It’s one of the most frowned upon things by bloggers worldwide. Â No I am not talking about the competitiveness and cattiness (though that could be number 2 I bet). Â I am talking about the biggest no-no in writing history….
PLAGIARISM!!
I have noticed this past week that plagiarism is a lot more rampant than I realized. Â For those that missed English class a little definition of plagiarism (as defined by Dictionary.com): Â Â the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.
What I wonder is what in the world sparks in someone’s publishing brain that makes them think
“Hmm, I like that I think I will use that whole post and/or paragraph and act like I wrote it”.
Obviously it’s not brilliance, so the next thing that comes to mind is stupidity. Â As a blogger today, surely we are all aware the time it takes to come up with a post, how much heart is put into posts such as Velveteen Minds Katrina’s 4th Anniversary post. Â In fact it was her tweets as well as another’s that sparked this Blogtiquette lesson, upon finding out that a good bit of her post was taken verbatim and used as the bloggers own words.
NOT COOL!
I can understand that it is entirely possible to have a sentence the same as someone else, and with reviews maybe even a couple. Â Anything more than that and you are sure to be found out. Â Let me go ahead and let you, smart content thieves, know in as nice a way as I can think to put it…
THINK FOR YOURSELF AND QUIT STEALING OUR STUFF!
Blogging is all about originality so when you use someone else’s words, you are not original (seems self explanatory but some seem to need clarification obviously). Â Stealing someone else’s words is not doing you any favors, in fact it will deem you the leper in the blogosphere, the one no one wants to be around. Â Blogging is hard work, no one ever said it was going to be easy, but if you can hack it on your own and think for yourself you really need to sit back and think if this is really for you. Â The more you “steal” the more you will be less trusted.
I totally get that sometimes you come across a blog that says something absolutely amazing and you wish you would have said that yourself.  It’s fine to envy someone’s post because it is brilliant, it’s not okay to make the words you did not write your own.  If someone truly says something you think you can live without on your blog, email them and ask  if you can use their words and LINK BACK TO THEM.  Let them have the credit for coming up with the brilliant writing.  Chances are if you do that they will say okay.  It would be an honor to most bloggers to know that you loved a piece of their work so much you wanted to include it on your blog, just give the credit where it is due.
In blogging today it takes an obviously not so bright person to think they will get away with something like this.  With all the copyright sights available to add on your blog or just run your url to check for dupes, you will be caught and when you are the fall out won’t be  fun.
Taking credit for something you didn’t come up with yourself is worse than being caught with the newest fashion faux pas…jean leggings. Â While from a distance it may seem like it’s a perfect fit and the style is original up close it can be seen that it’s not the real thing. Â It’s just another company trying to outdo a classic because in reality they can’t top the real thing so instead they take the idea and try to put a twist on it. It doesn’t work and rarely ever does.
Blogtiquette Lesson 4: Thou Shalt Think For Yourself!
Toni Patton
Latest posts by Toni Patton (see all)
- Sunsets Are My Reminder… - May 27, 2024
- Pensacola Beach’s “Bands on the Beach” 2024 Schedule Announced - February 21, 2024
- When The Baby Goes to College: I’m Not Ready…But, oh, How Ready She Is - August 22, 2023
Unfortunately some people are not witty nor intelligent enough to come up with original content. So they peruse the net looking for others more quality content. Or they just regurgitate some BS they already did mixed with someone else’s. Pathetic really. I personally love to quote others and give them a link back…shows respect and gives them credit for their original work.
I do too Karie, give credit where it is due, bloggers will respect you for it.
i love the look!!
ok. so this has been going on for ages. and it’s horrible. i don’t even know how to find out if my stuff has been plagiarized.
it’s jealousy, lack of creativity, amongst many other negative words.
lousy.
but it’s par for the course. the internet is huge. and full of thieves and dishonest people. and sadly, our posts are victims.
Okay the our posts are the victims made me giggle. But it’s true and hopefully it will be realized that just as any published book it’s not okay to take the words as your own and write a book so it will be eventually in the blog world 🙂
I definately draw inspiration from other’s blogs and use these same concepts when posting if I like the concept. I also post funny viral emails I get throughout the week. For the most part, there is no author listed but I do mention it popped up in my inbox. I have to say though, I’ve never noticed anyone cutting and pasting an entire post. That would really be jarring if I stumbled upon this one day.
