Plagiarism

Ever had that feeling that somebody else's website or their blog seems strangely familiar? Further examination reveals that some,large parts, or all of it is exactly the same as the text that you carefully crafted for your website or blog. Or have you ever found a graphic on someone else's website that looks just like part or or all of a photo that you took and put on your site or your blog or even on your social media account. You have just joined the ranks of the many people who have had their work copied - plagiarised, to use the technical term.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism), plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.

Many hypnotherapists, when they are starting out or looking to update their websites, will look at other hypnotherapists' websites to see what looks good and what doesn't - to get an idea of what they'd like to see on their own new site. And, sometimes, they see text or graphics that seem just right. And they make a note of them - or right-click on the images and save them, or copy and paste the text. And, without necessarily meaning to, they have plagiarised that other site. Which helps them out a lot.

But how would you feel if your text or your blog had taken and used by someone else? Someone who might be getting your potential customers because of what we written on their site.

Copying images from Google Images is also plagiarism. And many of those images are copyrighted. People like Getty can move quickly to sue people for using their images - and the cost can be very high. If you want royalty-free graphics, try sites like Pexels ((https://www.pexels.com/royalty-free-images/) Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/), or Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/images/stock/royalty-free).

Surprisingly, plagiarism is not always a criminal offence. It depends on whether the text is copyrighted or not. If copyrighted material is used without consent, that is a criminal offence. So, re-using text from a book or magazine on your website without consent would be a breach of copyright.

Google is quite hot on plagiarism and a site with plagiarised content will do badly in terms of SEO (Seach Engine Optimisation), which is not good for business.

The rule of thumb is don't use anyone else's work. If you want to re-use it, then get the original author's permission and attribute it to them on your site.