Declare War on Plagiarism – Stop the rot!

So you get a great idea, and it doesn’t happen all the time, does it? I mean, as much as we want them to, those moments of brilliance don’t come around every day, (at least not for me), so we should capitalize on them where we can.

How do we do that? We go ahead, publish our idea on the net, maybe even market it a bit, and if you are an amateur blogger, usually without thought of monetary compensation, in that the idea is free in the name of sharing information. You feel secure in the knowledge that the world is happily benefiting from your idea and being morally upstanding in proliferating it, right? Well……

Then one day, you google it, or explore a tag …. Bingo!!!! Someone else has taken your idea and claimed it as their own, with no credit, no ping-back, or acknowledgement what so ever that I had the original idea!

The first time it happened I thought it was flattering –

Second time, nah, must be a coincidence –

Third time, I am a little concerned –

Fourth time, I am really cheezed off!

Do people have no moral backbone? No sense of copyright?  Perhaps they simply trawl the net and regurgitate ideas from others?

What do I do in response? Rant on in the privacy of my home about plagiarism, copyright infringement, or attempt to report them? But what about the ‘community’ one builds around our ideas?

The ideas are not just stolen, but potential community members too are lost to other groups. Groups that I am excluded from due to ignorance of their existence!

But my twenty something highly computer literate son tries to placate me with:

“Mum, reality check: it is the internet!” (like somehow this makes it ok) “Request a take down notice or report them”

Okay! Let’s see how that worked for me:

Reporting them to Youtube/ Facebook or the net: zero results.

Direct contact via email – one positive result

This eventually resulted in the removal of a video from youtube, only because the film maker claimed he did not have time to check the validity of my claim! Time!!! Not because it might have been an error, morally reprehensible, legally wrong, or anything else, but in the interests of time alone! Ha!

Some victims  of cyber harassment take to facebook and contact the parents of these youth who indulge in this kind of intimidation, so is this the approach the internet users of today understand?

Somehow, approaching their mothers about copyright infringement is doomed to failure, as these kids are not familiar with the values of ownership, and generally speaking these values come to us from our parents, so I doubt I will find any joy there.

I do lay the blame, to some extent, on the sharing mechanisms for leading the youth to believe it is okay to take and not give credit. Hey, it is nice to share, but we don’t share everything, and, if we do, we don’t then claim it as our own!! Give credit where credit is due, comprende? It doesn’t take much time, but means a lot.

Then I found this wonderful little cheat sheet from digital cameraworld.com , that is incredibly useful in untangling the whole copyright issue, at least in regard to photography use. It makes for something interesting to ponder about.

Here it is and please note that this is digital camera world.com’s work!!

A Must to Ponder About