Lately, I keep on running into two things: Plagiarism and copy/paste comments.
I'm spending more time flagging than upvoting lately. That's not really how I want to spend my time here, so I'm asking you all to pitch in. Squash these bugs while they're still small and set an example for future members.
The example
I ran into this post a little while ago:
Great, right? Then I saw Cheetah's comment:
Hmm, let's just check that out, shall we?
Wikihow:
Our plagiarist:
Ouch, doesn't look good for this guy. Time to flag and explain why...
Not too rude, right? I still have my kind moments...
Then, the argument ensued!
Wait, a friend? Wikihow? Just the images taken from the site huh? But... what about Cheetah's comment? What about my very own eyes being able to see the exact match from the texts?
I cannot make this any more clear, can I? I checked out his profile and surprise surprise, he re-posted the article again. It even had an upvote or two! A whole $0.01 pending! Not anymore though.
Sigh...
This guy has plenty of Cheetah comments on his posts and he is rude and daring enough to challenge a plagiarism claim, even though this particular one was very obvious.
I know Cheetah's comment doesn't always mean the post is plagiarised. I got my fair share of Cheetah comments when I started out with copying content from my Wordpress blog to Steemit. People also quote sources sometimes. However, if you see Cheetah's comment on any post, please just check out of it's plagiarised, before you upvote the content. If it's blatant plagiarising, either flag it yourself (with an explanation), or report to Steemcleaners through Steemit.chat.
At the very least, don't upvote the post.
How would you feel when someone stole your text/art and earned a couple of bucks (or even hundreds) from it?
Would you not feel betrayed? Would you not feel that you deserve (some of) those earnings?
Plagiarism gives Steemit a bad name, especially because we can actually earn from our content here. If you're very unlucky, I'm sure you could get into some serious trouble by stealing text, art or pictures from an online source. You're not allowed to just use anything you come across online, especially when you're using it to earn money (including crypto). Don't simply copy pictures from google or random websites either. Use your own or figure out if the picture you want to use is free to use for commercial purposes (and check if this is with or without mentioning the source).
What can you do to keep up Steemit's good name?
The simplest thing you can do is keep an eye on the comment section of a post. If you see Cheetah commenting there, follow its link and see if the posted content is the same as the content in Cheetah's link. If it is, check out if the Steemian mentioned the source in his/her article. Did he/she quote (part of) the source and mention it? No problem! Did he/she mention it was a copy from his/her own blog or site? No problem! However, is there no mention of the original source whatsoever? You should take action. You can report them to Steemcleaners in the Steemit.chat steemcleaners linkdrop channel. You can also flag the post yourself and write a comment on why you flagged them. Depending on how bad or minor the plagiarising is, you could even offer to remove the flag once they properly cite the source.
Please help keep the platform free of this kind of abuse. It takes all of us to keep a watchful eye. Don't be afraid to use your flag. If you are afraid of retaliation, you can report to Steemcleaners instead, so you won't have to challenge anyone yourself.
Repeat offenders who have already been warned should always be reported to Steemcleaners, because they can simply do more than one person could.
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Fair warning: Copy/paste comment and obvious bot comments will get flagged.
A beautifully presented article despite the rather less beautiful subject matter.
Upped 100% and resteemed.
People really need to learn that we, the consistent genuine original content creators will not stand for this kind of plagiarism followed by blatant lies. I congratulate you @playfulfoodie on your actions. And if you continue to see this kind of thing, please send me their link as a PM on steemit.chat
...and you will no longer have to fight this fight alone!
Thank you for correctly crediting me for your main image 🙏🏻
I rather like that particular image and had actually forgotten about it! Think I will use it in my website now.... thanks for the reminder 😃
Thank you so much for your kind comment @samstonehill! I'll remember to PM you if things don't work out with only my flags. I just reported this particular guy to Steemcleaners, so I'm sure they'll make work of it.
Yes, I really love this image of yours! I've used it in a couple of other Steemit-related posts aswell in the past, but I forgot to tell you about this latest one. Glad you found it on your own :D
Hi @playfulfoodie, we loved this post so much we felt to talk about you in our post today. Have quoted and linked back here accordingly and also would love to see you in our mastermind group if you feel so inclined.
https://steemit.com/plagiarism/@kenistyles/plagiarism-what-can-we-do-about-it-the-story-of-my-first-flag
People that just plagiarize really do not understand the website. They think it's a way to make easy money. Just flagging the posts will hopefully get the idea in their heads.
