10 reasons why you should not just copy and paste articles from other pages to your blog

Blogging can also be describe as the art of creating quality contents geared towards building readership community around such contents with the main aim of constantly impacting and delivering values to the community which in turn could end up in you being rewarded.

The above definition is what bloggers should truly see as blogging and if you must accept that definition, then you must also accept that for blogging to be done correctly and successfully, there sholuld be rules governing blogging like that of the rules of engagement in the military.

Since the major ingrdient of blogging centres around content creation, this rule of engagement should be appllied in the right manner to the ways bloggers create their contents.

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For those that have been blogging for long, I strongly believe that they already know these rules governing content creation, and then for those commonly referred to as newbie bloggers, it is also not an excuse (since ignorance to the law is never accepted as excuse) for you not to know such rules i.e. even why at the onset, for the title ‘Blogger’ to be attached to you, you need to have learnt at list the basics of blogging before jumping into it. 

Learning the true nature of blogging first before practicing are things even expected of you, if you must come out successful in the blogosphere and it is even applicable to all other aspects of our existence and offline jobs.

We can assume at this point that some bloggers are still found wanting and are oblivious of some of these rules, so we want to excuse them for being newbie bloggers by giving them the benefit of doubt or even if they may want to act ignorant, let’s point out 2 to 3 of these major rules guiding contents creation.

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= =>All bloggers are encouraged to chunk out valuable articles by themselves that can impact to their readership communities.

= =>Necessary researches are encouraged when trying to chunk out those articles and also ideas can be borrowed on the course of such researches. 

= =>If you must copy contents in few cases when you are lacking some content ideas or maybe going through writer's block, you should endeavor at all cost make it a must to link back to the source of such articles (images inclusive). As it is a way of giving back credits to the original creator of the content which you copied.

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Having said much at this point, the major reason for writing this particular piece as the title already suggested is to highlight 10 good reasons on why you should not just scrape other people’s contents and pose as if you were the creator on your blog.

Without even wasting your precious time, let’s hit it out on the 10 reasons why you should not copy and paste other people’s articles on your blog;

1.   You could easily be harassed and embarrassed – The mere fact that people don’t like being harassed and embarrassed at the same time should give you a food for thought when trying to engage in the act of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, therefore you should endeavor to desist from it. 

    These sorts of harassment and embarrassments could come as form of text messages, phone calls, mail to your inbox, name callings etc. from the original content creator, once he finds out that you have scraped his content. And don’t expect him/her (the original content creator) to greet you with kind words when he contacts you for such an act.

2.   DCMA report could be filed against you to the appropriate authorities – if you still don’t know what DCMA report is at this moment, I will tell you. It stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a US binding copyright law which criminalizes the act of circumventing the control access to copyrighted materials (online) e.g. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V which increase the penalties for copyright.

3.   You could easily be reported to Google, Yahoo and other big internet movers – you know that Google, yahoo and other giants are the real internet movers and that there are hardly any activities you carry out online without making use of their products directly or indirectly and even without you knowing, therefore when you are reported to them, they could end up penalizing you. 
    

    As a copy-paste blogger that you have turned yourself to be, your pagerank for example could be dethroned or if you are part of their ads network programs, you stand the risk of your account being suspended with any penalty that could arise.

4.   It does not show any sign of professionalism – If maintaining professional attitudes in the blogosphere are what bloggers constantly sort for to become successful at the long run, then how can you relate Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to professionalism? Or how do you think your quest and path to becoming professional bloggers will look like?....very rocky if I may guess!

5.   It is merely an act of discrediting other webmasters effort – Ever imagined your own effort being stolen by others without receiving any form of credit. I am quite sure that people don’t like wasting energy and time or doing things without being rewarded since they are not Santa Claus. It is like a popular saying down here ‘that monkey are working while the baboon that is also a monkey is only but feeding’. I bet you that no webmaster will want such to happen to him/her.

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6.   It is an act of plagiarism in the blogosphere – As piracy is major to offline, so is plagiarism to online. You all know the grieve consequences of piracy, so is plagiarism with its own grieve consequences in the online arena.

7.   Your integrity as blogger could be put to question even by your own fellow bloggers – if I may ask at this point, will you like to compromise your integrity as a blogger just because of ordinary Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V….I am sure you would not. Good name is still far better than silver and gold put together.

8.   It is a pure indication that you are a lazy blogger – yes you heard me right, copying and pasting others articles most times is pure indication that you are lazy. It shows no sign of commitment to your work (blog) at all, since you cannot at any time task yourself by coming up with article of your own for your blog. Down here, we commonly say to lazy bloggers that ‘there is no food for lazy man/woman’

9.   It could land you in jail – and don’t you just dare think that I am just kidding you by telling you that you could end up seeing yourself cooling your feet in jail by ordinary Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V action. You can go back to point 2 above when I mentioned that a DCMA report could be filled against you. And so what do you now think will happen to you after investigation and if convicted. It is a serious offence, and the police department responsible for crime investigation in your country could just be hunting for you during investigation.

10.  You could easily lose your passion and could end up not making money with your blog – all other reasons highlighted above could culminate to this particular one i.e. you losing passion and ending up not making money with your blog, because no advertisers out there will like to place their ads on blogs with plagiarized contents. And detecting copied contents is very easy because there are many handy tools out there to check for copied content.

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Finally, you have seen all the simple action of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V could cause you as a blogger and definitely the disadvantages are enormous and not worth you spending energy and time always sourcing for other people's content to scrape while posing as the original authors, as all could easily culminate to wasteful resources. 

Wrapping up with this little incidence… there was a time a copy and paste blogger went to copy content from another blog and even went ahead copying the original author's name inclusive without even knowing and he pasted every bit of the content on his blog….What an embarrassing situation it all turned out to be at the end when the original author of the article later found out. 

So if you have developed the habit of polluting the internet by always scraping others contents the way they are, this is a call and opportunity for you to stop now….99 days are for the thief, but one day is for the owner!