Tuesday
May292012
Plagiarism On the Internet and What You Can Do When It Happens to You
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The word plagiarism has been around since the 1620s, and plagiary since the late 1500s, so this is not some newfangled idea people made up to make life difficult. It has been considered a bad thing to claim the works of others as one's own for hundreds of years — be the works written, visual, or conceptual — but people seem more confused than ever now about what plagiarism is and why it is a bad thing to do.
A common misconception these days is that works published on the internet somehow fall outside the usual rules of theft and appropriation, but the truth is that the rules don't change just because something is published in one medium and not another. The same rules apply whether the material being used is from a printed book, a recording, or someone's website.
People often use words like "borrowing" or "copying" to describe what happens when work is plagiarized, but the truth is that it is actually fraud to falsely claim ownership of another author's work and present it as your own.
Yes, FRAUD.
I have had to deal with plagiarism more than once over the last couple of years, and, in each circumstance, the individuals who plagiarized my work not only did not admit to wrong-doing, but they also persisted in the plagiarism until I either wrote about their actions publicly or, as in this last instance, had their website removed from the internet altogether by their web host until they removed the plagiarized content.
In light of my most recent experience, I thought I'd offer a brief education about plagiarism, fair dealing/fair use, copyright, how to avoid plagiarizing others, and how you can deal with plagiarism of your own work, because a lot of us have not been taught what the boundaries are, and it really gets in the way of good internet citizenship when someone crosses the line.
This isn't only about being a good neighbour, though. It is your responsibility to be aware of and then act according to copyright law and fair dealing/fair use if you publish online and/or use social sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, or Facebook, because ignorance of the law is no excuse.
In Canada, fair dealing "...offers some exceptions to the Copyright Act's general prohibition on copying. Fair dealing allows limited and non-commercial copying for the purposes of research or private study, criticism, review, and news reporting".
In the United States, fair use "...is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work."
Fair dealing and fair use basically mean that another author's work can be used in part with certain restrictions without crossing into plagiarism. For instance, you can use a smaller part of a work, such as a quotation of a sentence or paragraph, to comment on or critique it as long as you cite the work in question.
In Canada, "...[copyright] protection is effective even without registration" and is generally held until 50 years after the creator's death, as long as the material meets the following requirements:
In the United States, the following works can be registered for copyright:
Read "Canada and the United States: Differences in Copyright Law" for more information about the similarities and differences between the two countries and how they understand copyright protection.
I want to make it clear that I am not a lawyer, so please do your research when using the works of others and defending your own plagiarized material.
Now, let me repeat: it is your responsibility to be aware of and then act according to copyright law and fair dealing/fair use if you publish online and/or use social sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, or Facebook. We all work hard on the content we create, and if we find content important enough to share, it only makes sense to credit the author behind that content.
Have you ever been plagiarized? Have you ever inadvertently plagiarized another author? What did you do about it?
A common misconception these days is that works published on the internet somehow fall outside the usual rules of theft and appropriation, but the truth is that the rules don't change just because something is published in one medium and not another. The same rules apply whether the material being used is from a printed book, a recording, or someone's website.
People often use words like "borrowing" or "copying" to describe what happens when work is plagiarized, but the truth is that it is actually fraud to falsely claim ownership of another author's work and present it as your own.
Yes, FRAUD.
I have had to deal with plagiarism more than once over the last couple of years, and, in each circumstance, the individuals who plagiarized my work not only did not admit to wrong-doing, but they also persisted in the plagiarism until I either wrote about their actions publicly or, as in this last instance, had their website removed from the internet altogether by their web host until they removed the plagiarized content.
In light of my most recent experience, I thought I'd offer a brief education about plagiarism, fair dealing/fair use, copyright, how to avoid plagiarizing others, and how you can deal with plagiarism of your own work, because a lot of us have not been taught what the boundaries are, and it really gets in the way of good internet citizenship when someone crosses the line.
This isn't only about being a good neighbour, though. It is your responsibility to be aware of and then act according to copyright law and fair dealing/fair use if you publish online and/or use social sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, or Facebook, because ignorance of the law is no excuse.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is:- when the ideas or words of another are used or closely imitated without the source's permission and passed off as one's own.
- when an idea or work is presented as something new but is actually taken from another original source.
- when another's work is used or closely imitated without crediting the original source.
- turning in someone else's work as your own
- copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
- failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
- giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
- changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
- copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not
What is fair dealing/fair use?
