Valuable content shared with Steemit is being tagged as STOLEN! Understand the importance of giving credit where credit is due.
A Steemer @tedvernon recently shared Alex Fortin's Youtube video and actually did pretty well for themselves as you can see here. The only problem with this is that our friends over at #steemitabuse tagged this as stolen and downvoted it 9 times with some pretty solid accounts.
The content was allegedly stolen from Alex Fortin's own Steem post. This post was actually shared by Alex 7 hours AFTER @tedvernon. Now, I wouldn't be so STEEMED about this if it weren't for the fact, that two days prior, when @digvijay shared Alex Fortin's blog, @alexfortin actually thanked @digvijay for sharing his content on Steemit!
Another Steemer @luiscuv recently shared an article from cryptocoinnews. His post was recently brought to #steemitabuse and is currently not only being down voted for being it being considered stolen/plagiarism but is also losing many potential votes because he didn't give the proper credit to cryptocoinnews!
SO, why aren't we down voting EVERY YouTube video or news article somebody shares? It's technically all considered "stolen" then, right?
Wrong!
Just like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media platform, we should be completely free to share content with each other, given legal authority. So please, whether it's a news article, or a YouTube video, or even just a great Giphy that makes you happy, come and share it.
TL;DR
Please, share any external content you would like, just make sure you are legally allowed to share your content and that you give credit where credit is due!
I personally don't want Steemit to degenerate into a place where it's merely rehashing YouTube videos. The devs made it clear that we should be trying to promote original content and that people should choose to give upvotes to those posts that have taken more time to create as a reward, rather than merely taking others content and saying "Hey take a look at this! It's cool don't ya think?" then getting paid handsomely for it.
"Please, share any external content you would like, just make sure you are legally allowed to share your content and that you give credit where credit is due!"
This should be the bare minimum if one is going to repost others work, but this isn't being done as much as it should. Barely being done is more like it. So, obviously I agree with your statement there, just I feel that reposting things in order to get a payday for literally 1 minute of "work" is bad for the culture I think the site is trying to promote. Hopefully, the system will change to balance the content so that this experiment doesn't die out due to a flood or an attempted flood of unoriginal popular content created on other websites.
As it stands, trying to wade through new posts is silly. So much junk trying to emulate what people think is the easiest payday instead of just creating. Why should we even bother to create anything unique when you could spam 20 YouTube and Vimeo videos in the same amount of time? Actually, you could "create" 50 reposts in the time it would take to create one really good, well researched original post.
Maybe I'm just being too idealistic or self-centered in that I WANT to create and be a part of something special for Steemit, just I'm not sure it makes sense to do so.
if it doesn't say "hey this is my personal created content" its probably a share... give credit? don't people say hit like and subscribe in EVERY youtube video they make? lol steem is decentralized? lets keep that spirit . every youtube video links back the channel it was uploaded on and back to youtube .....what do we need to post in a professional format now ? if you share a youtube partners video and they monetized it you just made them free ad revenue aswell
"... its(sic) probably a share..."
You are guessing it's a share. This is the beef I have. People don't care about doing due diligence. They want to get something for nothing. If they cared about and respected the work that others do, they would ask BEFORE they reposted others YouTube videos or other content. Instead they make excuses of every type to justify their theft. Just because FB and other sites have made it "ok" in the minds of most internet citizens doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
Those YouTube channels that say like and subscribe are not saying "Go ahead and profit from my video by linking my video as if it were your own content" which is what IS being done on Steemit.com. Also, a YouTube channel will need thousands of views in order to make even pocket change. On Steemit, you only need a few whales to voteup your repost without even watching the video to get paid more than that. How can people that do this sort of thing not feel sleazy? It really boggles my mind how unscrupulous society is as this is surely the status quo for nearly anyone you ask.
In my opinion, this is proper etiquette.
Regardless of how things are done on the internet elsewhere, Steemit.com shouldn't just follow what others do if it's wrong. I get the impression that some of those that are completely ok with people profiting from others creative works have never been in the position of having their own creative work used in a way they didn't approve of or not been paid for creative services rendered.
I like to share interesting news when I find it. Is it ok to just put the link to the original content at the bottom?
Honestly, I feel dirty profiting from others sweat and investment. If it were me, every penny I made from reposting something I liked, I would contact the real content owner and see how I could transfer the profits to them. Contact them before linking it and seeing if they don't mind. I don't know, anything other than just putting a link to YouTube and saying "hey ain't this swell! Don't forget to upvote me! :p"
In my gut this feels wrong to do. It's like reselling freeware that the creator says is ok for you to use and even ok for you to share with others, just don't make money on it. And what are we doing here? We're making money on someone elses hard work. Doesn't that set off your spidey senses as being unethical?
I have yet to see any reposter make note of asking the original content creator if it was ok ahead of time to post here. I'm sure there must be examples, just I have yet to see it.
I understand how copying personal content from youtube, blogs or forums is really stealing content especially if you don't mention it's not yours. But I'm talking more about posting about an article on some news website. Including the link will probably send traffic there and that's what the original website wants so isn't that ok?