Twice in the last two weeks, other people have literally copied content of mine and claimed it as their own in blog posts and printed materials. These are word-for-word pick-ups of my content shared without attribution.
While it is true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, is is also called plagiarism. Cathy Stucker, the Idea Lady, has written three excellent articles on this topic that seem timely to share right about now.
Stucker writes: “Don’t take someone else’s work and simply reword it. That is plagiarism. It is illegal and immoral. Don’t try to duplicate the success of others by creating confusion between your product and theirs. Using deceptively similar titles is one way this happens. Don’t think that just because you CAN copy something, it is OK to do so. Computers and the Internet have made it easy to copy the words, images, and sounds created by others, but that doesn’t make it right. Respect the work of others.”
I always tell my 12-year-old son, “When in doubt, always do the right thing.” And the corollary to that is this. It is never right to do the wrong thing.
