Plagiarism: When Is It Plagiarism, and When Is It Not?

Whenever I watch the Globalist Propaganda Media (The TV networks that we used to call the “Mainstream Media”), I frequently hear them say something like “According to New York Times reports…” or “As reported by the Washington Post…” It seems that they do very little original reporting these days. They have become repeaters, not reporters.

But they’re not the only ones! It seems that very few in the alternate media do their own original reporting either.

This is not necessarily a bad thing PROVIDED THAT CREDIT IS CLEARLY GIVEN to the original reporter.

This type of repetitive reporting does at least two good things:

1. It presents important information that would probably go unnoticed by most people without the repeat presentations in other media. This is especially good in Steemit. We want our readers to stay right here. We need to give them all the good stuff!
2. IF PROPERLY CREDITED, it can help to promote the work of the original reporter.

But there are some bad things that can happen too!

1. If the original report is “fake news,” then so are the repetitions.
2. Unless credit is clearly given to the original reporter, then the repeater is effectively STEALING the work product of the original reporter.
3. On Steemit, if you “re-post,” “re-blog” or otherwise repeat someone else’s work, even if you DO GIVE PROPER CREDIT, you may become the victim of overly zealous, trigger-happy flaggers who have self-appointed themselves as guardians of the Steemit galaxy. These unfriendly and careless flaggers do great harm to the Steemit community, especially when they flag minnows who simply need a little constructive guidance. On the other hand, if you DON’T give proper credit, or if you don’t make it immediately apparent, then you deserve to be flagged!

So, what shall we do on Steemit?

First of all, if we copy and paste images or large blocks of text, we must give clear, complete, and obvious credit to the medium where we got the material. If we do not get our material from the original creator, we should also give the same type of credit to the original creator whenever possible. If we don’t copy and paste, but we paraphrase the original work (or a repetition thereof), we should still give clear, complete, and obvious credit.

It is OK to quote short passages IF they are properly formatted as quotes and adequate credit is given.

Even if we do a total re-write based on multiple sources (like a research paper), we should notate our sources.

“Reviews” of the work of others can be considered useful information, and may even qualify your excerpts as exceptions to copyright law due to “fair use” clauses under the copyright laws of some countries. There may be other fair use exceptions as well (educational purposes, for example). But, once again, the origin of the work, as well as the “fair use” nature of the repetition should be clearly, completely, and obviously notated.

Photos and other images should be notated with the creator’s name, copyright information or equivalent where applicable, and preferably a notation like “Used by permission” (if true). Even if it’s your own work, you need to say so.

We should be careful to effectively promote the work of the original creator, for example, by providing links to their work or to their home pages in their various media. If we do a good job of this part, the original creator may even be glad that we repeated his or her work. As a bare minimum, when we copy and paste (or even paraphrase) work from another web page, we should include a link to that specific page.

Bottom line, posting material on your page automatically implies that it is your original work unless you clearly, completely, and obviously give credit where credit is due.

I have plenty more to say about this, but I suppose I’d better save some of it for another post! So stay tuned (maybe even follow me?). And don’t forget to upvote, reply, resteem, and promote.

Photo Credits:

1. "Egret 459X464.jpg" by Archie Steele, Copyright by Archie Steele 2016, Used by permission.
2. "Dandelion Flower 144128.jpg" by Archie Steele, Copyright by Archie Steele 2016, Used by permission.
3. "PapabearNLapuLapu Thumbnail.jpg" by Harah Jay Curamen, public domain (The owner of this photo has published it several times without any copyright notice).