stealing my content
I am totally shocked that I actually need to write a blog post titled ‘Stop Stealing My Content’, and have put it off for quite some time but it is getting a little bit ridiculous now.
Whilst I can’t necessarily stop people from stealing my content, I am now going to be making a bigger deal of it when I find out people have done. If I see you have directly stolen content from my blog (and I do have alerts etc.) then I will be contacting you and asking you to either reference the article directly (and link to it) or remove it.
What is worse is that some of my followers regularly contact me with links to blog posts, photos, news stories on other blogs or Facebook posts which is my content.
I have absolutely no objection to people sharing my content, so long as they do the decent thing and reference Lawyer In The Making and put a link to the article. I actually like it when people do that, when they agree, disagree, and share posts.
If you are going to refer to a blog post, paragraph, photo, or comment of mine, then remember to reference Lawyer In The Making. Plus it isn’t that hard to copy a link, especially when I know you know how to copy content, as you have taken some of mine!
What I am really not happy about is when people copy word for word my content and upload it as their own. That is plagiarism and there also is no need for people to do this.
My blog is my blog, a place for me to write legal news updates, career updates, share legal events I go to, book reviews, useful tips etc. If you have a blog, you create the content for it yourself. Or you take ideas or news stories from other people but you share the necessary links.
I don’t go around stealing content from other people; if I see a news story I like, I always link to it in the blog post and say where I took it from.
Are we living in a world where people lack manners and common decency?
I like to think that I am fairly decent, easy going human being, but this is getting ridiculous. I have seen a blog where a certain student copied my entire About Me page, how is that even relevant to her? Copy the style of it if you like, but not all of the content, plus last time I checked her name wasn’t Rebecca and she didn’t go to my university. I know she looks like a fool but it isn’t the point.
I regularly see people who have stolen entire blog posts and some of my most highly read posts too, please share these posts and link to them, or copy a paragraph (and a link) but write your own content. It isn’t that hard.
Rebecca x