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A while ago, a friend discovered my Are You Burnt Out PSA had been shared by a Facebook page with 31,000 likes. That post was shared by another 500+ folks after that. I’m truly and honestly flattered that so many folks would share my joke.
There was only one problem: the original poster had removed my logo from the PSA.
In truth, I’m kinda bummed those folks who saw the logo-less version won’t get to connect with me.
See, I make these PSAs for you as much as I make them for me. I like to know that other people out there feel the same way, too. It’s like a little high-five for my soul each time someone shares, likes, or comments on one of my PSAs.
I make like… $1 for every coffee mug or t-shirt sold, which is not a ton, right? So removing my logo doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if someone planned to resell it. And, it’s not like removing my logo from that particular PSA made it easier to share or cleaned it up any (there’s still the stick figures having sex and all…)
So it got me thinking…
There’s a bell curve of intelligence, right?
Stephen Hawking and Einstein and those guys? They’re way over there on the right. People like you and me? We’re right around the center (no offense, I’m only guessing here). George Carlin liked to say, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I do pretty idiotic things. Like this morning, I’m pretty sure I answered the door in my boxers. It’s a moving measurement from day to day, I suppose. So when I wonder why someone would take my logo off of one of my PSAs, I can only think it’s because they’re too far down the curve (in that moment or possibly about digital rights in general) to know any better.
Friday, my friend Erika had this happen to her, too. Her “Buy Me Coffee” consulting offer was stolen not once, not twice, but three times since she put it up in February. In typical Redhead Writing style, she went for a scorched Earth policy in calling out the first infringer. I’ll be honest: I had a hard time figuring out at first how the infringer Erika called out had, well, infringed.
When I looked at Erika’s screenshots, side-by-side, of her offer and the infringer’s offer – I saw two different pieces of content. My understanding was that in order to infringe on someone’s copyright, you actually had to copy the original content to some degree. From what I saw, under that understanding, it wasn’t infringement because the copy had been changed “enough” in my opinion to make it a different bit of content.
Meanwhile a few trolls who had found Erika’s post began to pick apart the infringer with ad-hominem attacks on the infringer’s gender, age, and choice of career – anything and everything they could to demean and degrade the infringer. Something I find totally distasteful. True, the infringer could have known better – or they might not have. In either case, ad-hominem attacks aren’t the right way to prove a point. To do so in blog comments is like a digital community form of slut shaming.
UPDATE: Erika posted a follow-up “On Stealing Shit”, which is well worth your time to read.
What ends up happening with ad-hominem attacks: the infringer becomes even more entrenched in their existing misconceptions and increasingly unlikely to do anything when contacted for fear of getting personally blasted for a (potentially innocent – if you thought that plagiarism stops at changing the copy) mistake. See the problem?
If your definition of “enough” determines whether or not you’ve plagiarized, your reaction (and awareness of if you did anything wrong) will be based entirely on your intentions and your understanding of where that “plagiarism” line is.
It wasn’t until Erika explained to me that the infringer had duplicated her execution of the idea that I really got it: while the copy (the written content) had changed, the other elements of the execution – the layout/design, the concept, and the systems (how the concept is done) – were copied nearly verbatim.
The “soul” of Erika’s idea was in the execution – the combination of the layout and design, the concept itself, the systems to implement the concept, and the copy and content. While the infringer had changed the copy and content, they hadn’t changed anything else – which is a form of piracy.
Think of it this way: you’d be pissed if someone stole your genetic code and cloned you, except they changed the tone of your skin, eyes, and hair and gave you a squeaky voice. The clone might look and sound different, but it’d still be “you”.
What became super clear to me is that people don’t need education in why it’s wrong to steal, but what exactly constitutes theft in the digital age. Only when all content creators begin teaching all of our readers what constitutes theft can we have any hope of preventing it from propagating itself.
The good majority of my content is (purposefully) licensed under Creative Commons – if someone is inspired by what I do, I want them to be able to adapt and grow it. So if someone “borrows” an idea from me, all they need to do is give me attribution. Under copyright, it’s a bit more complicated – even so, some education would be a welcome thing.
So – what do you want to know? What can I help you find out?
Nick Armstrong 
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” … people don’t need education in why it’s wrong to steal, but what exactly constitutes theft in the digital age.” BINGO!! I agree.
