Time after time I am shocked to find out that someone, usually someone with stature, like lawyers, mediators, and others with professional jobs do not seem to understand what plagiarism is. So I thought I might help you.
1.You may not use an article without permission.
2.You may put a small part of an article in quotes, referencing the author and linking to their article. Follow proper rules. It should be clear whose words belong to whom.
3.Read the rules of the site before using any portion of someone else's article – on my site Divorce at Bellaonline.com the rules are clear, you must ask permission before using any of my articles.
4.Using someone else's entire article, while changing some words, or adding some words is still plagiarism even if you mention that they wrote the original article.
Here is an example of an article right here on this site that is plagiarized. I tried to contact the owner of this site but that appears to be impossible.
Stolen Article Here
If you notice it is mentioned that Stephanie L Watson of Bellaonline.com says something, but you never really know what part of this article is Stephanie's and what part is Marie's. Well, since I am Stephanie, I can tell you that most of the words are mine. Few are Marie's. Imagine my shock to discover Marie is a lawyer. A lawyer who should know the laws. A lawyer who claims to be honest and ethical. I'm sure she would not appreciate me stealing her hard work. Unfortunately, she is not the first lawyer or mediator to steal my articles from my site. I'm sure she won't be the last.
Once I found one of my articles in it's entirety on a mediator's site so I emailed him and asked for a link back to my site, from my article. He sent me an email telling me he is not “providing links at this time.” Are you kidding me? You steal my article, link to your site all over the net with my article, and then you won't “provide” me a link? That takes a serious lack of morals and ethics to do something so mean and dishonest. A mediator!!! What's the world coming to?
I asked him to remove it. It took weeks but he finally did although I have found the article with him as author on many other sites since then. It is difficult to find all these articles, write all these people, and put a stop to the theft of my hard work. I am simply a writer, a mother, who writes from home. I don't have a firm, I don't have the money to pay people to find all my work on the net to protect my good name, my hard work, and my livelihood. I try, but time is limited.
I don't appreciate it and it hurts my business and my website. Search engines do not like repeated content all over the place so it damages my business by having my exact article all over the net. If I wanted my article all over the place I would have put it there myself, but I don't want it anyplace but where I put it, or give permission for it to be.
I wonder how many other places my blood, sweat and tears could be, where someone stole it without even mentioning my name. I wonder how people sleep at night.
I have to assume that you just do not know what you're doing and you're accidentally breaking the copyright laws. So here, this article waits for you to read it and hopefully learn something.
Remember I am a person and by stealing my hard work, you're probably taking food right out of my kid's mouths.
Don't STEAL! See www.plagiarism.org for more info.
