Given the thousands of hits that we get to the CheapAccounting.co.uk Blog every month, many of you will know that from time to time I do suffer at the hands of plagiarists.
Plagiarism – the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own
Damn frustrating
The initial emotion I feel when I see my blog content and / or topics copied is one of utter frustration.
I spend the time coming up with the topic, the material, the relevance of the topic and some lazy urchin sweeps in, copies it and passes it off as all of their hard work.
Name and Shame
It has been suggested in the past that I name and shame them but this just draws attention to their web site and blog and away from ours so that cannot be right.
Legal Action
There is of course the legal action route and I would lie if I did not say that I do consider this from time-to-time.
The issue I have with this is that it diverts the resources (time and money) of CheapAccounting.co.uk away from positivism, forward moving activities into negative actions.
If I had a choice why on earth would I want to spend my time, money and energy on these activities – I want CheapAccounting.co.uk to be moving in one direction only and that is forward.
Mind you, one day someone will go too far and end up facing a very expensive court case!
My professionalism
I guess I could lower my social conscious and my morals to that of the plagiarist and accept that this is usual business practice in these days of social media and the internet.
But should I do this?
Do I want to do this?
Can I do this? – the answer to that is no I cannot stoop to those low professional standards
So sorry to say but my frustrations will continue and from time-to-time I shall have a little outburst followed by a nice cup of tea and a cream cake to calm me down.
Plagiarism – a topic I will not copy.
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A suggested email from me to send to my plagiarist followers from Ken Frost http://www.kenfrost.com and @ken_frost
Dear Plagiarising [derogatory term]
I am flattered that you have taken the time and trouble to reproduce verbatim my article from my website (insert link and title here) on your own website (insert link and title here).
I am told that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
However, I assume that there has been a typographical error in your reproduction of my article as I see no link or accreditation to my authorship or site?
In fact, thinking about it, I don’t recall ever having received a request from you asking for my permission to reproduce my article?
Did your request asking for my permission get lost in cyberspace?
I am certain that the above “omissions” on your part must have been “unintentional errors”, because (aside from the law pertaining to copyright, which is understood and known by all those who claim to be professional writers) I quite clearly state on my site the following:
“The copyright of these blogs belongs to Elaine Clark of CheapAccounting.co.uk and MUST NOT be reproduced without her express permission.
We are seeing numerous copies of our blogs appearing on the web sites and blogs. We’re afraid that it is now time for me to take a tough stance on breaches of my copyright!
Any breaches of copyright will result in a charge to the copier of £5,000, payable immediately for use of our content.”
I look forward to receiving your written apology, and a link to your updated and corrected article within 24 hours.
Kind regards….
Hi Elaine,
Have you ever thought of referring the plagiarising sites to Google to ask if they could be de indexed?
I would guess that you already have, just thought I would ask the question.
David.