A lovely reader of this blog asked me for advice on how to stop others from plagiarizing original content on their blog. I thought this was an interesting topic for me to touch on now that this issue has come into the limelight thanks to SOPA and PIPA.
First of all, plagiarism is defined as taking someone else’s work without permission and calling it your own. This can be done on purpose or accidentally. Regardless of its intent, it is considered illegal. However, beyond illegality, if someone is taking YOUR content, it is just plain ANNOYING.
Unfortunately, it seems that with the flexibility and transparency of the web nowadays, it is IMPOSSIBLE to stop someone from copying content from your site. If you disable the use of the right click, it doesn’t stop someone from re-typing your content or taking a screenshot of your images. If you spread your name across a beautiful picture you’ve either taken or created, it doesn’t stop someone from using photoshop to carefully erase it right off.
So here are your options:
Option 1: Fight Against Them!
Back when I was in school, the days in which we had to write our notes by pen and paper, NOT the modern days where kids lug around their sleek laptops to play games in class while they pretend to be paying attention, we were all forced to go to the library to gather ideas from several sources to support our paper’s argument.
I’m not sure everyone had to go through the same torture as my fellow students and I, but I remember submitting my papers online so that a program could scan my work and tell me whether it was plagiarized or not. I’d cross my fingers as a bar of red increased as it went through the content. Then, I would sigh with relief when it made the cut of being considered academically original.
If you seek to subject others on the web with the scrutiny that teachers had against academic plagiarism, there are a couple of tools available for you to use:
However, what do you do once you find the culprits? All you can really do is send them an email asking them to remove the content. What else? Perhaps you can spam them to death. Realistically, who can afford to really take them to court?
Option 2: If you can’t beat them, join them!
When I first began getting intensely involved on the web, it was all black and white for me. However, as time passed, I realized the web world has really added a lot of gray into my moral fibers.
How often can we say we can come up with a purely original thought? Have you ever thought of the NEXT BIG THING? Only to realize that someone else thought of that exact same idea 20 years ago? Or have you ever heard a new song on the radio, only to realize that the melody used sounds strikingly similar to one that was created over 50 years ago? Quite often we read articles on other blogger’s sites that ignite our own opinions that we later write on our own. Or for you web designers, how often have you become inspired from several website designs to create your own masterpiece? How much of what we do can be considered truly original?
Society has become what it is today because of our own creativity that is often inspired by others and enhanced with the collaboration of other individuals. How often do we realize our goals are achieved much faster with the help and assistance of others?
My world was literally flipped upside down when a teacher introduced us to the concept of Creative Commons.
“Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.”
What it means is, creative commons does not support plagiarism, but in fact encourages people to share their work with others and to marvel at what collaborative work can produce. I encourage everyone to watch this enlightening Creative Commons documentary called RIP: A Remix Manifesto by Brett Gaylor.
You can download the movie on their website Rip Remix.
I have long gone given up on the idea that it is possible to protect ALL the content I post online. All I can ask for is to be credited (and hopefully linked to) when someone DOES intend on using my work. So, instead of stressing about what others are doing, I can focus on what I can do next.