I think it's just funny when I see posts like those haha
I think plenty get caught. I hope there aren't a lot of people who get away with this stuff, because then it would be easy money. We need a lot of people flagging this stuff, so others won't get bad ideas!
And this process happens all the time with steemit:
Hahah, yes, exactly this! Cheetah has really helped out as well as people who flag.
Hah, yeah that sounds about right!
It is getting a bit tiresome.
Last one I came across is @drt, who has already copied my content and also copied @sardrt's content, plus some varied content from around the interwebs.
There are so many ...
Ooh I see, bah! Flagged one of his posts you commented on now.
Yes, there are so many lately. I hope most get caught, though I can't imagine they do. Atleast not before they earn some quick cash for their plagiarism.
Did you report it? Can it be reported somewhere? I see he didn't answer you yet?
I flagged it and knocked his rep from 40 to 39.
I suppose you can report it somewhere on one of the fora surrounding Steemit, but I never go there.
He did answer, sort of, by asking "are u idiot" in a comment under this post, but I flagged that as well.
Hope people learn from their or other's mistakes. @playfulfoodie thumbs-up for your spirit of education people. Keep up the good work. Even i had some event in past when cheetah commented on my post and you guided me then :)
Thank you so much @abhinav.badola, I hope you're doing well!
Yes, I hope people will learn from other's mistakes :-)
I am doing good, hope the same from your side. But looks like some people don't have decency to accept their mistakes, they keep on looking for shortcuts. Anyways have a nice evening.
Yup, I think you're right! I'm doing good too, have a nice evening :-)
I'm a little minnow but I understand fairness and ethics. If I were a whale, you'd be many thousands of upvotes richer. Thank you for doing such a thankless job. I'm following you for sure. Mil gracias.
Aww thank you very much, that's such a sweet thing to say :-)
Thanks for the info! I wasn't sure how that worked beyond flagging... Funny he is even going to argue about it lol. BTW on their banana bread post, the first image of the banana cut up is the third search result when you type banana into Google images!
Yeah, I figured none of his posts would be original... Sounds like a Steemcleaners issue, which is where I just reported him.
Im having my eyes open. And def flag when I see something like this. Im glad finally people are standing up.
Peace
Glad to hear that @markush!
yes they are a pain in the ass , yes their funds should be frozen, but the only ones that could do that are the developers i think, the same way they blocked /removed the acounts randomwhale and randowale .
They did? I didn't know that! I've always felt Steemit is governed by its members, where its creators/developers hardly ever step in. Which can be nice in some ways, but I'd still be happy with the option of account freezes through bad behaviour...
i agree i would love to see that if you mute an account it would count negative towards their reputation , that way we won't have to flag every post they make.
That's actually a great idea :-)
I saw allot of new users who take pictures not say the source and boom they make money from that, for users who have some money in the account the things change. Mostly they use their own content or they read something and make an article about that but with they own words, and what they think about what they read and if they are not good at taking photos they search for free photos and they put the source. It is not hard at all but copy paste from somewhere i think it is a bad thing. I saw this phenomenon just on new people and i think they don't know or they try their luck. If they will have money in account maybe they will change. I think on steemit it must be a very big and red warning Do not post copy paste content because you will get flaged and from there your account is useless and they dont understand your account is more valuable if you have reputation then the money. Maiibe i am wrong but they are to many and what will be after 1 year or 2 if the price of steemit will go up.
I'm worried about this trend to be honest and hope we can somehow get the point across. You're right, I think some don't know better, which is why I feel that we need to explain our flagging in a comment on their post. Some people genuinely didn't know and change their ways. Other will ignore you or try to argue, which are the ones I report to Steemcleaners.
Far worse things are going on including people using exploits to get a decent amount of $$ for a bunch of worthless photos of weeds, rocks and other worthless content. At least with the people you mention, you know what they are up to.
You're right! I was just pointed to the @sherlockholmes account yesterday and read about pretty elaborate scams there. I'm glad someone's looking into that. One of the accounts was actually one I followed, so I threw in some flags before unfollowing that particular one.
I have to admit, I don't dig as deep as our Sherlock does, so I just try to battle the obvious.
