Plagiarism is basically when you pass off a piece of written work as your own, especially without the consent of the author. This is a really nasty thing to do because the author of an article spends a lot of time researching or integrating their style into their writing and so convincing others that it’s actually your work and not theirs is wrong and unlawful. Plagiarism is illegal.
I was having a conversation with my twin sister earlier this week. She told me that she was talking to someone who enjoyed composing articles. The conversation somehow landed on some people making a living online by rewriting articles and my sister’s friend was very shocked and disturbed about that.
I might have been exposed to the webmaster world for far too long. I’m somewhat leaning towards being pro-article rewriters. The rule for rewriters is that is copyscape-proof, and that Google considers it an original article. As long as it passes these two criterias, the article is considered “unique” and good enough for site content.
But are there ethical implications?
According to my sister’s friend, he spends an entire day composing a well-written article. It includes a lot of research from numerous sources. When someone rewrites an article, they might spend a few minutes or a few hours, depending on the number of words the article consists of and the quality of the rewritten article.
In most cases, they do not require multiple sources of information. They just form the sentences differently and use a lot of synonyms to describe the same thing. Could this be an indirect form of plagiarism? I’m not certain.
If someone creates a blog and starts re-writing everything on my blog, how would I feel? Would I feel like they are copying my content and should be reported? Or should I accept their actions?
I’m not 100% sure how I will react if that were to ever happen. But for now I can say that if they copy every word of my entries down to a T, it will upset me because this will affect my blog’s performance in the search engines so I will report it on Google (this could result in Google banning their website from appearing on the search engine).
However, if they can formulate their words in a way in which the Google search algorithm considers it to be unique and it also passes the Copyscape test, then what can I say? It will be competing with my keywords and attracting my potential site visitors but it’s something I could tolerate. My entries would still be the ‘original’ one and if anything I might actually be flattered. After all, “imitation is the highest form of flattery”, n’est-ce pas?
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WYSIWYG! I'm a simple person trying to live the simplest life possible - it seems to be the most difficult thing to achieve! I'm an internet enthusiast and I've been a webmaster since early 2007. I like: blogging, developing sites using open source software, social media, computer games, '80s music, comedy & horror, animals, crunching on M&Ms peanut and Smarties!
