{"id":261,"date":"2010-04-06T03:23:21","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T10:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astrologymediapress.com\/astroblogging\/?p=261"},"modified":"2011-09-06T02:15:39","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T02:15:39","slug":"astrology-copyright-and-plagiarism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"Astrology, Copyright and Plagiarism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Astroblogging<\/strong>)–By Tony Vowles<\/p>\n

Blogging is a personal and very rewarding pursuit. Technically it is easy for someone with basic IT skills to produce a website that appears very slick \u2013 beautifully designed templates can be slotted in at the click of a few buttons with no need for design or programming skills. All you need to do is author content. This is where the joy of writing comes in \u2013 the imagination, the literary skill and the hours poring over content. Personally, I hardly ever read what other astrology bloggers have written on a topic until I\u2019ve written my own \u2013 I don\u2019t want to be sidetracked by something mentioned. I also don\u2019t want to subconsciously take it in and end up repeating it. My work is my life blood \u2013 my soul is in there and I know it is the same for many others.<\/p>\n

So it should come as no surprise that the idea of your work being plagiarised feels almost the same as someone breaking into your house! The question is, what can\/do you do about it? I think it\u2019s important to try and distinguish between what is a simple mistake \u2013 a lack of understanding of copyright, wanting to share your material (but doing it badly), and outright copying for personal gain. Both happen, perhaps more frequently than we realise. I\u2019ve worked in IT long enough to know that sometimes people do and think the most ridiculous things \u2013 believing that a wireless mouse and flat screen monitor speeds up a PC for instance! It\u2019s easy to see how copyright might be a completely alien concept to someone like that \u2013 in these cases a gentle reminder should be enough. You never know, the exchange could turn into a friendship \u2013 after all, it is nice to know that someone values what you\u2019ve written and want to share it with their network.<\/p>\n

So, what of the other type? You\u2019ve no doubt seen them \u2013 an exploitation of the ease of creating websites by producing something that has no heart and soul \u2013 no personal investment \u2013 that investment is being taken from you! There seems to be a great many of these around and from what I can discern their interest is in receiving revenue from ad clicks and bundled offerings. With such a lack of investment from the owners I suspect many wouldn\u2019t last too long. However, it isn\u2019t difficult to create lots of them, exploit keywords for Google placement, and let the pennies roll in \u2013 like a cash cow.<\/p>\n

We all have to consider how we\u2019d like our content represented \u2013 external links provide clickthroughs to our site (which is good) but does it portray our brand in the way we intention? If it doesn\u2019t, then it\u2019s worth considering that our product could be weakened in some way, despite the extra traffic.<\/p>\n

Copyright<\/a> violation is against the law and we do have the ability to close down sites if push comes to shove. Check out this Wikipedia article on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a>. Google Analytics helps \u2013 we can see an amazing amount of detail about traffic to our site \u2013 if you\u2019re not using it then you should be! There are also varying levels of copyright services available to aid us. Copyscape<\/a> offers a free service where you can input the URL of your page and it scours the internet looking for duplicated content. They also provide a paid premium service for more sophisticated protection.<\/p>\n

So, there\u2019s much to consider with copyright and plagiarism. It is complicated; the law is tricky and differs across boundaries. It isn\u2019t always black and white but there are free tools at our disposal to help fight it. If you know of other tools and utilities then fill up the comments section here with your ideas!<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Hailing from the UK, Tony calls himself an amateur astrologer and social networker. He has been studying Astrology for about 20 years on and off and also has a background and interest in Martial Arts and Zen Buddhism. His astrology blog is aptly named The Astrology Blog<\/a>
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Astroblogging)–By Tony Vowles Blogging is a personal and very rewarding pursuit. Technically it is easy for someone with basic IT skills to produce a website that appears very slick \u2013 beautifully designed templates can be slotted in at the click … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4,1],"tags":[24,38,47,48,102,133],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":592,"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblogging.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}