Aren't We All Guilty?

The first time I was fully made aware of plagiarism/piracy and it's implications was  years ago, 2009, I think, when I shared a video of the song 'Time to Say Goodbye' by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman on Facebook, a video I got from Youtube which I assumed was already in the public domain and could therefore be shared by anybody.
I got a serious warning from Facebook with threats of suspending my account and legal action as I had no right to share the video. It wasn't like I claimed I was the owner of the video o! Na wa!

Courtesy: google

I must confess I was one of those who, for our 1st degree research project, just copied from other people's research projects and made them ours, and I can't remember giving due attribution to them all. On social media people quote, copy, paste other people's works without as little as "as so so and so said". Now that I'm more mature and fully aware of the implications of plagiarism, I don't joke with it because I don't find it funny when people as much as copy my Facebook post without attributing such post to moi.

Recently, the Internet was agog with the news that  our President, Muhammadu Buhari plagiarised President Barrack Obama in his speech. Hmmmm.... Now, I do not support plagiarism in any form whatsoever, and I personally feel they should have known better. There's Duplichecker, the website where you can check anything you've written to know if it had been published before. If I, a mere mortal, know about this, I should expect that speech writers should know about it too. If you want to add someone's words in your speech, saying 'as so so and so said...' won't hurt or make your speech less great, rather it'd avoid such embarrassments. 

The funny thing is that everybody joined the bandwagon to criticise an already unpopular President and government. Even those who have never composed an original Facebook post or Tweet suddenly became defenders of copyright, dancing shoki and azonto on top of the matter. If you copy people's post and tweet without due acknowledgement, nothing makes you different from the speechwriter that wrote that speech. Just because you're not famous yet and therefore nobody notices your acts of plagiarism, that doesn't mean you're not guilty. As we share jokes on Social Media we forget that someone came up with that joke originally and you've stolen and shared his intellectual work. If you think it's easy to write a joke, go ahead, I dare you. 

Courtesy:google.

Before you point accusing fingers at someone, check yourself. In life, just because you sin differently from the next person, or your sin hasn't been found out, doesn't make you more righteous. For the writers, in order to avoid stories that tickle the bumbum, please check your work with Duplichecker, it's free. There might be other apps and websites where you can do the same, but this is the one I know and use. If you're among those that copy people's intellectual work without giving credit to the author, or claiming to own the work, stop it! You know you're a thief, right? Yes, you are.  That you're ignorant of the crime won't absolve you of the blame o, just as our President was called out on this, despite the fact that someone else wrote the speech for him.

Have a lovely weekend everyone. See you on Monday.

Hugs...