Duplicate Content versus Plagiarism
Pirating other writers' works
Duplicate content versus Plagiarism: in my own opinion, none of the two is much different from each other. They're the same. It is also called piracy, if you won't mind.Plagiarism or duplicate content in books or piracy in music or films.
Everything in the world today are being copied, like the clothing designs, jewelries, perfumes, you name it, knock off marketers and dubious businessmen have it. Talk about counterfeiting. But this is another subject. I must truly dig on it.
Going Back in Time
Written languages through different kinds of literary media, like short stories, anecdotes, legends, parables, poems, and the like have been a popular culture among humans in the whole world. Before, our forefathers memorize stories of their existence and activities, like many battles and acts of bravery through spoken languages. But when writing materials were discovered, like the papyrus papers in Egypt, excitement of writing their thoughts became another stage in the civilization of man. That's why the biggest and oldest library in the world can be found in Alexandria, Egypt. This was conceptualized and built during the reign of Queen Cleopatra. Scholars in literature, i think, never argue of plagiarism and duplicate content before. Until now.
Duplicate Content vs Plagiarism 000
The BIG QUESTION is how can we not say that all contents from the books compiled as Holy Bible are duplicated or an act of plagiarism? As fas as I'm concern, the Books of Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have duplicate contents. Is it because it's the Word coming from the Lord itself? How about the Book of Mormons or the Koran of Islam? Clarifying it can lead to an endless arguments.
In fact, ordinary writers, like me and you as well, will be branded as plagiarists or duplicators if our articles have contents similar to others. There are cases in the lives of today's hub writers that highlighting parts of other writer's work then pasting it to the hub writing tool, then revising the word is a clear act of plagiarism. When you finished editing and publishing it, your article will be branded as with plenty of duplicate contents.
Resisting the urge
How about when we copy contents from major sources in the e-world, like Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, isn't it a clear act of plagiarism or duplication? Even we linked our copied content to the source, it's still a clear indication that writers of today couldn't resist the urge to develop the content of their articles from the plethora or array of sources just waiting to be tapped through various website in the internet.
How about students or researchers copying their assignments from Google Search or Yahoo Search engines? My nephew who's in first year high school now will say that it's better to student through the net or the prepared application of Microsoft Encarta than dabbling or turning pages of the books from the library of their school. If he wants to prepare his homework, he'll just highlight the relevant phrases or articles from the source, copy and paste in in the blank page of Microsoft Word, edit a little and print it. It's just easy as that. Teachers always know or they don't have any idea of how their students prepare homework as long as they can submit it on time. They copy or paraphrase it, just like we do in some of our articles. The safe word is referencing it.
There are many players in the field of writing in the internet. From blogging (online diary or retelling an experience) to writing hubs (tips, ideas, travel, other topics in hand) we are vulnerable to only plagiarism or having duplicate content.
ePlagiarism and iDuplicate
The systematic detection of plagiarists and duplicators on the net is truly a breakthrough in online writing. The anti-plagiarism software can easily detect violators of Ethics 101 in Writing and forced themselves to rewrite what they've submitted in a particular site, especially in Hub pages. Editing the content of your article is a way to eradicate the note on duplicate content. Electronic sentries really sweep and eradicate dirt or spam-like contents to help in maintaining a clean and peaceful writing community.
Works of famous writers and playwrights, like William Shakespeare, are being investigated through the plagiarism software, not because the playwright was a cheat. It was recently discovered that Edward III was also one of Shakespeare's works.
Hub Writers
Hub writers, including me, are always under the scrutiny of plagiarism software and the intelligent people behind it. What we've written here are not merely products of our imagination. They are facts that are already there. We just get what we really think worth writing for.
