Online Plagiarism
If you spend a lot of time writing online, plagiarism is one of those things that you need to be careful of. Nowadays, it is easier than ever for writers to get their words read by others. You can set up your own blog or website with free hosting within minutes. The good thing about that is that a would-be writer has a bigger chance of establishing a presence online. The downside is that plagiarism is a very real problem or issue. This means that if you spend a lot of time writing online, you need to make sure that you are safeguarded against it.
As the current copyright law is written in the United States, once you write something, you automatically own the copyright. That means that unless you give someone the explicit permission to print it, they are violating the law by printing it or trying to pass it off as their own. Plagiarism is a very serious offense and the person who does it can be sued or fined. This is not a good thing. However, it is pretty easy to plagiarize unless you take measures to protect yourself against it.
The first thing you can do is make sure that you give a warning on your website. You may have opted not to have one, thinking that it seemed obvious. But don’t let this fool you. It is not obvious. There are people out there who may feel intimidated by the little warning and not copy your information. However, that doesn’t stop most people. If they take your work at this point, the only thing you can do is ask them to take it down and then take legal action if they aren’t listening to you.
So you will need to be able to prove that you wrote something. It is best to have a record of what you write on your computer. A lot of people just write posts within the website. It is better to write it on your computer and then post it. That will offer another layer of protection. Of course, if online plagiarism is an ongoing problem for you, you can file a protection form with the convert. Each form is thirty dollars and you can register multiple works with it. However, you need to continually update the listing, especially if your work is on a website that changes often.
