Profitable Blog Copywriting and SEO Strategies: RANT: Give Me a Break Cook’s Source. How Stupid Do You Think We Are?

Have you felt the rumble of online writers’ forums over the last several days? One particularly outrageous example of blatant plagiarism and outright ignorance reared its ugly head over an article that was illegally reprinted in a magazine called Cook’s Source. Basically, a woman named Monica Gaudio was contacted by a friend asking how she managed to get an article published in Cook’s Source. Only problem was, Monica didn’t give her permission for the article to be used by the magazine.

Long story short, Monica contacted Cook’s Source and received a snippy, rude and inaccurate reply from the Editor which indicated that everything on the Internet is public domain and they didn’t have to even use her name on the article, much less get her permission to reprint it.

W R O N G ! !

So many people take off on this “fair use” defense without having a clue what that means. They assume they can lift copy or content from any website and use it in any way they choose. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, here’s a direct link to the U.S. Library of Congress website that explains fair use.

In this followup, we see the huge extent that even this “professional” (and I use that term loosely) organization went to scrape content for many issues over time. Pitiful. Just pitiful.

Writers, musicians, publishers, video and movie producers and countless others who try to make things easier on their customers by publishing information and products digitally are repaid by untold numbers of copyright infringement. And we wonder why prices keep rising. We can’t seem to figure out why more and more laws are passed. It’s because these people are being stolen from.

Every time you photocopy sheet music and give it to a friend. All those CDs you’ve copied and handed out to coworkers. Pictures you’ve swiped from the ‘Net and used on your website without permission. Those ebooks you uploaded to the free download sites (yes, even if you purchased the ebooks). They are all instances of illegal copyright infringement. “Well, nobody’s getting hurt.” Wrong again. *I* was getting hurt. Now you know somebody.

So much so, in fact, that I pulled my books from digital delivery and went to paper. That raises costs, means me and my team have to spend more time preparing packages for shipping and our customers have to wait to receive their products instead of getting instant access to PDF files. But I had been ripped off so many times and found my books on one too many free download sites. That was it.

“But if I paid for the ebook (or DVD, or CD, etc.) I can do with it what I please.”

Wrong for the 3rd time!

What you are paying for is a license, not for ownership of the song, ebook, podcast, etc. So no, you cannot do with it what you please.

OK, rant over. The whole Cook’s thing just got my blood boiling once more and I had to get it out. If you have questions, don’t assume. Ask them (here if you’d like) and avoid facing the wrath of some publisher, copywriter or videographer who might hunt you down later and demand (legally) compensation for his/her work.