Steal like an artist, but don’t steal literally

How not to fall for plagiarism on the Internet

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Imagine you spent a month on research and wrote a blog on LinkedIn and you find out someone copied it as their own on Medium or LinkedIn. How will you feel? If you find someone plagiarising, how do you respond? Let’s understand.

Recently I came across a few posts on LinkedIn that were created by somebody else. I didn’t know they were copied. Like most of us, I read those, liked and moved on. But, a couple of designers voiced their posts being plagiarised on LinkedIn, and that’s when I registered the problem.

I tried to investigate if there are only a few plagiarised posts or more. I spoke with a couple of friends, and they told me they encounter such posts on regular basis. Thus, I decided to write about it.

When you post original content on the Internet, it gets liked, commented, retweets, critiqued, and so on. Good content is shared across different platforms, like WhatsApp and Telegram. It helps you grow. But, while this is being shared across channels, your name gets lost and you find it is posted by somebody else. Somehow this has become a practice now.

Does it not make you furious that you are not credited for your work?

I am not saying everyone takes credit for the work. Even though some people might have good intentions behind sharing, they might be honest, they may not know they are plagiarising. But, it is a clear case copyright violation.

If you write original content, then it will increase your reputation. But, if you plagiarise, then it will tarnish it to the extent you won’t imagine.

There is a need to end this habit. This needs to STOP.

I suggest you follow some simple rules that may help you avoid plagiarism.

1. You should never copy any content that you have not created or you do not have written permission to distribute the content. Even though you may like the blog, photo, video, etc and thus want others to gain knowledge, still the content is not yours, so avoid sharing it.
2. When sharing on LinkedIn, use the share function. A similar function is available on other social platforms. Twitter has retweet or quotes retweet.
3. CCing doesn’t work. When you write an email and cc somebody, it means you are marking a copy of your email and you are not giving credit to them. Giving credits and tagging the person might help to some extent, but you should check with the creator before tagging and giving credit.
4. Remember WhatsApp, Telegram, Google are not the sources you should cite when sharing any content. This as a naive mistake.
5. If you like some content, and you want to convey what you learn from it, then you may write in your language by citing the source. You may write your views or you may critique. But, do not copy the content itself from the source. Quoting a single or a couple of sentences should be fine, but quoting a whole paragraph or the complete work is a no go.
6. I have seen some people quote out of context, and the whole meaning changes. The creator might have put some thought, some story for their content. Copying a portion and criticising it doesn’t work. If you critique on a portion, then it doesn’t convey original meaning, so avoid that as well.
7. Get into the shoes of the creator. If you do not like somebody else claiming ownership of your work, then they won’t like it either. Simple.
8. It is a good practice not to post anything than posting somebody else’s work. You may convey your appreciation by like, upvote, etc. and that should be fine. Anyway, modern platforms show your connections what you liked and commented.
9. A better approach would be analysing the content of the people you follow. See what they write about, and analyse the gaps in their writing. Find out the topics they are not writing about, and you may take those topics for exploration.

To complete the story, as a responsible person, I requested the person to not copy without permission. He tagged the original author, but it wasn’t sufficient. His reply to my comment was “Somebody shared it with me in a WhatsApp group. I have tagged the person and cited WhatsApp as a source.” 🙈 I thought it was better to write in a long-form that debate over there.

Concluding my blog, I will say you will have a good or a bad reputation based on the decisions you make on the Internet. But, it will be there for perpetuity. So, think wisely and then share.

Thanks for reading! Please share your views by commenting below.

Disclaimer: The thoughts, opinions, criticism, and viewpoints expressed here are my own. They do not necessarily represent the views of my employer.