You wouldn't walk into a book store and steal a novel off the shelf, would you? What about a magazine off the rack?
For most of us, physical theft is unthinkable. We wouldn't shoplift as much as a candy bar, never mind a book or magazine. They don't belong to us. If we want them, we have to pay. Just like everyone else.
So why is it that people feel free to steal content on the internet? How is stealing a blog post different than stealing a magazine? In both cases you're taking something that someone else created. Yet people steal on the internet without a second thought.
People steal on the internet for two primary reasons. Kevin Kelly describes the first.
"The Internet is the world's largest copy machine. What the Net does is it copies things."
Copying is part of the Internet's DNA. Your site copies itself many times, on archive pages. As you can imagine, creating a tool to copy the internet isn't difficult.
The second reason: you can access internet content from anywhere for free. Yes, you can access book and magazines for free inside a store. We've all seen people sitting down in a book store aisle reading a book. But you can't take the book from the store without paying. With a blog, you can read it anywhere. Hence, people are more apt to think that because it is free, it is also free to take.
Let us be clear: it is not OK, in any way, to take someone else's content. It belongs to them, just as a book belongs to the store. (And the content belongs to the author or publisher.)
Let us be clear on another point: it is the owner's job to police theft. Book stores have security measures that detect theft. Publishers seek out people reproducing content without permission. Though they don't have the same resources available, bloggers are responsible in the same way. If you want to prevent people from stealing your content, you have to protect it.
Bloggers, Who are serious about ownership of their content will heed the following tips.
