When does 'Modelling' become Plagiarism?
Over the past few weeks I have noticed something in our coaching community that’s got me concerned.
Recently a coach called me to say that she was worried because somebody had published an article that she had written for one of her website pages. “Extra publicity – great for her”, you might think but the problem was that she wasn’t credited at all and no one had asked for her permission to use it. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you’d think that the coach who published it had written it.
What’s got me concerned is that this sort of things seems to be happening a lot – it’s happened to me where people have lifted the FAQs section from my coaching website and passed it off as their own, and it may have happened to you or someone you know.
Here’s what I think might be happening...
Those of us who have studied NLP understand the power of modelling. You find someone who’s already successful and break down what they have done to become successful. Anthony Robbins describes this process as finding out someone’s recipe for success.
When we come to setting up a coaching practice, we look around to see who’s already doing well and ‘model’ them. The problem is there’s a fine line between ‘modelling’ and ‘plagiarism’. Copying someone else’s website content word for word isn’t modelling.
So what do can you?
If you don’t have the time to write your own content, there are lots of sites where you can use other people’s articles for free so long as you reproduce the article exactly as printed and include their resource box in full. The resource box contains the author’s name, contact details and any promotional message from them.
Sites where you can find articles like this are:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
Of course, if you’d like to submit articles for other people to publish on their websites and in their newsletters/ezines you can add them to the site for free. Every time they’re used, you’ll be credited and your contact details will be published.
To protect your content, make sure that you put a copyright notice on your web pages and at the foot of each of the postings on your blog.
There are some free tools online which allow you to check whether someone has copied one of your pages.
One of these tools can be found at www.copyscape.com
It also allows you to use their banner (example below) on your web pages to alert visitors that your content is your own copyright and you’ll be checking up!
If you do find that someone has copied your content, copyscape has a guide on what to do on www.copyscape.com/respond.php.
Recently a coach called me to say that she was worried because somebody had published an article that she had written for one of her website pages. “Extra publicity – great for her”, you might think but the problem was that she wasn’t credited at all and no one had asked for her permission to use it. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you’d think that the coach who published it had written it.
What’s got me concerned is that this sort of things seems to be happening a lot – it’s happened to me where people have lifted the FAQs section from my coaching website and passed it off as their own, and it may have happened to you or someone you know.
Here’s what I think might be happening...
Those of us who have studied NLP understand the power of modelling. You find someone who’s already successful and break down what they have done to become successful. Anthony Robbins describes this process as finding out someone’s recipe for success.
When we come to setting up a coaching practice, we look around to see who’s already doing well and ‘model’ them. The problem is there’s a fine line between ‘modelling’ and ‘plagiarism’. Copying someone else’s website content word for word isn’t modelling.
So what do can you?
If you don’t have the time to write your own content, there are lots of sites where you can use other people’s articles for free so long as you reproduce the article exactly as printed and include their resource box in full. The resource box contains the author’s name, contact details and any promotional message from them.
Sites where you can find articles like this are:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
Of course, if you’d like to submit articles for other people to publish on their websites and in their newsletters/ezines you can add them to the site for free. Every time they’re used, you’ll be credited and your contact details will be published.
To protect your content, make sure that you put a copyright notice on your web pages and at the foot of each of the postings on your blog.
There are some free tools online which allow you to check whether someone has copied one of your pages.
One of these tools can be found at www.copyscape.com
It also allows you to use their banner (example below) on your web pages to alert visitors that your content is your own copyright and you’ll be checking up!
If you do find that someone has copied your content, copyscape has a guide on what to do on www.copyscape.com/respond.php.
posted by Hannah McNamara at 11:19 am
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