If you steal copyrighted material, what if your blog goes viral?

Would you be embarrassed—or sued—if the world found out you were a plagiarist?

We talk a lot about plagiarism and copyright infringement on Steemit because quite a few bloggers have been caught presenting other people’s articles and/or photos as if the material were their own. When caught, some of these plagiarists respond with outraged innocence before they do it again; others reform and contribute to the platform. The @cheetah bot and @steemcleaners are leading the way in eliminating profit from plagiarism.

Before you decide to steal someone’s photo, or just don’t bother to check whether copyright applies, think about this: what if your post goes viral?

Donald Trump, Jr. posted a meme showing a photo of a bowl of Skittles. Pushback against his anti-refugee message made the meme go viral. That meant that David Kittos, the British photographer who said he took the photo and put it on Flickr with copyright protection, woke up today to his photo all over the place, according to this Raw News story. The meme itself apparently borrows from Nazi propaganda, according to the story.

To add irony to the injury of using Kittos’ photo without payment or permission to advance an anti-refugee message, the photographer is himself a refugee. As a six-year-old, he fled the Turkish occupation of Cyprus with his parents in 1974, according to Raw News.