The Importance of Understanding the Fine Line Between Fair Dealing and Plagiarism for Content Marketing.
You’re in the middle of creating content to publish which has a deadline in 4 hours. Writer’s block takes over and you’re brain-dead for a good period before the gears begin to click in your head. You’re left with an hour before your deadline and now you’re panicking.
In a world where data and information is plentiful, it’s really easy to find the content you need, copy it and take it as your own and meet your deadline. So you do it, present it to your boss and they give it the OK to publish and you immediately feel relieved.
Can you tell what the problem is here?
The above scenario demonstrates an act of plagiarism. Doing this is highly frowned upon and can constitute a copyright infringement and you can risk paying a large fine, dismantling your career or risk going to prison.
Plagiarism and Fair Dealing
So, what exactly is plagiarism? If you aren’t new to writing, then plagiarism isn’t a new concept. But for those who are new to the concept, plagiarism can be defined as taking or copying someone else’s work and publishing/submitting it as your own (without proper citation).
This is an act of fraud and the offender can be penalized or charged for the act. Copying the structure and wording of at least 5 words is considered an act of plagiarism (according to John Rampton of Forbes). It isn’t limited to just words or ideas, however. It can be applied to media assets as well like photos, graphic designs and videos.
In Canada, there is no legal provision for Fair Use in the Canadian Copyright Act. Instead, there is a Fair Dealing provision which acts as the Commonwealth version of Fair Use.
If your use of content that is not yours used for research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review and news reporting, then you will need to be sure that you create content in good faith by properly sourcing and citing where the information or image was found.
A good content marketer either writes their content using their own words and experiences or by providing explicit credit to the owner of the information you’re using on your article or post.
You can also formally obtain a license on some websites to use certain images, sign formal licensing agreements for researched information by another party, whatever it may be. As long as you give credit where credit is due, you can mitigate risks of plagiarism.
I recently found out that there have been multiple instances of copyrights infringement cases between CNBC and several Chinese media companies where CNBC articles were translated into Chinese word-for-word and generated millions of interactions and thousands of comments without the consent of the authors and reporters.
Even Chinese intellectual property lawyers deemed the actions of the Chinese media companies a violation to CNBC’s rights and eventually had taken down the translated posts (though other media companies are still doing this).
Goes to show that even across international waters, plagiarism is rampant.
So, to recap, plagiarism isn’t something that should be taken lightly. Always create content with good intentions by giving credit where it’s due and plan carefully when you’re considering your content marketing strategy.