There are circumstances when it is okay to use part of another author's work using what in Canada is termed "fair dealing" and in the United States is termed "fair use".In Canada, fair dealing "...offers some exceptions to the Copyright Act's general prohibition on copying. Fair dealing allows limited and non-commercial copying for the purposes of research or private study, criticism, review, and news reporting".
In the United States, fair use "...is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work."
Fair dealing and fair use basically mean that another author's work can be used in part with certain restrictions without crossing into plagiarism. For instance, you can use a smaller part of a work, such as a quotation of a sentence or paragraph, to comment on or critique it as long as you cite the work in question.
What is copyright?
"Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression." (Wikipedia)In Canada, "...[copyright] protection is effective even without registration" and is generally held until 50 years after the creator's death, as long as the material meets the following requirements:
- the material is literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic,
- it covers the expression of the idea but not the idea itself,
- the expression of the thought must be original if not the thought itself, and
- the creator of the work must be connected with "...either Canada or a member of any number of other international trade or copyright treaties, including the Berne Convention."
In the United States, the following works can be registered for copyright:
- literary works (articles, stories, journals, computer programs, and pictures and graphics)
- architectural blueprints
- music and song lyrics
- plays and screenplays
- audiovisual and sound recordings.
Read "Canada and the United States: Differences in Copyright Law" for more information about the similarities and differences between the two countries and how they understand copyright protection.
How you can avoid plagiarizing the works of others:
- Familiarize yourself with fair dealing/fair use.
- Familiarize yourself with copyright.
- Unless otherwise noted by the work's author, assume copyright is in place.
- Limit your longer quotes to 250 words or less to stay on the safe side of copyright. Wikiquote has good guidelines for safe use regarding quantity.
- Secure an author's permission before republishing either a larger portion of their work or a copy of it in its entirety.
- CITE YOUR SOURCES. Use proper citation to accredit online or offline works to their original authors. When online, make sure to link directly to your sources.
How you can deal with plagiarism of your work:
- Use an online plagiarism checker like Copyscape to scan the internet for copies of your written work being republished without your permission.
- Save a screen capture of your plagiarized content. You may need this in the future to prove your case.
- Perform a Whois check for the domain in question if you work is being plagiarized. This should give you information about the website owner and the registrar and how to contact them.
- Contact the website's owner explaining that the content has been plagiarized and that it must be removed immediately.
- Contact the hosting provider if the website owner does not remove the offending content. The hosting provider can ask them to remove the offending content or can even remove the website altogether if the website owner fails to comply.
- Contact the website's advertisers. Plagiarized content is often used to try to boost ad dollars, so contacting their advertisers can remove their incentive to plagiarize.
- File a report to search engines that your content is being fraudulently reproduced. Search engines can be helpful, because it is in their best interest not to have duplicate content showing up in results. They have the power to ban the site from their listings.
- Write about the website owner's behaviour publicly. I had to resort to this action at one point, and it was not pretty. This is a course of action best reserved for repeat, unapologetic plagiarizers who refuse to comply with decency and the law. Be careful if you go this route to avoid libel.
- Pursue legal action against the website owners responsible for the continued plagiarism of your work. If you live in the United States, one option that may be cheaper than hiring a lawyer is DMCA Takedown Services, which uses the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a U.S. copyright law, that "...addresses the rights and obligations of owners of copyrighted material who believe their rights under U.S. copyright law have been infringed, particularly but not limited to, on the Internet".
I want to make it clear that I am not a lawyer, so please do your research when using the works of others and defending your own plagiarized material.
Now, let me repeat: it is your responsibility to be aware of and then act according to copyright law and fair dealing/fair use if you publish online and/or use social sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, or Facebook. We all work hard on the content we create, and if we find content important enough to share, it only makes sense to credit the author behind that content.
Have you ever been plagiarized? Have you ever inadvertently plagiarized another author? What did you do about it?
categorized in lists, writing and blogging and tagged in Copyright Act, DMCA, copyright, copyright infringement, fair dealing, fair use, how-to, lists, plagiarism
lists, writing and blogging and tagged in Copyright Act, DMCA, copyright, copyright infringement, fair dealing, fair use, how-to, lists, plagiarism 
Reader Comments (19)
So helpful! Thank you for the clarity.
I was plagiarized by the same person.. twice. She claimed she didn't know how to embed a hyperlink to give me credit. I had to threaten legal action to get her to remove my content.
