Please don't waste this life time opportunity on Steemit with copy/pasting articles from the internet or stealing other's property.
Do you want to make money? Do you want to be famous? Would you like to have lots of followers and friends? Well, it all can be yours, if you work hard for it. I mean really hard! It won't come to you just because you posted one good article or a picture. Maybe you have to write dozens of good posts before people noticing you, but it can be done! Steemit is an outstanding chance for many people, maybe even for you, if you have the will to do it right.
Spare some time to learn about copyright and proper referencing now, here I am to help you with that.
[Image by Christopher Dombres from Flickr - CC0 1.0]
Who cares about copyright?
Writing good article is a time consuming activity. Usually it takes a few hours, especially if you are not an experienced writer. You need to research, take notes, draw up, write, correct, and spell check. This is a lot of work. Every penny you get is well deserved, right?
Now, imagine that someone read your article and thinks it is a good post than he goes and copy the whole text and paste it into his blog. Sells it as his own. He had worked with it for 5 seconds, yet he is making the same money as you (maybe more) because "your" article was good.
Would you care about copyright in that case?
What is copyright?
The exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.:
works granted such right by law on or after 1st of January 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 70 years after his or her death.[source: dictionary.com]
Many websites use a "©" symbol with a date (eg.:©:2017 - Such & Such) to indicate that the content of the site is copyrighted, but it is not necessary. Everything is automatically protected by the law on the internet from the second it is online, regardless if it's mentioned on the site or not.
Are there real consequences?
Yes, there are many possible consequences!
As Steemit grows more popular every day, Google starts to split out a good amount of results from it. Which means your article might come first on Google results before the original! That would make things very difficult for you.
Steemit is a blockchain technology which means that everything you write is permanently stored, forever. If you steal someone's work it is stolen for good. After seven days of publication, nobody can remove it, ever.
If the original creator of the content finds out that you were using his/her property than it might result in a lawsuit where you might be liable for:
- paying the amount of money you made with the use of the content
- paying the author's lost earnings
- court fees and lawyer costs
As it can not be removed, you might be liable for the rest of your life to pay some money as his/her wallet constantly suffering losses because people will read your version first instead of the original.
Of course, this is a very worse case scenario and it is unlikely, but the possibility is there! All it takes is a smart lawyer. If you think my scenario was unbelievable, you can find real life stories on the internet like Kari DePhillips, who had to pay [$8,000 penalty for a misused picture on a low traffic blog].
A more possible and immediate consequence is that you get flagged. Which would be bad for your reputation. If your reputation is low, your posts are less visible to the users. If your rep gets really low than Steemit automatically hides your posts from everyone.
There are many users on Steemit constantly looking for "bad" behaving people. The two main guards, as I'm aware:
- @cheetah. She is a bot who is constantly looking for new posts to compare them with the internet searcing for anything similar.
- @steemcleaners are another example which is a group of Steemit users led by @anyx, watching out for spammers and other type of abuse. They have a [detailed guide] on how they make their judgements.
How to use copyrighted material in your post
The best if you are not, but if you must, use it under fair use.
Fair use:
You can use part of any copyrighted material for criticism, educational, and research purposes.
...The law lists the following factors, which courts must consider together in determining whether a particular use of a copyrighted work is a permitted "Fair Use," or is instead an infringement of the copyright:
- the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
(the noncommercial educational use is more likely to be a fair use)- the nature of the copyrighted work
(the more factual and less creative the work, the more likely it will be fair use)- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
(the less taken, the more likely to be fair use)- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
(in other words, is the use taking away from the copyright owner money that he/she might have been making from the work)[source: copyrightkids.org]
Referencing
This is very important that you always reference everything what is not yours!
Indexing
As you might noticed, at the end of every quote on this page there is a little index stating the source of the information. If you want to do as I did, you can use the <sup> and </sup> (superscript), and also the <sub> and </sub> (subscript) tag pairs. Anything you put between those two is going to appear with small font size and upper or lower indexed. Let's see:
This is a line with <sup>superscript</sup> and subscriptsub>
This is a line with superscript and subscript
I think it's easy to do, try it and you will see for yourself. Don't forget that there are tag pairs, so once you "open" it (<sup> or <sub>), you must have to "close" it too with it's own closing pair (</sup> or </sub>).
Pictures
There are sites you can get free to use pictures such as Unsplash, Giphy, and Pixabay. This list is not complete, for more free sources, you can check out @mindover's post [here]. He wrote a detailed list of 13 sites to find legal pictures. Hint: If you check the comments, you will find even more!
Even if you got your image from a free site it is still advisable to reference it.
To reference a picture you need to mention the site, where the picture came from and the creator's name. Let's say your selected photo is made by "James Woods" and it is published on "ABC.com". Your reference would look like this:
Image by [James Woods](http://abc.com/james-woods) from [ABC](http://abc.com).
To have the picture and some styling you can write the following code where you want your picture:
<div>
<center>
<sup>Image by [James Woods](http://abc.com/james-woods) from [ABC](http://abc.com)
</center>
</div>
Feel free to copy the code and try yourself with your chosen image!
References and credits
This is not necessary if you referenced all your pictures and quotes properly, but if you like, you can make your post look more professional with a separated section at the end. Just list all your sources and references again. To make it small, you can use the technique you've learned from indexing. As an example, look a the end of my post. I've used indexing and links to indicate my sources.
If you have any question or something is not clear, please ask in the comment section. If you are shy or you have more than one question, you can join my Discord channel too. I'm happy to help!
My earlier posts:
If you want make your posts beautiful with markdown:
[TUTORIAL] The ultimate guide, how to make posts so pretty that everyone must read it!
If you are a minnow and want to vote with reduced voting power:
[NEW APP] Voting with desired power to anyone! - Minnow-Power
Thanks for visiting and have a nice day!
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--- resources list --- Pictures:
The battle of copyright [CC0 1.0] | Road Sign Man Prison [CC0 1.0] |
References:
Dictionary - copyright | Cheetah - FAQ | SteemCleaners, the Steemit Abuse Fighting Team! | The SteemCleaners Guide for Dealing with Abuse on Steemit | Copyright kids - Copyright basics | Don't Plagiarize Images! Here are 13 free (and Legal) ways to find high quality photos you can use on Steemit. | Copyright infringement penalties are scary |