As a student at a university for several years, I studied Journalism and English/Literature as part of my degree and for my own interest. A university student knows (or should know) the meaning of plagiarism and what constitutes as plagiarism, particularly when so much content is readily available online.
I have been reading a story about a blogger, Monica Gaudio, who discovered that one of her articles had been fully published in an article by an online cookery magazine Cook's Source. She emailed the magazine to ask for an apology and for the magazine to make a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism, and a few emails went back and forth without apology and refusal of donation; some of these can be read on The Guardian's article (1). The story generated publicity and many joined the magazine's Facebook page to post abuse.
Some claim to be ignorant of plagiarism and do not see it as a problem. (One can but hope that a magazine would understand and know what plagiarism is to avoid it.) Personally, completing my own work is much more satisfying than stealing someone else's work. Also, as an artist and a creator, I believe in giving credit to where it is due.
In the past, I have had images on my website stolen, and a year and a half ago, someone lifted my entire website and badly changed a few bits and pieces around to claim as their own; I discovered it appear in a search engine. My name and all of my HTML tags were left on the website. After several ignored emails and phone calls to the person who uploaded the website with their contact details, I had to go to the Internet Service Provider hosting the website to have the problem dealt with. In this case, the offending website was harming my own website's search engine optimisation; search engines will ignore websites that are duplicated.
Under the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States, Internet Service Providers will remove any material that infringes on copyright. Google will also de-list websites who have committed the offense; this can be done by filling out the form here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905.
In the story above about Cook's Source, social media was used to 'name and shame' the magazine for copyright infringement; it now appears that this has been the death of that company (2).
To protect your work, use watermarks on images and Copyscape (http://copyscape.com) to check the content. If the user has linked directly to content, replace the image or change the htaccess file.
(1) Baird, Dugald. The Guardian. Cooks Source:US copyright complaint sparks Facebook and twitter storm. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/nov/04/cooks-source-copyright-complaint [4 November, 2010].
(2) Dell Creative Studio. Someone's stolen my stuff! What to do when someone copies your content. http://www.dellcreativestudio.com/2010/12/10/someones-stolen-my-stuff-what-to-do-when-someone-copies-your-content/2/ [12 October, 2010].
I have been reading a story about a blogger, Monica Gaudio, who discovered that one of her articles had been fully published in an article by an online cookery magazine Cook's Source. She emailed the magazine to ask for an apology and for the magazine to make a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism, and a few emails went back and forth without apology and refusal of donation; some of these can be read on The Guardian's article (1). The story generated publicity and many joined the magazine's Facebook page to post abuse.
Some claim to be ignorant of plagiarism and do not see it as a problem. (One can but hope that a magazine would understand and know what plagiarism is to avoid it.) Personally, completing my own work is much more satisfying than stealing someone else's work. Also, as an artist and a creator, I believe in giving credit to where it is due.
In the past, I have had images on my website stolen, and a year and a half ago, someone lifted my entire website and badly changed a few bits and pieces around to claim as their own; I discovered it appear in a search engine. My name and all of my HTML tags were left on the website. After several ignored emails and phone calls to the person who uploaded the website with their contact details, I had to go to the Internet Service Provider hosting the website to have the problem dealt with. In this case, the offending website was harming my own website's search engine optimisation; search engines will ignore websites that are duplicated.
Under the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States, Internet Service Providers will remove any material that infringes on copyright. Google will also de-list websites who have committed the offense; this can be done by filling out the form here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905.
In the story above about Cook's Source, social media was used to 'name and shame' the magazine for copyright infringement; it now appears that this has been the death of that company (2).
To protect your work, use watermarks on images and Copyscape (http://copyscape.com) to check the content. If the user has linked directly to content, replace the image or change the htaccess file.
(1) Baird, Dugald. The Guardian. Cooks Source:US copyright complaint sparks Facebook and twitter storm. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/nov/04/cooks-source-copyright-complaint [4 November, 2010].
(2) Dell Creative Studio. Someone's stolen my stuff! What to do when someone copies your content. http://www.dellcreativestudio.com/2010/12/10/someones-stolen-my-stuff-what-to-do-when-someone-copies-your-content/2/ [12 October, 2010].
Leave a comment