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Residual Income | Article #292 : PLAGIARISM – PART 1

Well, if this isn’t a hot topic, I don’t know what is. In this article, I’m going to give you a broad definition of plagiarism and then I’m going to give you my thoughts on the whole thing, especially with all the article marketing that is going on in the world today thanks to Bum Marketing and The Ultimate Affiliate Strategy. Plagiarism is even more important to be aware of than any other time in Internet marketing history.

So just what is plagiarism? Well, if you go to dictionary.com, you’ll get this definition.

1. The unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work. 

I think that’s pretty clear. Notice though that it says language and thoughts. It doesn’t say JUST thoughts. The reason for this is because ideas cannot be protected. If somebody writes about how to write articles, the idea of “writing articles” in itself can’t be protected. Anybody else can write about writing articles as long as they put it in their own words.

With many topics, especially those that are quite complex, this isn’t too hard to do. If anything, it would be almost impossible to write a piece of work that was even similar to somebody else’s if you wrote on the subject of “Advanced Mathematics” and did it off the top of your head, which would be easy to do if you were a mathematician.

But what if you wanted to write an article or book on Google Adwords and you started your book with step by step instructions on how to sign up with an Adwords account? Have you looked at the step by step process for creating your Google Adwords account? It is very specific. Not only that, but it MUST be followed in the exact steps outlined by Google. There is absolutely no room for any improvisation here. What’s my point?

If two people were to write the intro to signing up with Google Adwords, there would be a very good chance that the wording of both articles or books would be very similar, if not exact.  And if you multiplied this by a hundred articles or books on the subject, you are certain to think that you’ve read the same thing at least more than once. And yet, in spite of these obviously similarities, no charges of plagiarism have ever been filed against a book on Google Adwords.

Now, let’s look at this from another perspective. A person wants to write about Google Adwords. However, they don’t know anything about the subject and have no desire to get an Adwords account. Certainly there is no requirement for them to do so just to write about the subject. Sure, it would make things easier, but it’s still not a requirement. So this person decides to simply buy some books, read some articles and then write his own book on Adwords from the materials he’s read. Now he’s got a problem. Let’s go back to that step by step process. It’s pretty hard to report that process in different words without having read about those steps.

End result?

This person stands a good chance of writing a plagiarized book that won’t really be much different from any other book that was written on the subject simply because of the method he used to write it.

My point?

Read the definition of plagiarism again. Seems like we’re in a very gray area given the example I used in this article. This is why plagiarism laws have changed so much over the years.

In the second part of this series, I’m going to give you some tips that will hopefully keep you from getting sued for plagiarism in the course of your writing career.

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