Plagiarism Wrong but Other Theft Okay on Steemit?
I am a fairly new member here on Steemit (I joined in September 2016) but I have been around a bit. Recently a friend of mine posted an article asking if some articles should be considered spam or not. I looked at the article then followed up with checking out the articles in question. These articles were posted one after the other (about 12 in an hour or two) and all of them were stolen content. The author had commented on that friend’s article stating the content (magazines in this case) was freely available, just click the downloads category for more proof.
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I engaged the conversation and brought up that these articles were probably not spam but they certainly linked to illegal downloads. This concerned me, quite a bit for a few reasons.
First, I am concerned as a content creator myself. I am working diligently to raise funds to relaunch my gaming magazine (Retro Gaming Magazine). Anyone that has attempted to do a magazine will be able to tell you it is not cheap. There is a lot of money involved and a lot of time invested in each issue. Seeing the hard work of others being made freely available like this is a concern for me on a personal and a professional level.
Second, the person that posted these articles also engaged the conversation and stated that these are “try before you buy” type downloads and they are not illegal – they are free. I simply stated that if they were legal, and free, then why is he not connecting directly to the website of each magazine where the downloads are placed? I have yet to receive an answer to that one. These are not legal downloads; the publishers are not giving this content away for free – they sell digital copies of these magazines. This is normal, they are trying to recoup some of the investment they have in each one.
Just check out the downloads category, it is full of articles linking to illegal content. Some of that includes Office Space (movie), Suicide Squad (movie), Steep Free (game), The Walking Dead (TV), Football Manager Mobile 2017 (game), Hustler (magazine), Time (magazine) and many many more.
Finally, the legal ramifications of allowing this type of content on Steemit could be bad for everyone. Just turning a blind eye and saying you did not know about it is not good enough as we have seen many torrent site owners shut down -they are in a similar situation to Steemit in this situation - they are not hosting the actual files, just basic information on how to obtain it (torrent). Who remembers MegaUpload? That service was shut down because of the hosting of files by their members (the owners attempted a "did not know" defense that failed horribly in court). I don't want to see Steemit shut down by a copyright holder with the courts on their side and everyone here lose their earnings, social interaction, etc just because there are a couple of people trying to make a buck sharing illegal content.
I know Steemit has a strict plagiarism concern about taking the content of others and passing it off as your own (which is great as I own a couple of websites myself - stealing is as easy as copy/paste). My question is, is posting content directing members to illegal content fair game here? That is a concern for us as a group and I would like to think that it is something that would not be tolerated.
Am I wrong in thinking that?
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Great article. I wasn't even thinking so far.
Goodluck with your magazine. I assume you let us know how it goes.
Peace
Thank you for bringing this concern to my attention. As you can see, I am concerned on many levels what that type of content being shared here can do to all of us as a team.
The mag is slowly going. I have one article so far about it (more historical in nature but a start). https://steemit.com/games/@triverse/rebooting-retro-gaming-magazine-part-1-where-we-started
"I know Steemit has a strict plagiarism concern about taking the content of others and passing it off as your own"
I don't believe that is an official Steemit policy. There are a group of people who do believe it is a big issue and work to fight it, but there is no official policy on it as far as I know. Everything the steemcleaners do is done by volunteers and backed generous benefactors who support them.
Thank you for clarifying that. I was obvious confused on the stance of Steemit itself.
As someone who's content has been stolen off the web (rather blatantly might I add), I completely agree. To come up with an idea worthy of being stolen usually takes hours of work or research. I've poured my heart and soul into articles that have been copy pasted elsewhere, how long did it take to do that? Even worse is the fact that due to differing laws of copyright varying per country, at times we can't even take legal action against these folks.
Is it that difficult to ask permission before doing these things? I do modeling, and as a co-owner of my photo's I always ask the photographer his permission for sharing as well as giving credit where it's due. Stealing other people's works is a crime and we could get hammered due to how stringent the United States is on copyright...
I'm with you on this line of thinking. Just a little while ago I made a comment about how I feel we can accept post rewards for linking content that is not our own... but it's a fine line and your post has led me to ponder it more.
The first key is properly crediting, and not claiming the work as your own. I think everyone is on board with that.
The more borderline part is the thought of profiting off someone else's content. In a very basic sense, I think that authoring a post that references non Steemit content is essentially curating, and can be rewarded. If the content in question does not have a Steem presence, rather than upvoting or resteeming, we share it as a new top level item.
With YouTube videos, it's easy. The embedded material still plays through YouTube, and is appropriately monetized and rewarded through their own system. Other content like an article, or piece of artwork, we need an etiquette for.
In those cases I feel in addition to being clearly attributed, we should provide a link to an official site for the content in question. The content also should not be reproduced in its entirety. If someone wants to see more than a thumbnail of the artwork, or read an article in its entirety, posts should be constructed to drive that traffic to the content creator.
If a creator has a Steem presence, good etiquette would indicate we only upvote, resteem, or link to their content.
This would even be good marketing. If a creator sees traffic hitting their site from Steemit.com, they'll check it out, and potentially build an official presence themselves.
The posts you've pointed out are definitely spammy, and Rapidgator is not a content creator!
With decentralization comes the burden on us to police such things. I have no reason to believe this poster (or any other) is malicious, and if they see such content is not favored, they'll stop posting it because it is not beneficial to them.
I am all with you on the points about sharing the content of others. We do this with our own content from Retro Gaming Magazine and Gravis Ludus (sites I own or co-own). We post a paragraph or two and then a read more link to the full article.