Maybe it should be legal to shoot plagiarists. Too harsh? Okay, make the offender write a 25-page paper [in pen; someone watching; no computer!] about their offense. This way, they hopefully learn why those they steal from aren’t flattered. Hahaha … I’m not kidding. =]

As bloggers and career writers, we don’t monitor every sentence and paragraph we send out into the great wide, online world. For heavy writers, tracking all content is actually a near impossible feat. Also, as business professionals, we seem to spend more time on monitoring our websites, or our articles, all the while failing to check whether other content, submitted in emails or published as comments, for example, is lifted by plagiarists (a.k.a. lazy thieves/writers, apparently without a thought of their own).

So imagine my surprise when I happened across my article published on Monster’s Excelle blog with a comment that sounded “too familiar” — something I would have said, actually. As it turns out, those words this commenter is claiming are MINE. So, were these words lifted from my website, or an article?

Nope.  Neither.

Let me give you a bit of backdrop. I wrote an article entitled, How Social Media is Muddying the Waters for Jobseekers, which was picked up by Monster for the Excelle blog, and Careerealism published the article as well. Responding to Dave Homrighouse, a commenter at Careerealism, I wrote:

“No doubt, this is a deep subject. [referring to social media, relative to privacy issues, of course]

I’m very active in social media … and like many, I have been somewhat marveled by the idea of how social media can be leveraged to further advance this pain-in-the-butt process we call job search. =] But some [jobseekers too], go too far and become unprofessional/inappropriate with their social media accounts … and hiring companies are all too willing to gobble it up.

Certainly as tools are developed to “spy” on job candidates, more and more effectively, I’m starting to question the true meaning and sacrifices we make by using social media. Obviously, social media connects us quickly and effectively, but on the flip side, it can be used against us all too easily too.

Companies are increasingly embracing transparency as part of their brands; but absolutely my increasing concern is that companies are *liking* this new found transparency from jobseekers all too much. Yowzer!”

Two paragraphs of my comment were “lifted” from the Careerealism website, and republished to look like those of a commenter over at the Monster website. I attempted to contact this plagiarist via their profile, but have yet to connect.

What reward did jencybevan get from plagiarizing my content? A live link at the bottom of the comment — not to my website, of course, but to theirs. Note: I eliminated link text from my above graphic to avoid giving any added promotions for clear misdeeds.

I wonder how many of the 68 comments this person has posted are actually original thoughts from their own head, not those lifted from others?

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