Business Ethics in Digital Journalism: Competitor Plagiarism

Is it ethical in the business or web 2.0 world to plagiarize your competitors? website and blog content for your own business gain?

Let me explain how I found a competitor blog?s systemic and blatant?plagiarism?of the Online Tech blog: While perusing Google?s Blog search results for HIPAA-related terms (go to Google and click on the More link to expand the menu, about two down from Shopping), I came across several rather dismal results.

One result that caught my eye was Healthcare IT: How to Invest in HIPAA Compliant Hosting (Part 2 of 3), hosted on the CoreLink Data Centers Blog. While reading the article, I realized it contained?precisely everything I recalled writing about in a blog post titled Five Questions to Ask Your HIPAA Hosting Provider late last October. (Sidenote: I really put in a lot of effort and time in researching and writing these blogs myself as well as using the great resources from other experts in our company, I don?t ?outsource? ? just part of my journalism background).

Published from January 19-24 of this year, the Corelink blogger made great use of our content by splitting it into three entire blog posts. So while we found less than a dozen of Online Tech blog/website articles they ripped off, they benefited with at least double or triple that amount of pages and content.

Everyone uses everyone else?s content, data, statistics, even videos and graphics at some point in their online publishing lives to supplement their own content. It?s just how the Internet works. But basic rules of journalism and ethical decency dictate you must cite your sources appropriately, preferably link to it, and make some type of personal analysis or evidence that you?re able to think critically (essentially, added value). Corelink?s blog doesn?t source Online Tech, me or the other authors, or even our sources as references, and that?s not ok.

In interest of decorum, I?d like to open this up to the public and get your opinions on whether or not a case of plagiarism is a valid conclusion in these six separate cases. Let?s start with:

Case #1:

Analysis: As you can see, much of the content was taken and reworked. A potential oversight on Corelink?s part may be the incorrect estimation of HIPAA violations between January 2010 and March 2011, from 272 to 372. Additionally, they appear fond of rounding up as they interpet our approximate number of affected individuals of 10,800,000 to be ?over 11 million?.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Blog

Case #2:

Analysis: Pretty much everything is copied, the bolded questions reworked but amazingly in the same exact order.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Blog

Case #3:

Analysis: Again, bulk of which is?plagiarized.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Blog

Case #4:

Corelink	Online Tech	Original Author
How to Evaluate a HIPAA Security Compliant Data Center ? Part 1	What is HIPAA Compliance? (first half)	Thu Pham, Online Tech?s Online Marketing Specialist & Blogger

Analysis: This is a slightly different case in which the Corelink blogger repurposed content I wrote for a page on the Online Tech site, What is HIPAA Compliance? ?The content is copied nearly verbatim.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Website

Case #5:

Corelink	Online Tech	Original Author
How to Evaluate a HIPAA Security Compliant Data Center ? Part 2	What is HIPAA Compliance? (second half)	Thu Pham, Online Tech?s Online Marketing Specialist & Blogger

Analysis: Again, the Corelink blogger repurposed content I wrote for a page on the Online Tech site, What is HIPAA Compliance? ?The content is barely reworked and copied nearly verbatim.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Website

Case #6:

Analysis:?Sources, stats, and more copied, with some reworking of the bullet points.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Blog

Case #7:

Analysis:?Most of the content copied, mainly bullets 2-4.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Blog

Case #8:

Analysis:?Bullet points are paraphrased with main points replicated.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Blog

Case #9:

Analysis:?Sources are copied; the statistics are taken from the infographic and the source (some percentages combined). The key message, that breaches were not in the cloud, was also copied.

Corelink Blog

Online Tech Blog

Now, there may be more ? but these are the most offensive and blatant examples we could find. What about the rest of the blogger world ? have you been unfairly ripped off and if so, what did you do in your situation?

Update: The copied articles aren?t just on Corelink?s domain ? they?re spread all over the Internet on the following external domains (links take you to direct examples):

Slideshare.net
HealthCareITNews.com (in partnership with HIMSS ? this page ranks #3 for on Google for a HIPAA-related search term, using content they copied from us! We rank #4.)
ArticlesBase.com
PowerShow.com
BestBlogHostingWebsite.info
ArticlesEngine.com
SooperArticles.com
ArticleRich.com
ArticleSnatch.com, and here.
SkyBlueCross.org

Stay tuned for more updates on what actions, if any, these external sites take to remove the plagiarized content.

Source: http://resource.onlinetech.com/business-ethics-in-digital-journalism-competitor-plagiarism/

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