Chances are, now-a-days you have, or have had, your own blog or website to call your ‘own’. Now, I’m pretty sure if your serious about blogging, you currently spend hours on end trying to think of the next big thing, or next thought-provoking, slightly controversial article, right? – At the end of the day, you want one thing – Traffic.
In 2007, Nick La of N.Design Studio, showed how his vector creations had not only been publicly broadcast on two Bosnia & Herzegovina TV stations, they had been broadcast without his original permission or knowledge. I’m talking about a wealthy TV company here, who didn’t want to spend their own money investing in in-house designers, and so stole works from the internet in an attempt to create a TV spot on the cheap. Get this – he later found his own canvas prints printed out onto canvas’s and being sold in a local shopping mall! …
The question is, why do people do this?
Should I be honored in a way, after all, someone is choosing to steal my content? – In a way, yes, the person who blatantly ripped your content, obviously thinks the content is worth ripping, and therefore you can feel proud that someone actually values your content that much. In another – No, these people have no morals, if they like what they see, they’ll take it for their own. No notification, no asking, they just do it. Copy and Paste – that’s all it takes.
Intellectual Property Right
From Wikipedia
“Intellectual property (IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical, literary, and artistic works; inventions; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights. Under intellectual property law, the holder of one of these abstract “properties” has certain exclusive rights to the creative work, commercial symbol, or invention by which it is covered.”
As many of you probably do, I scour the web day in day out and with it I can’t count the number of times I come across a site which looks like it has just had the entire source code from apple.com copied and pasted, and republished the design, text content, button layout and PR material for their own. Let me make this clear. You cannot do this. You just can’t. Intellectual property cannot just be taken from a site, you must contact the owner of the content and ask for their express, and sometimes written, permission.
How can I guard against content thieves?
This trend is on the rise. Nick thought it was bad in June 2007, it’s now extremely prominent all over the web – These people don’t care what the content is, it can be graphics, text, coding and even in some cases whole custom-designed web templates. The good news is, if they upload an entire duplicate of your website for their own, likelihood is, you will find it. A good service to guard against this is Copyscape. This is an online service, striving to scour the web for duplicated source code or content from your site’s or blog’s. Simply enter your URL, and watch it go in search for your duplicated content.
What do I if I find my work has been copied?
There’s not a lot you can do. In the worst situation the thief will claim to own your works and question whether you are the original content owner. Legal action? – As Nick states this probably isn’t worth it as most of the time they’ll be personally owned websites or blogs.
Do you hate content thieves?, Have you encountered someone who blatantly ripped your content?
– Feel free to share it below.
This has to stop. The content is not yours, you do not own the rights to re-publish it.
R-Fly
Leave a Reply