Last week, I noticed a project posted that was exactly the way I’d posted the week before and scanned and scanned for my shout out and never found it. I ended up commenting “wow, what a coincidence! I posted this exact tutorial last week!” The blogger responded, “I know, that’s where I got the idea!” It wasn’t malicious, I just think it never occurred to her to credit it. I think posts like yours will get the word out and make bloggers think first, then credit the original thought second.
Thanks!
.-= jennifer juniper´s last blog ..Google Analytics Fun and DIY Thursday =-.
Jennifer,
I agree I think we all will find a post here and there through our blogging career that we will draw inspiration from. I think it’s flattering of course like others but at the same time maddening that someone would take credit for something they didn’t come up with. If this post even makes one person realize that it’s not okay to not give credit to the original poster then that is a step right 🙂
Thanks for commenting.
I think it’s important to point out that the person that was plagiarizing me was not a scraper. Meaning, it was not a bot blog that was automatically copying my text, triggered by a keyword.
This was a real blogger, with hundreds of readers and close to 1,000 twitter followers (many of whom followed me, as well). She had recently been invited to General Mills’ Table Talk, so people took her seriously.
In my case, she carefully inserted whole paragraphs of my post into her own in order to flesh out her post. She was not quoting me. She was passing it off as her own writing.
Her reply to me before making her blog private and deleting her twitter account? I was able to say things in a way that she couldn’t. Sigh.
She could have just quoted me. Had she wanted people to feel the way my post made her feel, she could have said so and linked to me. There were a million ways she could have handled this differently, but the bottom line was that she felt cheating was easier.
Honestly, for all of the work that it must have taken, I can’t imagine that it was actually easier than just writing it herself. And now her blog is more or less gone and her hard-won twitter followers lost. How could that possibly be worth it?
Point is, although posting a link back to yourself helps in the case of scrapers, it won’t fool a real human that is carefully stealing your content, paragraph by paragraph. Lots of deceitful thought goes into that.
Toni, I could talk about this all day. This is not the first time it’s happened to me. Thanks for shedding some light on what happened for me. I’m not sure how to write about it myself.
I absolutely agree, she should have quoted you not have passed it off as her own :(. Your post was amazing and I am so sorry that this happened to you.
I am sure you could write it much more detailed and not so glazed over, since it hasn’t personally happened to me I only know the pissed offness I felt on your behalf but I imagine what you felt was much much worse.
I just seriously can not wrap my head around why someone would do such a thing, it’s so sad.
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting.
Wow. I can’t believe people do this in good conscience. I give credit even if someone else’s tweets or blog sparked a thought for a post of mine (as you said above)..how do they do this without it eating away at them? I doubt anyone would want to copy my content but I guess you never know. How does one go about finding that kind of stuff out anyway?
You can search copyscape for copies and I have myfreecopyright on my blog so that all my posts have a fingerprint and all content is copyrighted to me 🙂
I have those on my blog…how did I not see/think of that lol.
I found my plagiarizer through copyscape.com. A reader found my first plagiarizer (an even more popular blogger than this second one) when she was tipped off to her plagiarizing other bloggers. She copied and pasted the plagiarizer’s most recent posts into Google and found the source, which was me.
I had no idea.
Fortunately, our work is copyrighted once we publish it, but that doesn’t stop these people. Finding them is the tricky part.
First (and I know this is off topic but) your blog looks great and second, my subscription to your blog remained in tact through your move! YAY! Okay, back to the subject… Honestly I had NO IDEA this was going on! I mean, what’s more original than a blog? Why do people have to steal? If I like something I saw or read on another blog, I ALWAYS reference where I got it from! This is just crazy! Good on you for bringing it to our attention and telling those copy cats to cut the crap!
.-= Christie-The ChatterBox´s last blog ..Escaping the Draft =-.
Girl I didn’t know either until I saw some tweets recently, then I was like wow, this happens more often than I thought.
It feels horrible to see your own words attributed to someone else. Most of us pour over our words so much that we immediately recognize. The sad thing is, every time it’s happened to me, it is obvious the person doesn’t care, they are not even a real blogger. They scrape feeds and post them with Google key words, surrounded with Adsense. Once, a splog had my entire feed, every post feeding into their horrible blog. Luckily, they even posted the “unsubscribe” part, so I took it upon myself to unsubscribe them.
Anyway, what are we to do? Is it part of the territory?
.-= Real Life Sarah´s last blog ..Get Real: Local vs National Blogging, Monetization, Setting PR boundaries for Your Blog! =-.
I don’t know what we can do aside from calling those out who have plagiarized us (not me personally since it hasn’t happened yet which is a good thing I guess LOL).
