Imitation maybe the best form of flattery but Plagiarism is not
I was in a discussion about plagiarism in the Newbie Resteem Day as two of the people there was having a very animated discussion about its effect and how it is either trampling on your free speech and use of ideas to one that if you created that idea somebody else is profiting from it.
I was observing this discussion and only was able to occasionally put in my two cents because I was in another discord community having a meeting but Plagiarism is something very important to me as both a content creator and as a reader because when something is created it is through the hard work of a person and if someone comes along and uses it without approval or even citation and profits from it then it just grinds my gears.
A month ago @xposed had written a great post about copyright and the number of comments and resteems it got showed how much the platform thought that it was important enough. Both sides of the argument were well represented in the comments as one side seems to think it is an antiquated idea in the age of the internet while one side is using the Intellectual Property Rights associated in a copyright.
If you are interested to read it just click on this link Let's talk about: Copyright
So using that article let us discuss what a copyright is.
What is Copyright?
Anything you see on the world wide web (www) is likely being copyrighted. Without owning the "copy"-rights you do not have permission (rights) to copy, duplicate, change/adjust, spread or publish the work that you have found. Whenever someone creates something like music, text, videos and photographs, Copyright is by law automatically allocated to that creator and only that person owns the exclusive rights to their work and can choose what to do with it. The creator can customize these licenses to their own or adjust to their client needing. These rights are described in different varieties of licenses that only the creator can grant to another person. By granting rights to another person, the creator still owns the work, unless he/she is transferring his rights to another person.
In Steem we are creating content that will be in the Steem Blockchain and in essence on the internet as well so anyone that Googles a certain topic might stumble on a post written on Steem.
Imagine the owner doing a reverse image search on a particular picture used using https://www.tineye.com/ and he can see where it was used. If it is a copyrighted image he can sue for improper use of something that he worked on.
This is especially true in Steemit as our post earn hear unless it is used for releasing information and the payout decline but still does not fully exempt the user. We will turn again to that article.
Because you are earning money on Steemit, you will need a commercial license for -any work that you are going to use for your blog posts. The most common and easiest to use license to publish work that has a commercial purpose is the CC0 1.0 Universal license. These works are also known as "Public Domain" where the creator has waived their exclusive rights to the public and made the photograph available for anyone, in any way. This means you can also use these works for Commercial Use (earning money on Steemit).
Enter Steemcleaners
In Steem we have a guardian against Plagiarism and Spam called @steemcleaners and is maintained by three witnesses @anyx, @patrice, and @guiltyparties.
These two links are very vital to know to avoid being tagged as a plagiarist or spammers.
Abuse Guide - 2017 Update
The Importance of Citation
Quoting from the Citation post
Citing sources in posts is important for a number of reasons, and not just because if you fail to do so you may get a comment from ourselves. Why do we, as Steemit users, need to cite our sources? To produce and share quality posts with original content. Plagiarised and copy/pasted material, including images, is not original content. Plagiarism is often a violation of Intellectual Property, which is generally seen as the theft of intangible property.
They have an uphill battle against spammers and plagiarist as more and more people join the platform and without the proper knowledge of copyright laws. Most of them do not have any experience in blogging or knowing that proper citation is needed.
Steemcleaners first objective is to educate and if the person persistently abuses then the account is downvoted to the point that anything published is hidden.
So far I have not yet been hit by any of its various tools and bots as I make it a point to properly cite or use Creative Commons images or public domain images. As for words and articles, I quote properly.
So why am I writing this?
Just a few hours ago one of the people I consider a friend in the platform said that her work was plagiarised.
She gave the link and I checked and was just dumbfounded. My first reaction was to flag the shit out of it and have it reported to steemcleaners.org for a nice SP bounty. Yet lately we have talked about how some people need to educated instead of punished right away. The original author stopped me from flagging the post and told me she would contact the person first. I left it to her decision if she would be reporting it or not.
Below is a screenshot of the plagiarised post and below it is the original post made by the author. Look at how all of the post is a copy and paste but changed the name to pass it off as his work.
Even the title and images are the same.
Plagiarized Post
Original Post
What could be the motivation?
An easy upvote as the tag Cxcoinsasia-Steem was being monitored by a whale who set out a call for 200 Videos to show Coins.ph the need to have SBD/Steem added as a currency supported by the platform.
If you look at the tag most of the posts have been upvoted to 10 dollars or more. So by copying a great post made by someone who took time and effort to make her post good and just plagiarize it and pass off as your own post is brain theft.
The fruits of your effort monetized by someone else without your consent. The person even placed a reference in the end to the original author's post but the intention is there to get an upvote.
Although I did not flag or report it I couldn't help but leave a comment that what he is doing is wrong. As I finish this post and check his post again he has deleted the content. The fact still remains if he was not caught he would have waited to receive an upvote for something he did not do.
