Copyright doesn’t mean that people have a right to copy. To to use a synonym that will help those who still think it’s okay to go to Websites and copy content without any attribution, it’s just simple plagiarism.

I have to first state that I have no problem with credible business sites aggregating my content, because they give full credit.

It’s the others that have me concerned.

AGGREGATION: There are lots of sites that lift bloggers’ work, for example, with little insight that the work comes from another source… People who have decided that they’ll get rich quickly by having ads on their sites, and not have any real contributors. They just aggregate, with no thought in mind other than making easy money. Frankly, if they think Google ads are easy money, I can tell you that the first year I ran Google ads, it took about 15 months to get $100. I gave it to an employee, who thought that Google ads might help to compensate my writing. I guess if you live in a third world country, that could feed your family for a bit, so there you are and an insight into who’s finding it lucrative.

TAKING CONTENT AND/OR IMAGES: I recently had a site where I found an image that I’d taken, because it fit the contributor’s theme… Bottles all lined up on my dining room table. It probably took me a half hour to shoot and process, and then I found it somewhere else, with absolutely no credit… like this person had taken that shot. The only hint that it came from my site, was the following at the very bottom of the page, as a side thought.

If you’d like to read up on the wines, there are some descriptions written here.

The “written here” part was a link to my blog. The way it’s written, though, has a reader expect that it’s going somewhere else on that site; but, it came to mine. It also suggests that the organizer took the time to review the wines and wrote about them… But, that’s not the case. It just went to my site, and my 10-12 hour investment in that story, like I’m part of that person’s process.

I asked to have my images removed within 24 hours. That didn’t work, so I went to the site’s own rules and regulations and found some very credible people behind the concept of all copyrights are reserved. I let the site’s Webmaster know about the use, and discovered that it was a naive contributor. So, I solved it over a few days’ time, but not time I felt like spending that way.

My website has, “Wine Blog Copyright © 2011 All Rights Reserved.” at the very bottom of the page. Additionally, under the “Contact/Use” tab, I lay it all out. I’m willing to share, but one must first be respectful that it’s my work.

It seems that more and more people are becoming not only aware, but they’re also quite upset with this modern day plagiarism.

Quoting from a story that I read on Reuters Website this past week regarding this issue, called Business Insider, over-aggregation, and the mad grab for traffic, by Ryan McCarthy:

“…So why does Business Insider risk undermining all that highly original, distinctive content for what appear to be roughly 18,000 article views? When media companies are asked to grow at a meteoric pace — and Comscore indicates that Business Insider’s unique visitors have nearly doubled this year — the line between original content and borderline theft gets awful blurry. The editorial mission quickly transforms from ‘What can I link to?’ to ‘How much can I take?’”

“To be fair, Business Insider’s more prominent pieces are often its most original. But journalists and readers should be very worried when fast-growth media companies determine the standards for distinguishing between citation and theft.

“One would hope readers and advertisers would eventually catch on to the kind of lazy lifting that would earn middle school students an F. But that hasn’t happened yet.”

It’s the wild west all over again, cowboys and cowgirls.

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