Recently I hosted a Plurkshop on blog content and copyright violation, plagiarism, and splogging.
My summary is published Here on the Plurkshops.com website.
Read the original plurk page for the topic.
In a nutshell, many of us blog for many different reasons, and whatever our motive may be, those of us who generate “original” content usually do not want this content to be duplicated wholly or without attribution elsewhere without our expressed permission. However, we don’t have the benefit of being informed as the unauthorized copying happens, and often discover the incidence either accidentally or through conscientious monitoring of our personal brand.
After I had published the plurkshop summary, Social Media & Public Relations Consultant Deb Robison alerted me to a ZDnet article by Jennifer Leggio on copy and paste blogging.
I responded to Deb as follows:
I think there may be cases where copying and pasting is necessary as a way to illustrate a point the blogger wants to make with the rest of his or her article, and cannot do so if the relevant portion is buried in the originating source. If not, there is not reason why the blogger cannot simply link to the source.
Sure, there is a risk that the source may no longer be there one day, we’re in the Internet age where
nothing lasts forever even as everything stays on record forever (if have enough $$ to spend to dig it out).
What I found interesting is the poll at the end of the article, “What do you think of ‘copy paste blogging?’” where the current results (with my vote tallied therein) are as follows:
- Total Votes: 156
- It’s great if the author adds his or her own opinions or news. (56%)
- It’s dangerous and I’ve seen it lead to mistakes. (37%)
- It’s fine. So what? You’re being too picky. (8%)
The above, by the way, is an example of me copying a selective area of the blog itself, without notifying Jennifer Leggio beforehand. However, the difference between my copying and what constitutes plagiarims/copyright violation may include:
- I am using a small and selective area specifically to illustrate an example
- I give clear attribution to the original source of the poll
- I use the selection in a way that would not preclude the need for you to visit Jennifer Leggio’s article to read if you are interested.
In other words, I didn’t steal Jennifer Leggio’s traffic by just copying her article with a big “blockquote” and slap Jennifer Leggio’s name somewhere to justify my actions, because you still wouldn’t need to visit her page to get her intellectual property. Furthermore, the majority of this article IS original: I made good faith effort to put some thinking and physical typing into creating this piece of content.
I voted as the majority had done: I was one of the 56% who said copying (parts, selectively) is fine if there is original content generated. Even if the choice itself didn’t specify “in part, not as a whole”, I’d let it go if I subjectively feel that the person copying my article is really using it as a platform to generate new ideas and discussions that will benefit both him/her and me.
When I used to do graphic and web design as a hobby, I’d have heated debates with a minority of graphic designers who think that piracy is just a fact of life and that it’s useless to try to be the “pixel police”. While I agree that policing pixel is one thankless job in futility, I also believe that resigning ourselves is very dangerous. This is akin to “evil happens in the world because the good people stand by and do nothing” (essay on this web quotation)
Hence, for my plurkshop, I was mindful to use the word “deter” and not “prevent” where plagiarism, splogging, and copyright violation with publicly available blog content or website articles are concerned. Just because we may never prevent dishonest people from profiting off our efforts and at our expense, doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to do what we can to make dishonesty as troublesome for the troublemakers as we can.
Postscript: Thanks to Rosa Say for sharing Jonathan Bailey’s Plagiarism Today website.