Poison All Our Skies
I have a new scratch on my laptop which upsets me, because it’s right in the middle of the lid. I don’t know how it got there, but James said that maybe I can fill it up or get it repaired. I just don’t want it to cost too much. The scratch is pretty deep.
I think I shall carry a towel around to wrap it in. In honour of Towel Day, every day. A tribute to Douglas Adams’s birthday. The wonderful author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Series.
I love Douglas Adams’s books, and not just that series. I love the way he writes and the zany things he puts into his books. He has the craziest and most wonderful ideas. I’m surprised no one has written anything like his books.
But then again, who would write something like that, except him?
If there’s one thing that makes the world pretty awful, it’s people who steal. What did they teach you in school? Not to plagiarise. What are all works on the internet under? Copyright. Because they’re published.
So why do people steal? It puts this off-putting smell in the air. You can just sniff it.
What I find unbelievable is when it’s obvious people are stealing. At university they use this program to check whether you have plagiarised anything. It’s so accurate, if you copy even a phrase, they’re out to get you.
On the internet, I also find it unbelievable when people steal from popular websites such as Audiorush, Tiny Scars and xDinna.
There is a particular person (oh, link, yay, take that, nothing to be afraid of) who has stolen a number of graphics and tutorials. The tutorials are obviously copied, with the words copied almost verbatim, and the codes copied as well – not to mention completely copying someone’s free layout templates. This person has stolen a number of my tutorials, and even copied my navigation code exactly.
How desperate are people nowadays? Not only is it unoriginal, it’s stealing. Stealing other people’s work and claiming it as your own. By all means be inspired by other people but don’t copy their work. It’s breaching copyright and, you could be sued.
If you wanted to write a book you don’t copy something John Grisham wrote.
Have you got the nerve to steal from JK Rowling and take all her words, maybe replacing a few characters with your own? When everything is so blatantly obvious that you stole? I’d think not. Then don’t steal other people’s tutorials from their website. I’m sure you wouldn’t like other people stealing from you.
You wouldn’t copy Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman artwork and say you made it, maybe even before him.
Like this ridiculous person, who copied Jorja’s poems, which she wrote all on her own, word for word.
You can go into a shop and steal a bar of chocolate. But if you’re going to steal someone’s work, that they worked hard on, maybe think about if you would like people to copy what you made and pretend that they made it.
I don’t think you want to copy Darwin’s Origin of Species with his theories about how we as humans evolved. Why? Because you aren’t interested?
Well, if you don’t want to copy something as revolutionary as that, then you shouldn’t copy other people’s written work or visual work, especially on the web. If you’re founded out, you not only gain a bad reputation, but you can be in trouble simply for plagiarising.
When someone publishes something on the web, it’s under copyright. You shouldn’t steal other people’s work. Now if you see someone copying your work, don’t think twice. Tell that person to stop, because you have the right to take action.
When you write something, date it, and send it to yourself. The timestamp of when you sent it is proof of when you write it. Sometimes on the web, it’s hard to protect your work, but even if you can’t do much, speak up. It’s your work, and your right.