Sigh

Once again I see a fellow blogger post something that is a complete copy&paste of someone else’s article. I’m hoarse from trying to get people to understand that it’s not okay to do that, that it’s a breach of copyright even if you say where you got it from – unless you’ve been given permission by the copyright owner (normally the author), you are not allowed to reproduce their whole article on your own blog. If you see an article you like and you want to give it extra publicity through your blog, then post a link with a short summary and/or a quote from the article, inviting your readers to click on the link and read the whole thing. (If it’s on WordPress then you can use the “reblog” feature, which does precisely that.)

I am seriously baffled by this behaviour from people who are producing their own written content, people who would expect others to respect their copyright but somehow seem to think they can do what they like with other people’s content.

Oh, but I did give credit to the original author, I’ve had people protest – that is not enough. If someone has posted an article on their own website, or on a newspaper’s website, or wherever, then that website is where they’ve chosen to place that article and they have every right to expect it to stay there. When I post something here on my blog, here on my blog is where I want people to read it, here on my blog is where I want to get comments, here on my blog I have control over my text, I can edit it if I find that I made a mistake, I can delete a post if for some reason I change my mind about it – it’s my text and I am the one who calls the shots about this text. Someone asked me once about one of my posts – he wanted to copy and repost it as an anonymous note on Facebook. I said no, if you want to share it with others then kindly give them a link to my blog.

But so many people don’t think to ask. They just copy and paste whole articles, giving credit to the author and thinking that’s enough. I’m sorry but no, that’s not enough, it’s a breach of copyright. (Yes, I did bother to read up on copyright law. It was several years ago, and I don’t remember where I found the information. But I’m sure my fellow bloggers are well able to Google this stuff for themselves, just as I did.)

Here endeth today’s rant. We shall now resume our regularly scheduled programme.