Vox has an article on internet plagiarism here, dated May 24, 2022. It got me to thinking.
Some of it isn’t relevant to what I want to talk about, so I’ll cherry-pick its contents to some extent. (For example, this blog doesn’t post pictures of “hot girls’ butts” to attract page views, so I’ll skip what Vox says about that.)
First, some history. A guy who delves into internet plagiarism (getting plagiarized a lot got him started down that track) has this to say:
“He posits that there are three main eras of internet plagiarism. The first was in the ’90s and early 2000s, when people stole each other’s work because they wanted to pass it off on their own, but didn’t necessarily have a profit motive. The second was in the mid-2000s, when search engine optimization became a widespread practice and sites could make money from crappy, AI-written work that capitalized on the strategic placement of certain keywords. ‘That came to a halt when Google really started clamping down on low-quality content,’ Bailey explains. The third era is made up of the kind that flourishes on social media, where users compete for the most attention-grabbing content in the hopes they might make ad revenue or score a brand deal.”
The latter is, I’d guess, where things currently stand, more or less. Now I’ll get to the article’s substance:
“Plagiarism, it should be noted, is perfectly legal in the United States, provided it doesn’t cross the (often nebulous) definition of intellectual property theft. Movies, music, or works of fiction have robust legal protections against this (recall the zillions of lawsuits between artists for stealing each other’s samples, and … in works where the originality or artistry of the author is sufficiently evident, courts will side with the creator), but it often isn’t worth the time and money to pursue legal action.
“Yet the definitions of what constitutes IP get murky quickly. You can’t copyright a dance or a recipe or a yoga pose, for instance, and it’s really hard to copyright a joke. You also, for obvious reasons, can’t copyright a fact, which means that in industries where IP law can only do so much, social and professional norms dictate your reputation: journalism, comedy, and academia, for instance, fields in which plagiarism is the among the most cardinal of sins.
“So what of the average influencer, YouTuber, or podcaster? Internet posts are, for the most part, not copyrightable intellectual property. Instead, they’re more like a hybrid of journalism and comedy, meaning that social media typically must police itself against thieves.”
Okay. So those are the rules, formal and informal, written and unspoken, more or less. Where does that leave this blog, which is the only thing I’m interesting in writing about here?
This blog doesn’t do original journalism. It doesn’t have an editor (he’s dead), much less a newsroom; it has no money, none, for rent and salaries. It’s a hobby blog started by a University of Washington Medical School professor (now dead from Covid-19) who recruited me to be a contributor. Its entire panoply of resources consists of a computer, internet connection, and my fertile, imaginative, creative mind.
Steve wasn’t in it for money, nor am I; there’s never been 1 cent of revenue. So it doesn’t make any difference how many people read this blog. And the only thing I’ve ever done to promote readership is not take down this posting, which has generated hundreds of thousands of page views. (Who am I to deprive that vast audience of something they obviously want to read?)
Here are my standards. In keeping with the fact Steve was an academic steeped in the rigors of university culture, and my background is two professions (law and journalism) with high standards of intellectual honesty and factual accuracy, I want my contributions to be information people can rely on. As for plagiarism, I try to stay within “fair use” guidelines, attribute sources, and link to them. Basically I surf the day’s news, grab a few stories, and add my own impressions, opinions, and commentary.
That’s about it, and I think it’s fair play, not thievery, because if it weren’t for me you’d probably miss those stories. We all have limited reading time, and I do the surfing for you, summarize the stories, and you can follow my links to the original articles if you want to read more. I’d guess that roughly a third to half of the content here is my own thoughts on various subjects.
As for my thoughts, I’m for rational thinking, so my approach to issues is fact-based reasoning. I’m a pragmatist who wants things to work, so I don’t like dogma or rigid ideologies. I’m against racism, bigotry, intolerance, lying, and dishonesty. My basic values are honesty, decency, and compassion. I wish people got along better, but that requires tolerance and compromise lacking in some of our fellow citizens. Their bad behavior threatens our democracy.
I didn’t plagiarize any of that from anyone, even though I’m not the first to think of them. These ideas and values are thousands of years old, and come down to us through the writings and instruction of great philosophers and thinkers. Passing them on to others isn’t plagiarizing. Forwarding other people’s good ideas, and constructive thoughts, isn’t plagiarizing either. It’s what makes a society work and keeps it healthy.