They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery but the rise of digital has also seen a rise of the least flattering form of copying. As life increasingly migrates online, a huge amount of content is being produced and, as both consumers and businesspeople we are engaging with it, enjoying it and demanding more and more. Every brand or business worth its salt is blogging (ahem) and rightly so – it’s a great opportunity to get to know a company and its people well, to communicate expertise and ethos. Be it a consumer facing organisation or one with a solely business audience, brands are able and should engage in digital content production.
And it’s great – we are empowered as consumers and as business people we share ideas and knowledge. We get excited about new things and the news agenda moves more quickly than ever before.
But there is a darker side to this sharing of information and that is plagiarism. In the digital sphere, it is so easy to lift an idea and make it look like your own. It can be done so quickly that many people may be unaware who thought of it first. Add to this that digital copyright is pretty murky and you have the perfect platform for copy cats to get their claws into.
Now I will be the first person to admit that in PR we often take an idea and build on it, enhancing it and carrying a discussion forward but that is very different – and more morally sound – than simply clicking copy and paste and claiming something as your own.
However, all is not lost as we are becoming increasingly savvy online. Not only is plagiarism a far more common practice since the advent of digital but, I hate to inform those that engage in it, it’s also far more easy to spot when it’s being done. Anyone can look at dates of postings and see who came first. It’s also pertinent to mention that anyone who engages in this is also probably copying someone very close to them and so it is a comparison that will quickly and easily be made. It’s a shame that people feel the need to do it when there is the opportunity to be open and honest online, citing and linking to content that you are commenting on which also has the added benefit of pushing your site up the rankings too. By doing this, you are adding to the debate and discussion without engaging in the immoral.
I really hope that brands and businesses carry on engaging in the digital space as they are so that the value and experience to be had online continues to evolve. However, if plagiarism becomes too widely adopted, brands and businesses will understandably step back and we will lose this wonderful forum for discussion and debate.
If you are ever tempted to do it, remember that grabbing the limelight off the back of another person’s idea may be quick but it isn’t clever.