The problem with the bigger scams can be that they also have more SP at their disposal though. I've seen whales fighting each other aswell and some claiming others are exploiting the system. I'm not sure what I can do there, besides not upvoting...
Thanks for pointing it out in the open @playfulfoodie . I've seen a lot of the same the past few weeks, and actually, I'm hoping these are all kids 'trying to make some quick (HAH young and naive) cash' with re-posts, while being bored during the holidays...
It's a minor detail really, but I just have to point it out:
The fact he didn't even bother about the layout while he had a ready-made example (/recipe 😉 ) in front of him.
@liomerciz : If you copy something, cite it. And if you don't, then at least try to add some personal flavour to it.
And don't lie. It makes you look like you're full of (sh)it 💩
Thanks for your comment @lauraorigin!
That's a good point you're making. I hope there's some truth to that and things will calm down after the holidays :-)
I totally agree with you, @playfulfoodie! I still am a newbie but that copy/paste attitude keeps bugging me from day 1. First thing I've asked my boyfriend, who told me about Steemit was isn't there going to be full with plenty of scammers in there... And I didn't have to wait for too long to find that out by myself! I find that really low and pitty, but I do believe for those who have hopes for easy money karma will get them and hopefully they won't be able to earn even one penny!!! Karma hanging for scammer gaming!
I hope so too @misskate! I guess we shouldn't be too surprised, this place is simply another place for humans to show their true nature. We just have to hope we will end up with enough good and honest people to keep the others at bay...
@playfulfoodie, nice and pertinent post. My last blog was commented by @cheetah as I had quoted a paragraph from my own previous blog here in the present one for some story line & continuity purpose. Well this is a first cheetah comment for me 😊.
But I agree with you. Blatant copy n paste is unethical and illegal. Perhaps along with flagging, they as should be losing sizeable reputation and perhaps some penalty like community service should be imposed ..
Thank you @topdog. Yes, Cheetah visits us when we copy a post of ourselves aswell. I haven't gotten a comment on my Marvelous Tales posts yet though!
If enough big members flag someone, they'll lose quite a bit of reputation. That's why it's important for us to band together here. Ofcourse they need a warning or explanation with their first flag, but if they continue...
Thanks for your contribution. Flagging in Steemit is sort of a Prisoner's dilemma. It is unpleasant and depletes the voting power, but if nobody does it we all lose by getting flooded by spam and plagiarism.
You are so right @ropaga! It's not really a fun thing to do and honestly, it's only a viable option against low-SP accounts if you don't want to risk heavy retalliation. Luckily though, most plagiarism is done by low-SP accounts, so we can safely warn/flag them. I am a bit sad about the voting power thing though, but I guess it's part of the deal!
I hate to say it but, my patience is beginning to wear thin too. I used to get the occasional response when I'd drop an image of the spammy comments page of their blogs. Now it just disappears into the ether.
@playfullfoodie, a lot of people are joining steemit that don't have anything to benefit the community with, so they are reverting to plagiarism. It's sad, but luckily we have plagiarism bots like @cheetah that will expose them, and hopefully cause them to either leave the steemit platform, or change their ways and start producing real content. Thanks for posting this!
Yes, I'm happy we have Cheetah! I hope most people pay attention to those comments, so they don't upvote plagiarised content :-)
I've forgotten to cite a picture source on occasion, but this is over the line!
I know, right? It's just really weird how he kept on saying he didn't copy... the proof was right there!
@playfulfoodie upvoted.. good job.. it seems it is an energy drainer in more ways than one.. do you know about @sherlockholmes let him know too.. he seems to be making headway on a lot of posts.. I recently started following him. He/she may want to share this post. :)
Ooh I did not know about @sherlockholmes! Seems like an interesting person to follow. Going to look through the posts for a bit... I see a familiar name popping up there.
Thanks for this article, following. When I started steemit, I posted lots of articles and photos from my own website and Cheeta said it was plagiarism. How is it plagiarism if it is my own content? But I will keep my eyes open. There is a lot of rubbish comment here, because this platform attract people who want to just make money. I will keep both eyes open, let's all help each other!
Thanks for your comment @sandrina.life! You're right, there is a lot of rubbish here, so I'm glad to hear you're keeping your eyes open!