I feel very strongly on the matter because like Ankarlie I really put a lot of effort into my posts and usually write an hour or so. If I see someone passing off my work like that I would be really pissed off.
How would you have reacted?
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I have an advertisement I place in a local paper now and then. The paper got a call once from someone who basically said "I like his ad. Can you give me that with my phone number?" I'm not even all that good a customer, but the lady was livid. She contacted me to tell me what happened. I don't think he got an ad at all, at least not that day.
It was just a 3 or 4 line classified ad that I think my wife wrote for me. (I probably wrote some piece of crap and she said "I can do better.) That's not the point though. it was my ad that someone put some thought into.
So you see, it's not just the internet, it's just easier on the internet.
Trust me, I'm a doctor.
indeed and with the internet you have the whole world to copy from and its terrible to see something that you made and it has been monetized by someone else.
So I cannot abide by not attributing.
I also am not cool with plagiarism. I work hard to make sure all pics are mine or are in the free domain. I also don't copy someone's work. I used to be on a website that was called Squidoo where plagiarism became an issue and they had to shut down the whole site essentially. I can't imagine being a teacher/professor these days and having to track down if the students actually wrote the papers themselves or not. I probably would flag and turn in someone who had totally copied me like that, especially if you know it was to get an upvote.
Yes and that was how I felt about this case! It was to get a 10 dollar upvote for something that he did not do.
Which is why I am happy that Steem is taking it very seriously with having Steem Cleaners and they are always thinking of new ways to combat spammers and plagiarist,.
This is a topic that strikes a nerve in me like very few can. It bugs me so much, I think, because no individual with even a modicum of intelligence, honesty or experience should ever, ever, think plagiarism or copyright is an outmoded philosophy or protection. In fact, it shouldn't even be a question. People should leave their grubby little mitts off of other people's stuff unless they've been given express written consent to use it and only use it within those parameters and for absolutely nothing else.
All that needs to happen to turn this argument on its head is this. How would you feel if, after all your hard work creating something, someone else made money off of it and you didn't? What if that happened multiple times a week over the course of your working lifetime? How would that make you feel? Would you be okay with that? Would you be okay with it if it meant you couldn't make ends meet, you were destitute and begging for food on the streets?
Anyone who makes a pro-plagiarism argument must have no talent of their own, and only wants to enrich themselves off the work of others. Period. That person is all but admitting that they are incapable of original thought or how to execute it. They are saying that the only way they can make money or compete or be cool or whatever they're attempting to do, is by leeching off the abilities of others.
The digital age shouldn't be the time for this to become a free-for-all. This is when all creativity protections should be doubled down on, because there are no other protections, such as geographical distances, means, security or any other obstacle. Anyone from anywhere, if it's living on the net, can simply appropriate someone else's work. There is no other security without these protections in place.
This is exactly the same mentality that causes people to walk through other people's property to get to a river or some other type of public by way, instead of taking their lazy rear end the long way around. This is exactly the same disregard that anyone has for anyone else's property of any kind.
And, if I could be so bold and actually do some stereotyping, it's usually, not always, but mostly, people who don't have whatever it is they're wanting. It's an, "I breathe, therefore I deserve it" mentality. It's the "I belong to the world" scenario.
I think I'd better stop. Not doing anything here to lose your interpretation of my comments being novels, am I? :) However, this one is a bit longer than most.
I completely agree with you Glen on this just because it is on the net doesn't mean its free picking for anyone.
The discussion went that anyone is free to make use of physical or intellectual property being myths in a scarcity mindset. While I espouse the abundance mindset I cannot put aside that there is still property owned. If we are to remove that right it will be chaos.
Hahahah I know as a content creator you understand and feel passionate about copyright.
Whew. I'm glad to see you finally get to this. You must be pretty busy. I was afraid I'd scared you off with my "passionate more than normal" comment.
It just kind of happened and I got going. When I read it again, I thought maybe I should tone it down, but then I thought, no, because some would be plagiarist out there might read this and might decide maybe I shouldn't, if for nothing more out of fear that this old guy might track him down and let him have it in person. :)
The abundance mindset to me comes from the idea that there is more than enough for everyone, which means you're not taking from anyone because you have your own. So, if you're not taking anything from anyone, you're not stealing their intellectual property, either, because you should have your own of that, too, in one way or another. And if you don't, then you probably should re-evaluate how you're trying to make a living.
Man, I'm going to stop now. It's starting all over again. :)
I have been sick for the past couple of days and not feeling too well so I expect to be knocked out of the league all together hahaha.
I can't type novels disguised as comments like you have hahahha.
But it is always a pleasure to see a comment from you and even if takes me a while to get to it intry my best.
Indeed go on and promise fire and brimstone to plagiarist because that is how I feel to.
I like how you said that having the abundance mindset indeed means that we have more than enough to go around that there is no need to steal another person's work.