I regularly run a Copyscape check of my content now, and even have a prominent copyright statement on my blog homepage. Those steps won't stop every theft, but at least I've given notice I won't tolerate plagiarism.
It's sad that you have continually had to deal with this issue, but I'm glad that you shared this article. Now, let's see if the some individual/site rips this wholesale as well.
Hang in there. The majority of us respect the content and its creator.
The definition of plagiarism that you posted is the one that I abide by and that I am familiar with from the academic settings that I have studies and worked in. However, I was surprised recently when I flagged a post that plagiarized a friend of mine's post and the website owner (not the same as the author of the post in question) made a determination that despite similarities, it was not plagiarism and while they would talk to the author about it, they wouldn't be removing it.
From that perspective, I wonder about the difference between "best practice" as it relates to plagiarism and legal definitions. Again, my familiarity is in the academic world and I know that any breach of the rules would result in at minimum a grade of ZERO on the paper and at worst being expelled from the university. But online? Who knows...
I've never been plagiarized, but maybe being plagiarized is the sign that you have super-awesome content? Although I do imagine it must suck A LOT.
Do you have to scan with copyscape every time you want to scan your site? I thought I heard about something that emails you if your work is being plagiarized? I might be wrong.
Mrs. Wilson, you can pay for Copyscape's Copysentry to do regular scans of your site and be notified if something pops up.
I don't think I've ever been plagiarized, at least not according to Copyscape. I'm just amazed that someone would do this. I don't really understand it. I hear from my friends that teach at college level all the time about students turning in plagiarized work and the whole idea is unfathomable to me. Why?!?! People are crazy stupid.
Amazingly, any time I've been plagiarized and brought it to the attention of the offending party, I got a lot of excuses for why they "had" to steal my work, and then a lot of insisting that I'm just being a bitch about it. So I'M the a-hole because YOU stole from me? On what planet? I wrote a post about one egregious incident and many commentors insisted that I was a bully for it (and I didn't even mention the name of the person that did it!) http://thefeministbreeder.com/a-little-plagiarism-and-mistaken-identity-puts-me-in-the-dumps/
thefeministbreeder, the commenters who thought you were wrong or a bully are either ignorant or full of shit. That was straight up fraud, and I don't care if her kids were sick. I feel bad that they were, but that's no excuse to commit fraud. She should have called on a friend to help her write the article and avoided being a lying thief, instead.
Well they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.
I totally plagiarized @Jodifur facebook status, but told her and gave her credit, thought she called me out of giving her credit before I had a chance to. Great post and great link. Great article! I am totally going to check out copyscape.
Thanks for taking the time to write this, lady. xoxo
Years ago as a race car mechanic I wrote a piece on a blog. Then 2 weeks later I read the exact same content of my piece in a published magazine by a rather famous racing commenter. I talked to him about but he acted like he'd never read my blog. Which was odd because he'd mentioned more than once how he really enjoyed reading it. I let the whole thing drop including my friendship with the commenter.
When I first started blogging, I've "borrowed" images from the web without authorization. The first time was when the copyright was watermarked on the image so I didn't feel it was necessary to credit the artist. Which of course was wrong. The second time was a slip up on my behalf, and the artist found out about it and contacted me. We discussed it, I offered to retract the image with an apology and he said all I needed to do was credit him.
Now when I find an image I want to use I contact the artist. The reception I get is incredible. They are always so thankful and gracious...
Thanks for this post, very insightful!
Sorry to hear that you have had to deal with this repeatedly.
Late to this discussion, but for visual artists this service is useful for finding ripoffs of your work: http://www.tineye.com/
Not sure that I completely get it ... When researching articles or blogs about a specific topic, they are ALL discussing the "same ideas"of the topic using their own words?
Dawn, using an idea that's common is different than a unique idea like the Theory of Relativity. For instance, we can all write about how annoying we find email spam or write about the latest political news, but if you write about the Theory of Relativity as though it is your own theory that you invented, that would be wrong
Using a fully automated plagiarism check software can be a tricky way to deal with the plagiarizers. Why not give it a try?
This exact subject is hard t come by. thank you for writing it.
I have my own blog, but I also enjoy writing for some $ on bubblews.co, Most of the core community is wonderful However there are those who flood their way into Bubblews that plagiarize. I suppose some just do not get it, even when told they will not be paid for nowt posted their own work. Others, I am not sure sure they are that dumb.I think it is an organized system.
I am searching for my own post, again. to avoid plagiarizing you, I want to let you know, I am sharing your link. thank you for the information.