Cheetah doesn't know who's the author of any content, so she comments on copies from your own website too. In that case, you can just reply to her, saying it's your own content. I always post that below the article aswell. Even better is if you post a link to your Steemit account on your website, so it can be verified that it's your own site :-)
nice dear
Nice work bro! Need more steemians like you around the place.
Thank you! Except that I'm not a bro ;-)
You are so right about this issue and right when you do (flagging) what you do!
Thank you very much :-)
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Thanks @screenname! You still seem to be visiting my posts regularly. Can't understand what I'm doing wrong anymore!
Hi @playfulfoodie. I don't think we do anything wrong. Honestly I think we are just no noticed because of the vast amount of writers on steemit. We should all team up and support each other more. How do you report to steemcleaners?
I think you're right about that @giantbear. For me, I mainly upvote the people I follow, because it's hard enough to keep up with them, let alone the rest of our members...
You can report to Steemcleaners through their Steemit.chat channel. You drop a link to suspected abuse there, maybe a little description of the abuse aswell.
Actually, you are allowed to do that.
European Supreme Court ruled that you can reuse & repost anything you find on the web
That sounds a bit weird and I wonder if they are taking things out of context, because in the main ruling, they keep talking about a 'clickable link'.
If you click on the 'ruling' link, you'll see this at the very top of the page:
This actually tells us a whole different story than the website that wrote this story around it.
If I can show you one more little part of that ruling:
They're clearly talking about hyperlinks to the original article. That's a huge difference from copy/pasting an entire text and acting as if it was your own. Meaning, without citing a source anywhere.
Thanks for showing this to me though!
Here is a more lengthy article relating to this case and to another case that followed after this one relating to the same issue.
https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-5-3-2014/4098
I'll add two relevant passages.
You are ok, as long as you link the content to the original site on which it was first published by it's author.
Here's the actual wording from the Court's decision which can be read in full here: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=147847&mode=req&pageIndex=1&dir=&occ=first&part=1&text=&doclang=EN&cid=128073
The other case relating to this issue for which the same ruling was given.
Yes, it is okay, as long as you make sure to cite your source (aka, the link you have to add). The site you first quoted said this:
Which is very misleading, because they aren't saying you have to share your source.
Copy/pasting an entire article and simply posting a link to it at the bottom is very poor manner, but apparently not illegal perse. However, pretending it is your own work is quite bad.
Actually, I always think this is easier to understand when talking about photographs, artwork or (music)videos. I think if you would post a music video of Taylor Swift on your site, pretended it was you and actually earned quite a bit of money off of it, you'd surely get sued and that wouldn't be something you'd win. So if it's not okay to do that with such a video, it's also not okay to do that with a digital art piece someone shared online. Just because it's online, doesn't mean you can grab it and use it without giving due credit.
The author didn't have to repeat that you have to mention the link to the original website because that's already been said twice in the Court's decision which is quoted in the article. See points 25 and 27.
I've made a post compiling our short convo on this and also gave an example.
That's true. That's illegal and if you do that you're committing fraud if I'm not mistaken. The article didn't imply that though.
As long as you mention the source, you can grab any text, photograph, video, audio, artwork and copy/paste on your website, and even earn money from it. This especially applies to Steemit.
You can post a video of Taylor Swift here on Steemit and earn money from that. By embedding the video in your post you haven't infringed on any copyright.
The author might not have had to tell us everything that was in the ruling, but the way the article was written, especially the first paragraph (the one most people read and maybe skip the rest), does feel very misleading without this piece of extra information. If you read the first paragraphy now, anyone will think they can just grab anything off the web and use it for whatever online (public) purpose they want and nowhere does it say that credit is needed. That's what bugs me about this article.
Mentioning the source is a big part. It's a huge deal actually and the most important one from any artist/writer's point of view. Them hardly mentioning that part is quite a discredit towards artists/writers, because people steal online content enough as it is.
I know my Taylor Swift example wasn't well explained and it's quite hard to think of anyone not knowing it's Taylor Swift. With my example, I meant that if you post it as if you made that song, sang it, were the girl in the video, etc. (yes, unbelievable, but just imagine it for a sec) and then you earn from it, that could get you into trouble. You need to make clear that it's not your video for things to be okay.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure we're on the same page, I just found the article you linked to be very misleading to anyone skimming over it, whether they had to share something or not.