It is simply wrong.
I'm sorry to hear you've been sick. That's worse than being overly busy. I hope you've started to feel better.
Well, I think I'll move on from the subject of plagiarism for now. Spiting fire and brimstone is exhausting. Not to mention, not so great for the throat and eyes. :)
Be well!
This is an important issue to address. We need to squash the notion that copyright is an antiquated ideal in the digital era. It simply isn't. Work is work. Stealing is stealing. It must be addressed and sooner rather than later.
I've had my intellectual property (video and song) stolen by a multi-millionaire to advertise his very famous world-wide audio engineering schools (which ironically teach copyright in their courses!! Lol!).
There were others that also had their works stolen in the same case. We couldn't pursue justice with it because he had a multimillion dollar law firm defending him which threatened the livelihoods of several of us involved. He basically got away with it because he had power and money.
It felt crap for all of us.
I've also had famous musicians directly steal lines from my shows and style of my music yet reach far greater success than I. That's ok, to a degree. That's the imitation is flattery side of things because inovators will get copied. It only irks me when an audience member comes to me and says something like "Oh, you're just like such-and-such." (eyes roll)
Anyway, great article post!
I agree especially now in the age of the internet that we should be more aware of not citing or directly copying someone's work.
Someone took the time, effort and creative process in doing something and by using that to profit is just wrong.
Yes the music industry is rife with this as artist's sample other artists work and even style.
You're a much more forgiving person then I am. I would have flagged the post in question. Steemit is still in its infancy and at present, the quality is quite subpar and amateurish in many instances.
The problem with flagging is that it requires SP. So if you don't have enough or any at all, you can't even flag bad content down. It's a flawed system. Especially flawed when the original author can see you've flagged and then get retribution by flagging your content back (it'd happened to me before).
I see rampant theft on this platform and I am so grateful for Steem Cleaners being there and the fact it costs nothing to report content and it's anonymous, is how Steemit itself should be.
As for the motivation of most people who steal, it's money. Definitely money. People are stealing content in an attempt to make what usually equates to cents in profit.
Indeed and bad if the person you flagged has bigger SP and a vindictive streak that starts flagging you down.
I agree that the SP for flagging should be different as you waste valuable SP and neglect those people you want to support if you are left to flag content.
I have used Steem Cleaners a lot of times especially for phishing scams which I absolutely hate!
The way they do it is completely anonymous and they verify so its a great service in the community that is why I have them voted as witnesses.
My first instinct is to downvote. I was judging a writing contest a few weeks ago, and we had a problem with several of the posts containing a large amount of plagiarized content. And I know sometimes people do it because they don't understand copyright, but it's still wrong to me. As a content creator and artist, I feel a lot of fear about other people monetizing my content without permission. It's a struggle between compassion for people who don't understand and upholding intellectual property rights.
I agree that it feels bad when people copy your work without attribution and more if they earned money out of it. It is not the fact that you should be paid but the thought that something you created was used without your permission.
Often times I give people a chance when they plagiarize and if they did not change it or put it down they off to Steem cleaners.
It is really not good to just copy the ideas of others. We all should learn to work on things rightly and not just wait or make it the easy way. Hay!
I think ideas in general are okay unless you are passing it off as an original idea but a lot of us have this as a reaction to an idea response.
It is when it is a direct copy and paste that pisses me off.
i have seen this repeatedly and by people we know, i habe seen people make $60 to $100 on the post and ive seen people take “inspiration” from my post or others and win contests from very similar wording. not copy and paste but words mean the same and some phrasing cooy and pasted. what is there to do, esp whem someone is “well known,” or very well liked?
I know ES!! It's so unfair when you do it the chance to trend is not high unless you heavily bot or get curie which is like hard.
But if a whales posts it even if you can't understand it becomes trending.
so unfaiiirrrr buahahahaahah
hey with E and some others help, i got it sorta figured out and i'm not doing too bad.
i really shoulda dropped more fiat into steem when it was so low. pounds my head against the wall
Ha! I wish I could pump the little money I have hahah as Steem goes up.
guess that's what they say, we should still buy bc its gonna hit da roof!
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fiyahhh
Hey, stop spending so much on hotels, candy, flowers and such ... Buyahhhh :p
Better to work hard for your own work:) Originality will be recognzed !!!
True better be an original.
I once got a lucrative upvote for a heartfelt comment I made, from a high-earning Steemian. The next day I was reading another post by the same account, and I noticed the same comment I'd made, word for word, but posted by someone else. Obviously it had no relevance to the post, but they clearly thought it might earn them some easy cash.
It was such a pathetic attempt that I didn't flag them or anything - I just put a link to my original comment, and called them out on it in a jokey way.
Oh man I have seen those especially for some folks who have English as a second language or struggling to express themselves.
They copy another person's comment and use it on a different post. That has happened to me too and just left me with a wtf feeling.