When it comes to making money on the internet, some persons will copy articles authored by industry leaders and experts in their fields and claim it as their own work. The point of this Hubpage is to discuss, in my view, when does it become unethical to copy the work of others.

Copying another persons work is happening on a daily basis in the workplace and in our schools where students copy answers, projects and homework. Copying someone else's written word is basically known as Plagiarism.

Plagiarism, as defined in the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, is the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work. (Source Wikipedia).

Considering why students might copy the work of their friends is often as a result of a "need to" because they did not do their homework or complete a project on time. Submitting something, is better then nothing, or so they think.

In the workplace, ideas and work are basically stolen every day. There is no love in war and the workplace often carries a similar parallel. Some work colleagues would not hesitate to carry out by any means, anything that can make them advance in the workplace, whether that be a position advance or receiving some gratification and acknowledgment from their peers.

Such instances are often performed without any further forethought then to achieve the goal the person has decided on and set out to achieve. That person does not take into consideration if what they are doing is unethical or morally wrong.

So when actually does copying the work of others become unethical?

Is it unethical when the person unknowingly sets about claiming someone else's work as their own or is it when that person starts to gain some benefit from the stolen work? Does the person have to have a realisation of what they are doing or does that not matter?

If someone is copying the work of others and does not have the awareness of what they are doing is wrong, is that unethical?

I know we have copyright laws etc where a person can be forced to retract what they have claimed as their content as well as the aggrieved party being compensated in some form but this is about being unethical.

To understand when the actions of a person becomes unethical, we really need to know what does unethical mean.

Wikipedia has a limited definition as Not morally approvable, morally bad; not ethical.

Would that definition come into being for a person who unknowingly goes about copying or claiming the work of others as their own?

Not really, I would say. I visited this link on Wikipedia and found it was lacking any real content. I would add that unethical also might mean selfish, doing something without thought, stealing etc..

You may or may not know, that I use and promote article spinning software. I wrote a Hubpage on Magic Article Rewriter. For those who do not know, the software can take one article and you then change the words and/or sentences to make the article a seed article.

A seed article using the software can then spin the article generating thousands of unique non duplicate content articles.

On my site, I received an email from a student who asked if the software could spin homework so he could sell it to his friends. Well the answer in truth is yes the software can do this, but also the question I asked was "don't you think that is wrong"?

The reply was simply, "no, who cares, I can make money".

Well, there you have it. The greatest answer in life to the question, when does it become unethical. In my student friends eyes, it does not become unethical, he could not care less.

Article spinning software can spin any written word. It can even spin this Hubpage and be unique without getting any duplicate content whatsoever, anywhere, even if it was spun one thousand times.

Taking someone elses article and spinning it using software is in my view, unethical.

Taking anyone elses written word and spinning it using software is unethical.

If, you research, by reading other articles and then later you set about writing your own words, and you spin those words, that is not being unethical.

This is what the design of article spinning software was programmed to do. Ethical use of the software without any excuses at all.