The Web is wonderful it’s full of all this content, all this information. It’s a copy writer or blogger’s dream. You just don’t have to do any work at all. It’s all laid out there for you, all you have to do is find it and take it.

Maybe just write a small introductory paragraph and then simply cut and paste the rest of the article you have found and publish. Easy!

Oh isn’t the web great. It allows such theft of someone else’s work. It’s fine to do isn’t it as the poor suckers put the information online so we could steal it… NO STOP IT!

Now I know we have various scrapers and SEO blackhats that just love to steal real content of the legitimate source. It’s a problem we all deal with on a daily basis. Then you get the various slack web site owners, gutter bloggers or copy writers that insist on copying content word for word.

Professional Bloggers Go Bad

You would think that this wouldn’t be happening in the world of the professional blogging. Yes the people that get paid to write and research original content. Surely they wouldn’t be just cut and pasting. Surely they have ethics. Surely they are not bringing the entire professional blogging community down.

Well this week I ran into a major incident from a group of people promoting themselves as professional bloggers that are knowingly stealing content. We don’t have one or two instances here, but a stunning amount, all attributed to a professional who didn’t write them. It’s not like these people are new to the industry, they come from an established professional culture where copyright is a constant issue.

It’s an interesting fact that these professional bloggers should be aware that they are now liable (I would assume, usually legal disclaimer) to pay the original author royalty payments. I would normally name names here and shame them, but I have been asked to remain silent on who and where as the issue is dealt with.

The Right Thing to do

Now I just shouldn’t have to say this.

When you are looking for content for your blog or web site don’t copy it from elsewhere. Fine you can quote sections. That’s sections like a sentences, a paragraph or two, make sure you attribute the source, not the entire article. It’s acceptable to get inspiration from the content, or summarise it. But don’t copy it. It’s against the law. Go have a look at Meg Tsiamis’ Copyright and Plagiarism on Blogs.

Don’t go saying it’s okay under the terms of fair use as blogging is just news reporting. We are not talking about a part of an article here, but the entire article word for word.

Stop It!

Remember we still have the Australian Copyright Act (and others elsewhere), in which once it is published it is automatically copyrighted, copyright notice or not. If you’re a little unsure on this please go read up on it at the Australian Attorney-General’s Department.

What about creative commons, isn’t that just an open licence to reuse it as you like. Well no, go read up on creative commons there is a range of licences. Creative Commons basically:

….provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

This still doesn’t give someone the right to resell and rip the author off completely.

So what would you do with these professional bloggers that are getting paid to steal other peoples content and resell it as their own.

Get the impression these days that we may have just overstep the mark with the number of social networking sites that are appearing. Now I’m not going out looking for them, but it just seems that they are appearing at the rate of about 2-3 a day at the moment.

Who has time to check them out, setup the account, workout if it’s worth investing time in importing your social network into site by the old hunt and gather the names method; I would never trust them to go collect the information for me. I usually bookmark them and move on. So every now and again (maybe 1 in 20) I will signup.

Now Spock is such a social networking site. I signed up with Spock in early beta and I did what I usually do, secure your alias and let the site account just languish until I’m ready to have to good look at the site.

The Concern

Fast forward about 6 months. I came back to Spock I see that I’m now a mass murdering, famous Hollywood movie producer that freelances in web design. So my name is like Joe Smith, a very common one. You see Spock is collecting all the information it can from scraping other social networking site, blogs, media releases, news sites and the like. This means that Spock builds a profile on you, sometime with a picture supplied by others before you have ever signed up with the site.

As you can image this can lead to sorts of concerns. Frankly I’m not the first on the web community to raise questions over Spock as Myles Eftos discusses. This concern is not that new either, as ValleyWag (August 2007) thinks Spock is creepy too.

It’s not just the aggregation of the publicly available information on you into one place that makes this site spooky. It’s the verification, or lack there of. This is like an automated Wikipedia gone mad. Try and add your aliases to your name, it will not let you. Say you don’t want your real picture online, but use an alternative graphic, it will be deleted. It seems that the community can vote up a picture, a comment, a news article that is totally false. What recourse does a person have have about this spread of misinformation. It seems not much if they are out voted. They have your information, but you don’t have the control.

Have We Lost Our Way

What the hell is going on here. isn’t this meant to be about the correct information overcoming the false crap that is usually spun. It seems Spock is not out to do that. So what happens if you want your account deleted, or you want the information removed. Has anyone considered that. Doesn’t seem a way to do that either.

Nice idea, but despite or maybe because of the long list of prestigious staff this site it is just missing the marker. Who is controlling the data they are collecting? Should we trust them? What are they really doing with it.

