I have two jobs. My day job consists of being a SQL Server database administrator. My evening job is as an author. It never ceases to amaze me how alike these two jobs are. Both require an enormous amount of creative energy, free time, and the ability to self-edit. But the biggest surprise crossover is, to me, the copyright and plagiarism issue.
Every year, it seems more and more “technical” people rip articles off of techie blogs or forum posts, strip off the author name, and post it as their own. Just recently, an article was removed from SQLServerCentral.com for being a complete and total cut-n-paste job from another person’s website. Here’s the kicker. Before you can hit the final submit button on SSC’s website, you have to swear that this is your own work and is not in any way, shape, or form another person’s work.
And, of course, there’s the whole problem with pay-subscription technical e-mags that put “free” links to technical blog posts, burying them under a plethora of ad-ware and “Buy your subscription now” screens so it looks like you have to pay to get to the blog link. Worse still, when the blog writers were NEVER ASKED if the mag could link to their content.
It’s been a big hot-button issue this year. More and more DBAs are blogging and tweeting about the problem. In fact, it seems to me that it’s easier for someone to plagiarize technical content than it is to plagiarize books and short stories written by regular authors. Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it. After all, to rip off someone’s fiction, you have to actually pay to obtain the original copy. Whereas many blogs and technical articles are available on the internet just for the searching.
Just an FYI for anyone looking to “copy” articles & blogs, keeping the author’s name attached does NOT make it any less of a copyright violation. See my previous post on Copyright Law for more details.
