In fact, it's probably much more commonplace than we know. It's an insidious problem that afflicts blogs, as it causes pain to writers everywhere.
We are talking about the blatant theft of another person's ideas, without creding them for their work.
We are speaking of plagiarism.
Blogs are not immune to the practice either. Just ask Vicki Smith at Just In From Cowtown. It happened to her.
Vicki had a post stolen without credit, with the plagiarist even claiming the post as his own work.
The post in question was originally published on The Blog Herald.
Vicki even requested permission from The Blog Herald to publish her own post on her own blog.
The plagiarist wasn't nearly so scrupulous. And no, I am not going to link to his blog. Apparently, he exalted in the added publicity that his plagiarism created for his blog. I have no intention of giving him any free traffic to his blog.
For Duncan Riley's comment on the matter, simply go to The Blog Herald. Duncan Riley considered the case to be "the most blatant example of plagiarism that I have personally seen."
As we can see, the problem of plagiarising other people's work and claiming it as their own, has reached the blogosphere. Once the province of the world of academia, idea theft has become part of the daily experience of bloggers.
What can you do to prevent the spread of pagiarism, and to avoid charges of the practice yourself?
First and foremost, you should always credit your source. That is easy to do for any honest blogger. Simply link to the post in question.
Jay Solo at Accidental Verbosity always recommends the "double link". One link is made directly to the post, and another link is created to the blog home page, by those who double link.
I try to follow Jay's recommendation, and double link. Occasionally, I forget as well. The only link that will appear on those occasions, will either be to the post, or to the blog's home page. Single linking is considered sufficient by most bloggers, however.
We must all try to be more scrupulous with linking and crediting other bloggers for their posts and ideas.
If we don't acknowledge the work of others, the next blog to be plagiarized may be your own.
Let's maintain the integrity of ideas in the blogosphere.