I have had to setup an account and clarify and ensure that my digital identity was intact. Why, well I live in a digital world where the truth can easily be misinformation. Did I really want to setup the account, no not really, I’m getting a little tired of new sites with very little economic consideration for their own livelihood, that on sell the audience demographic information.

But, where is all this going. Are we over stepping the mark, okay you can say it’s all publicly available, and if you put yourself on the web you have to expect it and all that. But we all have distinct lines in the sand.

Should this type of site be allowed to aggregate the material without our permission and have others add to the information as well. It’s an ethics thing a suppose, just because we can do it should we do it. For me it’s just way to spooky.

This is one time I don’t want it to live long and prosper.

Now various types of ethical issues have been debated by Molly and John Allsopp in the past. What they’re planning, for me, is not what people are focusing on. The problem is that Molly and John are focusing on the solution, a code of ethics for web designers.
We even have a (still) empty ethics wiki for it. Frankly I can’t see this happening in the short term. The industry is just too full of practical people that aren’t focusing on the level of corporate governance. However all is not lost. It’s the local web industry professional associations that will over time produce their own code of ethics. And slowly from the bottom up the industry will regulate. They will be adopted and over time the industry will clean them up, rework them purge and recombine. Simple, it just takes time.

From a day to day basis some of the ethical tests we often face are often of several types:

• Breach of copyright of artwork, steal someone’s design or artwork
• Presentation of a substandard solution at a highly inflated price.
• Misrepresentation of work that is not all your own
• Conflict of interest.

So in the mean while how do we handle the various scenarios that life throws at us.

Scenario One – Copyright issues.

Client insists on using artwork/design or stock photography that they clearly have not paid for or have license to use. They demand that the images concerned are to be used. Technically you are not really that responsible for the content or the approved design. That’s the client’s responsibility. However I wouldn’t bother trying to use this as a defence in court.

Do you respect the rights of the artist who created the work or do you just rip them off. “You know if they really didn’t want their work used then it wouldn’t be on the web,” you say. But if that were the case then everything on the web would be fair game. Including all your work.

You can discuss this with the client. Most of the time I find they have no idea about copyright, some don’t even care and think all artwork is a lot of wank and should be free anyway. Some will be shocked and will toe the line. Or you can walk away from the job. But what if you are an employee, do you mention it, but do the job, do you quit, or do you just shut up and collect your salary.

Scenario Two – Upselling a substandard solution.

You know how to design and develop via a web standards based approach with perfect accessibility, with the content, function and presentation separated. However you are asked to cut corners and do the site cheaper, but you have chance to charge at the full rate as if the site was fully standards compliant.

Do you take the extra money and rip off the client? After all it is business, and frankly there is sucker born every minute. Or do you do the job, non-standards compliant, let the client know its not standards compliant, and charge the lesser rate. Or finally do you do the site as a standards compliant site, absorbing the extra cost in the hope of making in up on future projects with the client. I know this scenario is especially hard on freelancers where you are not at all in direct contact or control of the specifications.

Scenario Three – Misrepresentation of Work.

You take over a site from another firm. Do you re-badge it as your work. After all they are now your client. Or do you remove the other firm’s credits for the site and leave none. Or do you leave the other firms credits till the site has a makeover. Or do you credit the other firm, but note you are now managing the site.

However this does present an interesting side aspect that most people are not going to think of. With a large use of open source, and creative commons material and software in use on the web these days; do you credit the authors of these scripts, from entire applications / cms, script libraries or presentation ajaxian scripts somewhere on the site? Or just leave the credit in the source? Or do you not bother at all? And just present the work as your own? Or do you present the job as an integration project and state as such with the client?

Scenario Four – Conflict of Interest.

You have a long-term client, you know their business well, and they know yours too. You have worked with them for years, building up their web presence till what it is today. There have been mistakes made, and there have been worthwhile gains achieved. You get approached by one of their direct competitors. They are willing for your to develop a siet improving on the one of your existing client. Do you take the job, and just not tell the other client, and hope it does let slip in their industry. Or do you take the job but approach it like any greenfields client and attempt to build them a site based of what they need not referring to your existing client site? Or do you just not take the job and maybe shuffle it off to a colleague? Do you tell your existing client? That’s another topic. This will depend on the business relationship you have with your client.

The Bottom Line

The question with all these scenarios is what would you do? Would you look at the bottom line, the dollar value and just take the money with disregard to the consequences of your actions?
Or do you enforce you ethics, approach the client and voice your objections or even reject the job outright?

Does ethics have a place in the Web Industry? Does ethics have a place in business at all?

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