Nick, I’m a stickler when it comes to “how” people behave online. In particular, how they find resolves for an issue like the one you’re focusing on in this post. For crying out loud, we’re all adults. So is “slamming” someone ever the right approach? In my way of thinking, it only creates more problems. Personally “attacking” someone is about as low as it gets. Not my style.
I’d prefer to kill someone with kindness. Works like a charm. 😉
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Melanie – I’m right there with you about the kindness… some folks are just begging for a rough response, but even my “meanest” emails are usually written to make the other person laugh.
I’ve never been afraid to tell people what’s on my mind, but there’s a huge difference between “slut shaming” and unabashed honesty. Honest intent is the difference.
It wasn’t so much the original torrent that troubled me (which was surprisingly civil) but the secondary and tertiary ripples that occurred in the comments and on Facebook which weren’t shut down.
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Nick, some people have limits and have learned to respect other people’s rights and dignity, and others… do not. and, the ones who do not also don’t know that slut-shaming isn’t the way you go about asking someone to stop some action you don’t approve of. It’s not relevant to the situation, but for some reason, people like that just go right for the slut-shaming tool, and wield like a limp… well, you know…
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Jenneth – it’s a violation when you’ve been plagiarized, for sure. It’s only natural to have an emotional response to that violation; the problem comes in when other folks (who weren’t violated) jump on the emotional response as if it were their own. Slut shaming is the result…
I’d much rather education take place instead.
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That needed to be said. Thanks, Nick.
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Thank you Sharon 🙂
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Nick, thanks for writing this. At the risk of getting my own “no name” throat ripped to shreds I opted to not comment directly on the situation above. I was just as confused as you were and, to be quite honest, I found it rather disturbing how the trolls and bullies came out and were NOT stopped – they were not stopped on the comments, they continued onto Facebook and sadly many took it even farther than that. This especially bothers me because it came after a post about trolls on youTube. o.O
I totally get being upset and pissed off, but when one is already riding on a huge rogue wave of a shit week (weeks or even months we don’t know), I found no grace — just fiery, blood thirsty revenge. It’s human nature to have a knee jerk reaction like this. But I think there is a certain amount of grace that needs to be added, especially when you are an influencer of larger magnitudes than the “average Joe”. In other words, if you have a large following or community backing you up, you can quite possibly (in this case I feel it happened) cause the proverbial “witch hunt” — and to be honest, I’m just not a fan of witch hunts.
I totally agree 100% with you that there needs to be more out there in regards to the “digital world”, copyright infringement, and piracy. I think it is more graceful to share publicly after the fact, not during the fact, but that’s just me. But yes, we definitely need to see more people talking about this .. hopefully in a different kind of place. Like … with less anger, pitchforks and torches >_<
Keep on keepin' on my friend! I really appreciate your follow up 😀
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Thanks Kimberly!
When you’re the ring-leader of a community, it can become really easy to listen to the “group-think” echo cheering your impassioned plea on. Especially when you’ve had some measure of success and built up your community along the way, you trust in ’em – even the occasional troll who finds their way into your life. Erika has definitely earned her following, person by person, idea by idea.
Toning down these knee-jerk reactions and honest-from-the-heart emotion would be contrary to her brand. Even so, as an outsider, I think taking the next step and shutting down the “slut shaming” trolling in her comments would have been a good next step. People posting on Savvy’s FB page on Erika’s behalf was… a little extreme and definitely not something I’d want reflected on my brand or on my behalf.
Scott Stratten’s twitter post to her was probably the classiest thing I’d seen all day in regards to the theft: “[@Savvy] plagiarism, not the best move maybe.”
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Great post, Nick. But a few inaccuracies. First, the person who ripped off my content, the one whose side-by-side screenshot I showed, did not pass Copyscape. That means that the content between the two pages is materially the same, and thereby, plagiarism. Secondly, her page used exact quotes (plagiarized copy) from my page (copyright infringement). Next, the copy on her page followed the identical layout of mine in flow, order of idea presentation, and shamelessly, the same words.
What people consider to be “paraphrasing” can still be copyright infringement. Moving a few words around, changing coffee to chai latte, and omitting the f-bombs that appear in an original don’t make it “original content.”
I also posted a response today to the criticism and call-outs in my scenario — you might find it of interest. http://erikanapoletano.com/blog/on-stealing-shit/
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Erika, this is why I have mad respect for you. I so appreciate you responding to the call-outs and I’ll update my post to link directly to your response so folks don’t have to find this comment to see it.
