Is Quoting on Facebook Without Crediting Writers the New Plagiarism?
People Copy to Facebook Without Sourcing Writer
Plagiarism may be a bit strong, but I have noticed a disturbing pattern lately. People on Facebook are copying and pasting quotes, song lyrics, all sorts of things onto their Facebook page and not crediting writers. To add to the mess, people comment on the stolen text and praise their relative or friend's witty remarks. When the offending FB page owner does nothing to clear things up, effectively taking credit for not sourcing the text, it irritates me.
I use Facebook sparingly. It's a great, even beneficial resource, but I find it to be a huge time waster. Browsing through a friend's family photos of their latest trip to Disneyland or the epic Grand Canyon vacation gets a little stale after awhile. Also those marketing surveys and games like Mafia Wars get on my nerves. That said, it's a good place to update those in your life about you, and can help market web content for writers. It's why when I started seeing text lifted from writers with no source credit on one Facebook page, I started scrutinizing many others.
I found more instances of it. Often it may be casual like slapping a Rolling Stones song lyric next to a photo. I highly doubt Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the boys will get peeved enough to take legal action. When I discovered lengthy quotes from articles written by professional writers or bloggers on the web, layered onto Facebook pages with no source credit, I found it to be a growing problem.
Each time I found text I knew wasn't written by the owner (we usually know how our friends write, so it's pretty easy), I direct messaged that person pointing out that what they did may not go over too well if the original writer finds it. The legal issues regarding it may be murky. After all, Facebook pages don't earn income, yet they're still being seen by hundreds if not thousands of people every day. It's also fair play. Taking someone else's work for your own isn't fair nor polite.
So watch out, writers. Next time you're surfing over a college buddy's Facebook page or enjoying a co-workers prose or poetry, you may find yourself reading something you wrote.
Published by Will Stape
Will is an Emmy Award nominated screenwriter. He also writes extensively for magazines and the web. Will penned episodes for the TV shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation & Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.... View profile
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14 Comments
Post a CommentI agree with Will but would take it further. The writer's words are his or her intellectual property. Just as Toyota creates cars or as a builder creates a building, so writers create texts. That's the whole reason for copyright laws, so that people don't steal this easy-to-steal intellectual property. It's not a matter of whether we agree with what people are doing on Facebook or we don#$%$ illegal. Even with the Fair Use Doctrine, a standard attribution of "Source:" with author, title, and date of work is needed. Not a popular idea for Facebook, but the writer's rights should come first.
Don't forget it give credit
A classmate of mine copies quotes from motivqtional speaker's material from different sources on the web. He gets all kinds of praise for how knowledgable and insightful he is from other, naive and very gullable classmates. His head has become grossly inflated and he is doing it even more! He has even been encouraged to go into motivational speaking! It has gotten down right dispicable! I as well as other friends have seriously considered unfriending him, however it concerns us about he is affecting our overall Facebook community of friends!
I think you are over-reacting slightly. The way conversations flow on Facebook is supposed to emulate the way conversations flow in real life. When I quote a section from poem or song to friends I rarely append it with the writer's name unless someone is curious about where it is from. Am I in the minority here?
Interesting point you've made. I never even thought about this before.
That is an interesting question indeed.
All persons who are quoting someone need to attribute the quote to the original writers. Important to educate them from the beginning.
Somehow they need to be educated.
Excellent points; I bet most of the quote-droppers on FB don't even realized what they're doing is plagiarism.
I am still not a member of facebook...if I was I would def. post this on FB...appropriately sourced of course ;-) I'm w/you on this one!