This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Plagiarism or Piracy – It's Still Stealing

Internet plagiarism is rampant. Web plagiarism is the illegal use of written work, photographs or graphics on a website and refers to content taken from another website without having permission or giving credit. Image Online piracy is refers to downloading illegal copies of copyrighted software, movies or music via peer-to-peer networks, Internet auctions or blog.

" ...Piracy is a form of ‘free-riding’ in which the pirate takes advantage of the efforts of the original author without having the investment of resources by the original author." 1

Free speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution, but so are property rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote that patent and copyright protection were necessary to encourage the creation of new works and suggested "Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

When something is written or a picture or graphic is created, it is automatically copyrighted and protected under the law from being stolen. But it didn't have the little c in the circle copyright mark, you say? Doesn't have to. In the United States, since 1978, there is no formal requirement to mark your work with the copyright symbol. In fact, there are no formalities required whatsoever except creating. Copyright is created in a work once it is fixed into a tangible medium of expression. This means your writing is copyrighted the moment you hit the “save” button; your photo is protected as soon as you click the shutter; your art becomes your intellectual property as soon as ink or paint touches paper or canvas.

The laws governing online content are the same as for printed materials, and both are protected by copyright infringement laws. Internet plagiarism is sometimes harder to detect than with printed materials because it is so easy to copy images or text from a web site. Most search engines can detect when a site is using plagiarized materials and can keep the rogue site from showing up in search results. The offending websites may even be taken down.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but not downright copying.

My first experience with copyright infringement was in third grade. A local women's club ran a contest at the local elementary schools for the best summer safety poster. I was good at drawing ducks and, spending the majority of my summers at the beach with my best friend, I knew The Big Rule at the beach was never to go in the water alone.

So I entered the contest with my poster of two giant yellow ducklings swimming together with the caption "Swim with a Buddy." I won first place and a check for 25 buckaroos. Big money in those days to a 9-year-old. It felt fantastic!

The next year, having already won, I magnanimously didn't enter in order to give the other kids a shot. I was flabbergasted to see the winning poster. It was almost identical to my winning entry the year before. Exact layout, exact headline. The only difference was that she had used another animal. Dolphins, I think. I was sick to my stomach at the unfairness of it all! She had just copied what I had done! That was cheating! She stole my idea and profited from it! (To this day, I'm still surprised the ladies in the club didn't see the similarity to my poster from the year before.) My mom gave me the old "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" speech, but I didn't buy it then and never have. (In high school, the same girl stole money out of my gym locker. Not surprising since she embarked on a life of crime with plagiarism at the age of 10...)

Have you been copied?

How do you know if someone has plagiarized content from your website? Fortunately, the same technology that makes it so simple to swipe on the internet also makes it easy to hunt down the pirates using the internet. From the time my kids were in middle school, students were required to submit essays and papers to a plagiarism checker online before they could be turned in.

I use one regularly to check text given to me by clients for their web sites when they hire me to do the design only and not the writing. I don't know if it is more embarrassing for them or for me when I have to make the phone call letting them know that I can't use their "lifted" content.

There are many free plagiarism checkers online. I use this one – www.copyscape.com. Just enter your website address and it searches the entire web for copies of your text and identifies websites using identical phrases. For other written material, or small excerpts of text, I use the Plagiarism Checker at http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker. It lets you paste in content and check phrases to find out what percentage of your content is original. If it finds the same combination of words somewhere else on the internet, it will identify in red the phrases or sentences that already exist online and will not pass Google (or other search engine) plagiarism tests.

If you are concerned about your website's "page ranking", don't present someone else's content on your site as original. Most search engines can detect when a site is using plagiarized materials and can keep the rogue site from showing up in search results. The offending websites may even be taken down.

Not sure what can be borrowed with being considered stealing? Take the online plagiarism test from Cardiff University at https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/plagiarism/quiz/.

1. John W. Snapper, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago - "On the Web, Plagiarism Matters More than Copyright Piracy"

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?