While I can appreciate that understanding the subtleties of intellectual property law is challenging, getting the basics right isn’t that hard.
If I produce “work” it is mine. I hold the copyright to it unless I publish it under some form of license that allows sharing – that could be a CC license or a simple “go ahead and (ab)use this content”.
There is no issue with “citing” works or re-using some types of content.
However there’s a massive difference between citation and plagiarism / copyright infringement. So if you wanted to “quote” an article you’d probably be ok, but if you wanted to republish an article in its entirety then you can’t.
(And yes I’m over simplifying some of this, but most of it is common sense – or so I’d like to think!)
Over the past few weeks I’ve seen several instances of blatant copyright infringement and plagiarism by an Irish owned entity that operates in the online marketing / SEO space. So I’ve called them out on it.
Last night I called them out on it again and they responded. Their response is incredible:
I’ve removed the names apart from my own ..
There’s so much wrong with this, but what really worries and concerns me is that these people are selling their services to small businesses who will not only give them their money, but also their trust. What kind of advice are they likely to give businesses if they don’t even understand that ripping off other people’s content blatantly is wrong?
Oh, now you feel my pain. Yes, people who believe that the things they read and want to copy from cyberspace are some how free and available for them to copy and/or re-distribute are limitless.
J Scott
Unfortunately there are still a lot of people out there who don’t seem to “get” basics. They don’t even realise they’re doing anything wrong. However this lot have been told more than once ..
Thanks for your comment
Michele
This is a big problem and something that has been an issue for all of us. Most publish content is a rework from someone else.
Why don’t you just file a DMCA against them? It might teach them something about copyright. Oh and maybe show Marketing Profs as well :).
“What kind of advice are they likely to give businesses if they don’t even understand that ripping off other people’s content blatantly is wrong?”
Maybe they do understand, but they act like this in order to end the conversation.