I’ve been involved in the creative industry in some form or other for the last 10 years.

Whether it’s running my own web design agency, working with freelance graphic designers, illustrators, copy writers, web coders and photographers or perhaps advising on the strategic direction a business should take for its branding or online marketing.

Overall, it can be said that I’ve come across many people who produce artistic and creative work in the fields of design, writing, video, web or software: “creatives” as I call them!

The “creatives” I’ve worked with have produced work ranging from “wow” through to “that’ll do” but ultimately what they all have in common is that the work they produce has and continues to be; original i.e. it’s their own! Admittedly efforts may be influenced by trends in fashion or other creatives in their field of choice, but it’s certainly not plagiarized or blatantly ripped from the web. That’s one of the reasons why my company charges what it charges for the creative projects it delivers.

So, what I mean to say is; use us for bespoke work, then that’s what you’ll get.

However there’s people out there who don’t think or operate, as I do.

[Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out at this stage that my team of creatives no longer includes people who present work to the “that’ll do” standard!]

Plagiarism is Alive and Well on the Internet

If you produce original and readable content on your own web site such as articles or blog posts; which is exactly what internet business coaches like myself, bang on about all the time as the Holy Grail of strategies in order to build site visitor loyalty and high volumes of qualified traffic to a web site; then one of the downsides of doing so, is that less imaginative website owners, looking to find the same Holy Grail; are more likely to rip off your content and claim it as their own.

This practice is not only illegal under international copyright law, but is annoying, insulting and potentially damaging to your Google rankings under their duplicate content policies.

It’s a big problem for website owners that deliver original content.

So What Can You Do About It?

The quick answer to this question is “a lot” ranging from from a snotty request to remove it from the web through to court action. However, I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores in this post.

Instead, I’d like to tell you a useful resource that constantly monitors the web and your website, compares the two and notifies you of potentially duplicate or ripped off content.

The cool tool I’m talking about is the popular CopyScape website.

Check it our for yourself, there’s a limited free service which gets you used to the service, you can add a warning logo to your web pages to forewarn potential plagiarizers and if brand and content protection are important to your business, then the commercia  fee paying service is well worth the investment.

Give it a try at www.copyscape.com