Good day,
I’ve been in blogosphere since 2007. From my first time there, sometimes I found a lot of blogs saying that blogger mustn’t copy paste carelesly another article to their blog. They were saying that blog content is a creation that must be respected. It means you couldn’t just duplicated blog content without authorization, reference, or at least a trackback.
Trackback
WordPress has its own trackback system. If a blog content leave a reference to another blog (usually as a link), the referenced blog will be notified. The notification itself usually came as a comment on the referenced post.
I didn’t believe that someone could do something like that. Just duplicating blog content without reference or a trackback isn’t ethical to me. I wasn’t believe until couple days ago. Someone just copy-pasted my writing. For your information, I also write at another blog. In that blog, I wrote a tutorial on how to build your own WordPress blog. I divided the tutorial into several posts. Each post referenced (or link) to the previous and the next step of the tutorial. So every post got a trackback from another part of the tutorial.
My posting there got a trackback from another blog. It used to be the usual trackback. But when I checked it out, I found out that the other blog has my post written on it. Just exactly as what I wrote them. The trackback was sent from the link that I created to link my tutorial. So if I didn’t divide the tutorial and create referenced to the part, I’ll never know that someone copy-pasted my post. This other blog didn’t bother giving a reference to my post (not to mention my own trackback).
I was furious. But I controlled my emotion and write a comment to that blog. I wrote as polite as possible, telling him to give a reference to my post. The comment saved as moderated. I couldn’t expect more, and I left it.
The next day, an email came to my inbox. It’s from the copy-pasted guy! He said (I translated and edited some part of it):
I’m really sorry for the repost.
I’ll delete the post right away. I just doing your tutorial, thanks for the article.
From the tone, I guess he freaked out. So I calmed him and explained that I just need him to give a proper reference to my post. That’s it. I think that was the ethical way. And I didn’t hear from him anymore. The post also disappeared from his blog. I dunno if he is still blogging or not. If he’s not, maybe it’s my mistake too. Somehow, I’m feeling sorry for him. But at least, I got my own lesson.
Do you have any experience like this?
Comments
cira at 13/05/2009 said...
wow… what did u wrote to the guy? i’m curious..
sidudun at 13/05/2009 said...
more or less like that.. ^^
fathoni at 13/05/2009 said...
nah lo… =D
hadi at 14/05/2009 said...
Yup, he should give a proper reference as i did in my blog, hehehe..
It will embarrass himself instead, if someone knows that his writing from another blog without permission..
just write a reference and let people know, right??
sidudun at 14/05/2009 said...
he’s a beginner,, maybe he didn’t know about it yet..
irvan at 16/05/2009 said...
danu at 16/05/2009 said...
just take it as a compliment dude………. it means that you’re doing a great post there, :)
btw, check out this link : http://www.copyscape.com/ in case if there’s another copy-paste tale that you haven’t notice yet…
sidudun at 16/05/2009 said...
@irvan:
yep, good lesson to me to control my emotion..
@danu:
surely does..
thanks for the site..
but I’ll not become a paranoid because of this..
awan at 11/07/2009 said...
Sedekah Ilmu :)
sidudun at 12/07/2009 said...
iya,, saya berbagi ilmu, karena itu saya tulis di blog saya..
tapi saya hanya minta jangan asal copy paste tulisan orang lain tanpa mencantumkan sumber aslinya.. itu saja kok..
dani at 08/04/2010 said...
Saling mengingatkan dan belajar kan gak pa pa. Benar, semuanya ciptaan Tuhan. Tapi kan tetap ada etikanya. Lebih baik mengingatkan daripada membiarkan ‘kesalahan’ terjadi terus-menerus. :)
sidudun at 19/04/2010 said...
betul mas..
etika ini emang perlu… makanya kita perlu saling mengingatkan…