Plagiarism, Copying, Stolen Content and Other Annoyances...
As of late, the issue of plagiarism and stolen content/identities has been showing up again, presumably because the recent rise in the price of Steem is attracting a new generation of people looking to score a quick buck.
I'm no stranger to "stolen content." LONG before there was a Steemit, I would periodically have to wrestle with anything from web sites that simply copied my articles without permission to one case of a site copying an entire archive of articles.
Several years back, I even saw some of the photos from my posts here — all all which are my own — show up in a few posts, without any sort of attribution or a thank you.
When you're out on your own, there are limits to what recourse you have. I have filed many DMCA "takedown requests" over the years... with at most the result of getting a site blacklisted by Google, or having the copyist's web site lose its web hosting. In most cases nothing happens.
In a community like we have here, at least there can be a community effort to call out instances and actively try to correct/discourage the perpetrators.
It's funny — and a little sad — how many people don't really think much about stolen web content, yet they would be outraged at the thought of someone stealing a book, for example.
There's really no "pretty" way of talking about it... it's theft, no matter how you look at it!
Sadly, not everyone even agrees with that... arguing instead that the moment you "set something free" in the public domain, it becomes everyone's property.
If that were truly the way of the world, I don't really know how anyone imagines artists, writers, photographers, musicians and other creatives could possibly hope to make any sort of a living.
You might think what I just wrote there to be a little absurd, but while Mrs. Denmarkguy and I had our local art gallery here in town, it was not unusual for me to have this discussion with occasional visitors who felt it was perfectly within their right to photograph half the paintings in the gallery!
Anyway, I'm glad to see several of Steemit's prominent communities taking a firm stand against copied content, and I fully support their endeavors!
If the community is to truly grow and thrive we can't idly stand by and pretend that plagiarism is "no big deal." So I would ask anyone who reads this to call out plagiarism when they see it... and be part of taking a unified community stance against it!
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Have you ever had your work copied by someone else, who then claimed it to be THEIRS? Did it make you angry? What did you do, if anything? Do you see plagiarism as a problem to be taken seriously? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210406 00:57 PDT
x146
Well said! It's a shame how the virtues of uniqueness and originality have slowly eroded in this day and age. People find it easier to plagiarise than create unique content. I've never been a victim of this but it must be entirely heartbreaking for another person to take credit for someone else's work. I believe the best way to resolve this issue is through severe punishment of offenders
I strongly believe leaders can bring back @cheetah to monitor post ...a great fight we all need to fight against ...great post big ups buddy
Such a beautiful flowers, original articel is a must.
I created my own websites in the end of 2000s and, since then, my content was stolen too many times.
When social media arose, stealing content became the usual. If we speak about traveling industry, you didn't need to travel to become a travel author - just create a page on facebook called "Beautiful Thailand", for example, and post 2-3 times a day photos of other people. I was technically more skillful that most these people but I never started doing such social media pages. And I was losing money and oppotunities in life.
Yes, social media became stricter about legal rights for content but when a blogger has 100 thousands subscribers (gathered by means of stealing), he / she can easily adapt to new reality.
Once, I had much to say about all this. But these are old wounds that mostly healed.
Today ...I think a creator must build his / her economics properly and this is the main goal and challenge. Stealing is annoying but ... You should not spend much energy in fighting against it... Better to learn how to grow into a bigger beast ... Then thieves will become not more than mosquitoes.
I remember in the old days when people would just copy and paste content into their website. It was weird because back then there was no money to be made from small personal websites. Not even ad revenue. They might have displayed the material in a different way, but word for word the text was the same.