I tend to think it is part of the territory of blogging but people need to realize it’s not okay and that all they have to do is something as simple as give credit where it is due kwim
Cheaters never prosper!
Love the new look, BTW =)
.-= Melissa Multitasking Mama´s last blog ..Linking me up =-.
Absolutely I totally agree!
What a GREAT post!
After reading about this happening to a few other bloggers, I happened to find something of mine on another blog – it was just a recipe, but it included all of my words AND my picture (luckily I watermark my pictures) – but no link/credit was given to me – this “blogger” posted it as if she had made the cake, wrote the post and took the picture!
So I started going thru her blog and it was apparent that most of her posts were “stolen” and used as her own words – it wasn’t very hard to find where a lot of it came from, because when I googled sentances, I found their true authors – many of whom I contacted to let them know. They were all very appreciative.
I, as well as others, contacted this woman – she never responded but removed my recipe and picture and….get this…..replaced it with someone elses – I called her out on that and sent her the link to blogger about “stealing content” – she did remove that recipe and picture as well.
This blog is still up, some of the people I contacted have had their content removed, but there is still a LOT of content there that is not hers. This woman has never replied to anyone.
This all took place just a few weeks ago, and this “blogger” has not made another post since then – but I do check it daily waiting to see what’s going to happen.
Sorry to write a book here – this just hit close to home!
~TidyMom
Thank you so much for your comment 🙂
That is so sad the circumstances you and the others had. I seriously do not get exactly why it is so hard to post a simple Originally written by…whomever with a link?? Originality is what we all thrive on in this blog world , it’s great that others inspire us and we like what they have to say but so sad that those out there think it’s okay to make it their own 🙁
YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN!!!! There is NOTHING that would tee me off worse than having someone steal ANY part of a post that I wrote. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t blog how difficult it is to get each entry JUST how you want it and say JUST what you wanna say JUST how you wanna say it. Then to see YOUR words on someone else’s site? Oh.MY.Gosh. NO! lol
.-= Kat @ For the Love of Chaos´s last blog ..2009-09-02 : My Tweets =-.
On thing you can do is include a link to your own blog within your posts. They can manually take them out, but at least you will catch scrapers, when you search for link backs. Also, you can set up a Google Alert which will notify you when anyone posts a certain keyword, or link. It’s a start.
.-= Real Life Sarah´s last blog ..Get Real: Local vs National Blogging, Monetization, Setting PR boundaries for Your Blog! =-.
Great information Sarah 🙂
Hey Toni.
Good post.
Something I picked up from John Maxwell:
You will never fully prevent plagiarism. The best way to minimize the effects of plagiarism is to continue to produce quality content.
John Maxwell was allowing people to download some of his speaking engagements online for free and passing out CD’s & even giving away articles and books he had written. Someone asked him about making no money off of it and asked if he was worried about people copying his materials and giving them away. He said something like he “would be worried if [he] didn’t have any new ideas to produce” & he “wasn’t finished.” I don’t remember the exact quote, but that was the idea.
I wish there was an easy way to fight it, but readers know the difference.
.-= RayZorback´s last blog ..RayZorback: @michellemalkin woah.. did you hear the van jones audio @glennbeck just played? get "your people" to get it for you! amazing! =-.
How very true, there is no easy way to fight it and I am sure it will go on forever, so sad. But love the thoughts of John Maxwell, he makes some great points 🙂
Those stories always make me sick. Like who does that? Someone super insecure who looks at Dooce and is all “that’s my celebrity.”
I mean, if you’re going to aim high, go for Paris Hilton or something really classy. We’re bloggers, we work hard – but ya know, its blogging. Its what we do inbetween meals or whatever — but its what we do as we **live**. And then we come write about living.
I wish the copiers could live first — and not worry about so many things second.
.-= Natalie´s last blog ..need your dating advice =-.
Wow…it is unbelievable that someone would do this. I haven’t checked on my blog either, but I know I need to now. I would be livid, as everything I write, I came up with on my own, and quite a bit of thought and editing goes into each post. To have someone take it would be a direct slap in the face…I just don’t get it. Why have a blog if you don’t want to write??
AMen, babe!!
And I am glad you are having fun!! (sorry I’ve been scarce)
I love this. Absolutely fantastically written! Glorious!
Great post. I don’t think I’ve written anything in my blog that anyone would find interesting enough to steal! It would really burn my beans if they did, though!
.-= Aubien´s last blog ..Second fiddle … =-.