IS IT WRONG TO PUBLISH SOMEONE’S ARTICLE OR AN ARTICLE FROM ANOTHER WEBSITE ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION? It is not right, both morally and legally; 1) Legally, such is an abuse of the Copy Right Law and the victims intellectual property, given that such pieces are people’s original works of literature. 2) Morally, as a writer I feel bad when such is done against me, to a level that it even irritates me should one copy, paste and publish my Facebook post as their own, without my permission and not even to the very least giving me credit. Now that up there is the ideal situation both legally and morally! However, as a person with keen interest in online media and publishing, the reality on the ground is far from what one would wish for. One article can run from website to website in just 10 minutes and by the time it gets to the 15th website, no single soul can trace its source as every website claims the piece of writing as their own original writing or work of literature. WHY? The fact is that as a country, Copyright is perhaps more of a myth! Regarding web based content, particularly TEXT, I would challenge any lawyer in court to prove any piece of writing online (Article maybe) as a particular person’s original work. We must therefore admit that the loopholes there in are so many, giving leeway to those that pay no attention to originality to further embrace their Copy and paste vice. ON THE QUESTION OF ASKING FOR SOMEONE’S PERMISSION TO PUBLISH THEIR WORK, I think it is fair and morally upright also but so what? Unless you have money to pay them for their work, then the rest is a mere show of courtesy. It’s not like the other party has any negotiation ground. If they said NO, how many would respect that NO? So, should writers be okay with just their name being mentioned as, “CREDIT: so and so…..”? I want to think they’ve got no choice, at least for now and some more years to come! As in how many bloggers around town can sustain a fully-fledged legal battle or better yet, who holds liability? Most of the websites here belong to individuals or a group of individuals whose liability can’t be legally ascertained! On an even sadder note, some of the websites that copy and paste people’s content have enough money to beat any sprouting blogger in court; the mention of court in this case is actually laughable. I won’t go deep into issues of Plagiarism, paraphrasing, referencing, alteration and modification of content online or any other publishing medium. Some of those are the shortcuts that many exploit. CASE IN POINT: If I went to your website, copied and pasted your article to and published it on Willappsug, retaining the original text as is and the Title of the Article as is on your website, also linking to the article’s source, then this is what really is; i) I have not altered your article. ii) I have not falsely presented the article as my own original work. iii) I have credited the source and iv) I have linked to the source. In this case, I will have only failed to ask for your permission to publish your article on my own website. So should we respect that effort or not? The case in point reflects on the below given comment by one Onyait Odeke on Nyana Kakomas post regarding the same subject matter. || These guys called Willapps also xeroxed my article and when I approached them about the issue they said that its okay since they indicated the source The Original Article I wrote: dignited/8038/10-banking-apps-will-save-long-queues-bank/ And this is the link to what they xeroxed: willappsug/2014/06/10-banking-apps-that-will-save-you-queues/ ... And so did BigEye.ug bigeye.ug/10-banking-apps-will-save-long-queues-bank/ || CONCLUSION: 1) Online media and publishing in Uganda is quite a young but rapidly growing field. In this case, such problems are expected and along the way, amends will be made till a time when we can at least achieve 70 percent success towards a professional moral and ethical fiber. 2) As we do that, we also have to recognize the challenges that deter people from embracing originality and content generation. ON BEHALF OF WILLAPPS LIMITED, We recognize the need for originality and respect of professional morals and ethics and as a company, respecting this is not a matter of choice; it’s our obligation. Therefore, necessary amends have been and are still being made, for our contribution to the element of originality, respect of professional morals and ethics and the growth of the online media and publishing fraternity must be seen. Kimbugwe Muzaphal (CEO Willapps Limited) Email: mkimsevil@yahoo Tel : +256-702 808026/+256-778 215030
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 19:52:30 +0000
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