I googled an article I’d written (to reference it for something else) and found my work plagiarised.
A disability organisation plagiarised my article. This is the second disability organisation in two weeks to steal that article (it was the article about disability and fashion) – and the third time a disability organisation has taken my work. (And it’s happened to my friends too.) While there was a link to Daily Life below the text, there was no link to my blog and the format of the article made it look like I had written for that organisation.
Generally my editor takes care of plagiarism but this time I called the organisation. The organisation was surprised to hear from me and the woman on the phone didn’t know what to say.
I told the woman that by taking my work without permission or proper credit or payment, it’s devaluing my writing. It’s devaluing the disability community.
I said that I spend many hours writing quality work outside of my day job (most unpaid) and while I love my work being shared, I don’t love it being shared inappropriately and not being compensated for it. And I added that if this is happening with my writing, I’m sure it’s happening to other writers.
I talked about copyright law and suggested that if the organisation wants to link back to articles they like, they include a short quote from it with a clear link to the original source.
The woman was very apologetic (she didn’t know this was happening and thought they complied with copyright law well) and will review all website content and remove my article. She said the plagiarism goes against everything the organisation stands for. And she was incredibly embarrassed. (She also told me she is an avid follower of my work and said she was a little ‘starstruck’ to hear from me in person!)
I understand in all cases the intent was not malicious but generous. The intent was to share with its members and the disability community, and to increase accessibility of the articles. That’s great – but I’d hope original content is shared within copyright guidelines, and not replicated in full. Replication of original content can decrease the author’s Google ranking. And a higher ranking (on any site) ain’t going to pay the bills!
That phone call felt so empowering. Yes, I could have let my wonderful editor deal with it, but I took ownership and I feel like I am singing Katy Perry’s Roar.
If it was a student or for-profit company who plagiarised my work, I would have been angry. But for a disability organisation doing this – an organisation advocating for the rights of people with disabilities – makes me sad. And I know that plagiarism happens for many writers, but in this case, it’s the principle that people with disabilities shouldn’t be expected to write for free.
This misappropriation of disabled writers’ work perpetuates the idea we should be grateful for exposure. It’s expecting us to work for free, and assuming we won’t speak up. It’s using lived experience freely for someone else’s gain. It’s taking advantage. The very thing that a disability organisation helps protect people from.
Copyright Council Australia has great information on writers and copyright, copyright on blogs, websites and user generated content, and seeking permission to reproduce content.
Arts Hub has a great list of things you should know about Australian copyright.
And this Harry Potter graphic about plagiarism is great!
I blogged in another genre for sometime and we used to get people who would scrape our RSS feeds and reproduce our blogs word for word and stick a heap of advertising on it – thankfully their google ranking never got high enough to top the genuine blog
I suppose you can take some comfort in that your writing is good enough for people to want to plagarise. Good on you for confronting them. But sad that it happened. And I agree that writers should be paid for their work.
Well done for standing up for your rights, Carly. It is a sad state of affairs and too many places seem to 'not know' they are breaking copyright laws. It also makes me wonder how much more this could be happening but people don't know (as you only discovered this latest breach by accident). Hopefully the message is starting to get through and again, well done for being so on the ball with this!
Sorry how do you have an editor?
I have an editor when I write for a news publication, in this case, Daily Life.
I don't think plagiarism is flattering. Sure, it's nice they like someone's work but disrespectful to steal it.
Thank you so much Rebecca – it might be a case of no knowing the law, or no malice intended, but for the original owner, it's not great to see your work republished elsewhere.
And it's so hard to get Google/blog company to remove that content. Sorry that happened 🙁
It's a good thing that yours were direct copies so you could call them out on it, and be properly credited as the original author or have it removed. I've had two articles ripped off by two different writers on two different mainstream websites. Both articles were so obviously "influenced" by my work that they were pointed out to me by a number of my readers, but the content was changed enough that I wasn't able to make accusations of direct plagiarism, even though they basically stole the headline, story angle, content, sub-heads and structure down to certain key phrases and even some of my jokes. LOL. It's not flattering. It's infuriating. It also irked me that the two writers who did it probably got paid for it too.
I had one of my recipes plagiarised by another blogger last year. We had a mutual friend who gave her my link as inspiration then tagged me in her post because she was excited and thought I should be flattered. She'd taken my recipe, changed the protein powder in it and taken her own photo, but it was my recipe. When it had been pointed out that she had plagiarised, instead of linking to my blog or my facebook page, she tagged my personal account with a thank you. It was incredibly dissappointing.