Think Before You Paste: Christians, Blogging and Plagiarism

The first time I saw the post, I overlooked it. I was browsing through the Christian blogs I’ve subscribed to on Google Reader, starring ones I wanted to go back to later and read more intently. I noticed the post because I had written a post on a similar subject. I figured I’d already learned everything there was to learn on the subject, so at first I passed it in the list.

I’m not sure why I went back to read the post, but when I did, I was surprised at what I found.

It wasn’t the title that looked familiar; it was the first sentence. I remembered writing and re-writing that sentence over and over again. Being a perfectionistic writer, that opening paragraph had frustrated me to no end. I wasn’t even sure I liked it when it was finally published on Revelife, the blog community of which I am the lead editor.

Parts of the post had been changed, but overall, it was the same – my thoughts, my words, my hard work. They had been lifted off the front page of Revelife, copied word for word, and pasted on another Christian blog to be published yet again, passed off as someone else’s work.

My experience is not uncommon. Copy and paste plagiarism, sometimes called content scraping in the blog world, happens every day – so often, in fact, that there are programs you can buy to locate your scraped content. Despite its prevalence in the blogosphere, it is no less a violation of copyright law.

It having occurred on a Christian blog only adds insult to injury. Though we as citizens are subject to the authority that governs us here on Earth, we as Christians are also subject to a higher authority, one that does not take thievery and dishonesty lightly.

In the jungle, there is a well-established food chain and a hierarchy of inhabitants, but there is really no one entity that governs over all. The same could be said for blogging; although there are rules in place, the government and certainly the police are in no way equipped to handle the enforcement of copyright law, especially in our technologically advanced age, when even my own mother has a blog. With that in mind, plagiarism becomes a lie of convenience – after all, no one will notice if I just copy this little bit of text, right?

The problem with that train of thought is that it leads us down a very slippery slope. While we may not get caught, stealing is no less wrong in both the eyes of the law and the eyes of God, whose eyes are infinitely more important and infinitely more omniscient. According to scripture, our God is a God “who sees what is done in secret” (Matthew 6:4, NIV).

Whether you’re a casual Christian blogger or a serious writer, there are two things you should know before hitting the post button:

• Know the law. That doesn’t mean you need to study and memorize it, but being slightly familiar with copyright law will benefit you greatly. The U.S. Copyright website has a great deal of information on what is considered “fair use” – that is, what you can lawfully copy with cited sources without permission from the original writer or publisher.
• Know your rights. Just as you are perfectly capable of plagiarizing, so too is your content capable of being plagiarized. While you might think your content is not protected by copyright law if you’re simply posting something on Xanga, LiveJournal, or Blogger, any content that you produce is yours and yours alone. No one has the right to take your content without giving you proper credit.

While plagiarism is prevalent in the blogosphere, we – as Christian bloggers – have the opportunity to use blogging as a ministry not just in word but also in deed. So much as we discuss our faith and beliefs in words, we can also act appropriate and lawfully as an example to others of honesty and justice.