For what it’s worth, Savvy’s ‘buy me a coffee’ may not have passed Copyscape, but it sure looked different enough to me at first glance – even though the structure and form was similar. It took your explanation of the “execution” – which goes beyond thesaurus-level replacements and into form, structure, and copy (with similarities) to get me on the same level of understanding as you. I don’t disagree – it’s a rip-off, but it took me a moment to get there.
I’ve been a DJ on KCSU, I write Star Trek fan fiction, I published a book – I’ve dealt with copyright issues on a daily basis since college. So when I get it wrong and am asking questions with that much experience, that means we’re missing some bit of education to make it clear where plagiarism ends and “inspired-by, but original in itself” content begins.
All the way up and down the comments on your original post and in Facebook, you see people saying, “Why does Erika think she had the original idea for paid coffee consulting?” And I cringe, because you’ve clarified each time with: “I don’t care who offers ‘buy me a coffee’, it’s this specific build and how it’s offered (the execution) they’ve stolen.”
I cringe because that education is lacking and our whole culture needs to be exposed to that lesson. It’s a huge issue which will take a concerted effort from every content creator.
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I can’t put it any better, Nick. I agree with everything you’ve written here.
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Just one more reason why you’re better off exercising your creativity in business rather than trying to follow the status quo…If your creative enough you don’t need to rip shit off….or maybe that’s just me!?!?!?
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I’m all for creativity. But I think it’s worth mentioning that copywriters are the biggest thieves out there. If Ogilvy had a dollar for every person who copied one of his headline formulas, he’d be richer than Bill Gates. Copying isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s actually called modeling, and it’s what coaches do: I’ve been where you are, this is where I am now, and you can do it, too (i.e. copy me).
The mistake this woman made was in copying the words instead of copying the psychology. I don’t think her intention was to steal or rip anyone off– although that was the result. But because I don’t believe that was her intention, I was uncomfortable with Erika’s scathing response. It’s not how I would have handled it, but to each their own and to red heads their feistiness.
No matter what this woman did, she did not deserve the collective slut shaming that took place next. Nick is spot on with his comments, and I especially appreciated Erika’s honesty in admitting why she didn’t shut it down sooner. We’ve all been swept up in emotion, but I do hope that Nick’s thoughtful reflection on the situation causes people to pause before attacking someone online.
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Sharon – thank you! 🙂 I get pretty uncomfortable with named call-outs. I’ve only ever done it twice; it’s just not a fun thing for anyone, you feel guilty about it afterward and… they, well, it isn’t so much fun for them, either.
I agree with you on the modeling thing.
I’d contend that a core part of the learning experience goes something like this (I’d originally posted some of this on Erika’s blog, so I’ll paraphrase here):
1) Articulation – figuring something out, working it, moving it around, seeing what it’s made of
2) Emulation – building a model of something, building a copy of something to know how it works
3) Adaptation – changing some aspect of the original emulated work
4) Modification – incorporating a new aspect into the original emulated work
5) Original Creation – combining new ideas based on what you learned in steps 1-4 to create something new
A great example is to think of how you learned to write poetry. You probably had to copy a sonnet or two from Shakespeare to learn iambic pentameter. A few more sonnets and you could write your own. That process continued for just about everybody. Soon enough somebody had come up with, “There once was a man from Nantucket…” and then finally someday someone penned the most brilliant poem of all: “Ode To Spot”.
As copying is a necessary part of initial learning, we have to think critically on how we teach children and adolescents about the creative process – what the consequences are for stopping early and claiming it’s original work, how we reward originality (at the moment: it’s largely punished), and how we license our content and contributions to society – or else misunderstandings will just keep piling on.
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Very insightful, Nick. Now I understand why I complain so much about what is popular in pop culture. In my opinion, a lot of it just stops adaptation. And adaptation isn’t that interesting or inspiring to me. Thanks
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If you think about it, we’re really inspiring the next generation of internet users to stop exactly at adaptation with the whole meme movement.
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Yes! Seriously, I need to take you out for a beer next time I’m in town, because I think I would really enjoy picking your brain.
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High-five, let’s do it.
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Thanks Ariana – I’ll add a bit more with my reply to both you and Sharon at the same time – but yeah, there’s a certain amount of laziness to plagiarism, but it might not be the kind everybody tends to think about.
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