“Alright, kids, turn to page 394 of your syllabus and let’s talk about plagiarism!”
“Ugh, we know. Don’t steal other people’s words. We’ll never use this in real life!”
So, guess what, now I’m talking about plagiarism in real life. If any of my high school teachers ever see this, they’re going to be like, “I told you so!”
But, anyways, I want to talk about stealing people’s content online. And I know what you’re thinking, you would never steal anyone’s content!
Well, the thing with little virtual digital bits is that they can be copied and spread infinitely without ever harming the original. The reason that real life stealing sucks is because you lose your original copy.
If someone steals your car, you no longer have a car. But if someone steals your cartoon, you still have your cartoon. So we need a new way to define what exactly stealing is in the digital era. And I don’t have that definition, but I have some ideas.
There are copyright and trademark and intellectual property laws, but many of those were also made for a pre-digital era. I mean, if you legitimately feel that your work has been stolen and used in an illegal way, you should definitely look into those laws, but that’s not what I’m going to be talking about today. I just want to talk about morally how we should be treating online content.
So we need to talk about exactly what kind of harm is done when you steal digital work, because if your online “theft” doesn’t actually hurt anyone, I wouldn’t really say it’s a bad thing.
For instance, let’s say an artist uploads a beautiful painting or drawing or sketch or whatever, and you really like it, so you download it and set it as your phone background or computer background or something. Now you have a pretty background, and nothing has happened to the artist. No harm, no foul.
But okay, let’s say you download their image, and then you reupload under one of your own accounts and claim that it’s your own. If you’re selling this image, this is pretty obviously hurting the original artist. Their work is being sold and they’re not getting anything from it.
But what if you’re not selling it? What if it just gets a lot of notes or retweets or whatever? Well, this is where we need to talk about the value of exposure. There’s a word that both terrifies and excites artists everywhere.
Exposure is a tricky thing to nail down. On the one hand, it doesn’t pay the bills. If someone wants you to work for free, just for the exposure, they’re probably undervaluing your work.
But, on the other hand, exposure can lead to other things. It can point people to your website where you have ads that make money, it can get people to your etsy shop where they might buy something, it can help potential employers or clients find you — so it’s not a bad thing.
In fact, I’d say audience growth is probably a major goal for tons artists and writers and content creators out there. That’s why at the end of this video, my endscreen is going to have my twitter and tumblr and instagram and everything because I want you to follow me.
Seriously, follow me. Follow me!
But, okay, so exposure can’t replace real money, but it certainly has value — that’s why so many people want it.
So, back to the example where you’ve stolen someone’s artwork and claimed it was your own, but you’re not selling it. If you gain any exposure or recognition or notoriety for this work, even if you’re not directly selling it, you are stealing exposure from the artist.
Okay, so let’s try one more example. Let’s say you screenshot or upload someone else’s work, but you don’t claim it was your own. You’re just like, eh, I found this somewhere.
Yeah, good job, you’re not lying — but again, if anyone sees the reuploaded work, they won’t be able to find the original artist. So you’re still technically stealing exposure.
So, what should you do? Well, the answer is pretty easy if the problem is exposure — just link to back to the original. Source everything you post. That’s really not hard.
If you stay within the same social media network, it just involves pressing a button. When you share something on Facebook from someone’s Facebook page, it automatically says who you shared it from. When you retweet or reblog someone on Twitter or Tumblr, it automatically links back to them.
And if you share between social media sites, all you have to do is copy the URL from one to the other. If you screenshot a Facebook post to share on Twitter, copy the URL and paste it along with the picture. If you screenshot a Tumblr post to share on Facebook, copy the URL and paste it along with the photo.
Just make sure that when you’re posting content that is not your own, that anyone who sees it can easily and quickly find the original source.
For example, here are a couple examples of what not to do. This is a post on a public Facebook page that’s just a screenshot of a Tumblr post. There’s no text with the image, and no source. Sure, you can see the person’s Tumblr username, so you could type that into Tumblr and go scroll through their blog and try to find the post so you could like or reblog it, but that’s a lot of work, and I doubt anyone’s going to do that.
But, I did do that, and here’s the original post, which currently only has 14 notes — compared to the Facebook post, which has 388 likes and 140 shares. It’s pretty easy to see that this Facebook page is essentially stealing exposure from this Tumblr blog, which is not cool. Especially since all they would’ve had to do is give a simple link back.
I actually messaged this Facebook page a couple weeks ago asking them to stop plagiarizing because I really like their content, but, uh, nothing’s changed yet.
Alright, here’s another example of what not to do. This is a popular Twitter account posting a comic without any credit. I did a reverse Google image search and everyone who I found had posted it had linked back to a dead link on someone’s Tumblr called positive doodles, so I’ll link it below because they actually have other really great art.
But again, all it would’ve taken was a simple link back to the source here.
Okay and here are some examples of what you should do. This is a post by a super popular Facebook page that has a video of a panda playing in the snow, and it links right back to the source in a very clear and simple way. Perfect.
This is another comic posted on Twitter, but this time the popular Twitter account linked back to the artist’s Twitter with a little “via” in parenthesis. Easy, simple, gives credit.
And I think the most ironic thing about all this for me is when I see social media accounts that proclaim to be feminist, stealing work like this. They’ll post content all day everyday talking about all the injustices in our world, and then they steal content from smaller creators to further their own platform.
If you say you want to empower gender minorities, queer people, and people of color, but then you go and steal work from those people and post it without credit, I don’t feel like you’re actually practicing what you preach.
So all I’m saying is, please, just source any work you post that’s not uniquely your own creation. It’s an extra two seconds for you, and it really helps out the artist whose work you obviously appreciate.
What do you think about all this? Has your work ever been stolen online? How do you think we can define property in an online age?
And this video is a part of a series for Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression. Be sure to check out my other videos in the series! And, if you liked this one, feel free to share it, since sharing a YouTube video automatically links back to the source.
Alright I love you all so much! I hope you have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you next week. Bye!
