Copying of ideas - What to do about it?

Plagiarism is a serious issue, nay a problem which needs to be addressed and solved. Here are a couple of suggestions.

(i) Include a short Summary - The contestants should be asked to submit their articles with a short summary. Short summary should not be a few sentences from the article but a unique description of the article.

(ii) Add an excerpt which should consist of a few sentences or a paragraph from the article so that you may look but can't copy or improve upon because it is only a glimpse.

This solution is followed by a popular paid to write article site.  click here, if you want to see for yourself. 

What is an idea?

Idea is not some single thing or a single entity. It is a complex interconnections of you past experiences, your thoughts your moods your friends your inspirations. Its like the dendritic nerve connections in your brain. Ideas are pretty complex. 

Above idea about the origin of idea is inspired by a TED talk on youtube :)

According to me, the best way to judge if idea or theme is plagiarized is to check the different perspectives the person has on the same idea by asking him questions and analyzing their replies.

I take ideas from a beautiful girl sitting at a coffe shop, the glittering moon, the travails of meeting deadlines, relationships, music, football, day to day events, etc. Ideas come from everywhere. All you need is a perspicacious eye.

Just mention your inspiration if someone questions you.

@Renie, when it comes to contests, I don't know how far will this idea be feasible....but could the judges be given the entries to read in the order they were submitted. That way, a novel idea, if any, will belong to the one who first wrote it and a note of the same in terms of parameters can be kept (if not too cumbersome) Not completely foul proof and the logistics are not something I am aware of, yet thought I'd suggest it. For having read so many contest entries, in fact the recent palgiarism entry reported, was caught because it was a topper in a contest....Also there might be times when a central idea might be lifted on a macro level. I think in that case the exceution and content should be the king. There are times when I read a post and get inspired. Ideas, unless copyrighted in a place like blogging, belong to the world. But yes, blatantly copying is a strict no no. And a shoddy job of the work can be quite tragic. If I find a smooth operator who copies my content and presents it in another dimesnion altogether, I'll become a follower :D  

There seems to be a de facto assumption that the copycat is necessarily lacking in talent compared to the originator of the copied idea. That is not necessarily the case always. Sometimes, the copycat may be far better at narration than others but not creative enough to originate their own ideas. So, given that picking the brains of others by way of plagiarising is allowed tacitly, copycats could well score over the original and may have often enough in the past.

Enough has been also said about the pleasure of writing but speaking for myself being plagiarised outrages me and if the copycat won the contest to boot that would add salt to my wounds. Taking pleasure in writing is no salve for the sense of being cheated when some such thing happens.

at the end everything we write or say is an inspiration from something..we are at some level inspired by our idols ,their speaking and writing styles .We all copy something subconciously ,it may not be from one source but an amalgamation of various experiences we have had

I would not be too worried about the format being copied because at the end only you can tell your story.

Yes I do understand that for competitions some people might copy your styles and ideas  but I beleive the bigger question to ask would be, have they ever benefited from this? Has any copied post won while the real inspiration failed?

If not then we might not need to worry about copy cats :) 

I agree eventually everything is inspired by something else. I am also trying to draw inspiration for my themes from mythology and stories of famous writers. But they have all got their due credit. But a small time blogger who has come up with a new idea for a first time - imagine how it would be for him/her to see someone making better use of the idea in the same concept and getting more readers and walking away with the prizes.

Personally I think plagarism is indeed lame and I have seen the consequences of copying someones work without giving due credit.

The action is post mortem and there is no real way of stopping it.

We as bloggers and writers want people to read our work and its always a double edged sword that someone will copy our work.

We have to be vigilant and keep our eyes open for not just ours but even those of others that are copied and highlight it to original authors and use means to force the copycat out and cease and desist.

We have effectively used social media sites like Facebook to draw them out. It may be a form of cyber bullying but those that make such a error are to be exposed and stopped from doing it in future.

The obvious form of copying where the content is copied is easy to accuse on FB and bully. But when a central idea if copied and put up in different words, it is difficult to prove it is copied. 

i remember coffeehouses were made for idea exchanges and history has it that great novels germinated there. i read of great novelist goibg to coffee house in  curfew

I guess we fight when copied only if it is beneficial to us not otherwise. But copying is in our blood and we do what everyone does. To be original and survive on originality is difficult. Even an Amitabh copied Dilip Kumar and he in turn copied K L Saigal and the story goes on. In stories too everyone copies everyone but the idea is to be different and yet copy. In my kids college they have a system where if any topic being submitted is plagarised they will not get credits at all. They have an inbuilt system which identifies such stuff. I guess we too should have such speed breakers in our systems. But since it has started somewhere back then, we cannot override the system. It will survive and yet we will continue to fight. So do what you got to but don't get caught. That still doesn't make anyone holy. God bless the system. Make accusations, copy, do what you got to. Finally we all do what our nature deems for us. The argument goes on forever without any answers. So fight if you must, copy if you must or just believe there is so called justice if you must. Is Duniya me sabhi Jayaaz hai! Like we Indians say-Sabh chalta hai!

Yeah as u mentioned that sab chalta hai we say but still insecurity prevails. I seriously believe that the creativity cannot be stolen. You can steal the honey which a bee makes but you cannot steal the knowledge and art of making honey from the bee :) well enough now if anybody does like that, they should be notified to make things settled down, communication is must :) and TF, you are a very creative person and that reflects in your previous winnings also :) You are just perfect :) yeah let's stand together and avoid plagiarism that hampers we bloggers at large :) I am glad that you started this forum I am with you :)

One thing that can be done is as many of us would agree that if something like this happens, the point is that the post should be written 1st and submiteed 2 or 3 days before the contest is aboutto close. that wuld surely lessen the probability of doing it. Secondly, the posts should remain hidden so that the probbility is again lessened.  I am myself strongly against it. People do steal ideas but the same concept should not be there. Idea can be or could be same but he plot behind it matters. well I would not say more but I am strictly against it and would not promote such plagiarisms at all :)

Just a single line to say: It's difficult to judge whether an article can be termed as a copied idea or an original one, especially in IndiContests where the topic is the same for all and ideas are devloped starting from either the ad or by browsing through their website (though not always). When, a paragraph or two are lifted entirely and sentences are restructured to make them appear original, then it can definitely be termed as a copied one but what if only the main concept was taken and improved to a great extent. Should the new creator be appreciated for creating an ocean with a small drop of water which was definitely not his own or should he be accused for the same? For instance, take the case of Arvind's samsung post where he has retold the Ramayana set in the modern era. Now, if someone starts a new website containing posts which retell the tales in the scriptures in a new way, each of them unique and gripping enought, what exactly should that person be termed as? as someone who shamelessly copied an idea from others or a person who was creative enough to retell not just a single tale but several of them? Judgement is difficult. 

Within the limited context of a contest, if Arvind's samsung post idea of setting the Ramayan in a modern context is taken up by someone - even if it is the Mahabharat and not the Ramayan - and a post written for the same contest what should be the view?? Your viewpoint of that idea being used for an entirely different and expanded purpose may be a subject of debate but, within the contetx of the same contest, I'd say that the second entry ought not to be considered for the winners' list - no matter how well it is written!! Else, this idea of originality being one of the deciders for contest wins would be a farce!

Lots being said about everyone having the same ideas relating to same subject and all. The point is what is unique in TF's posts for Sony, say, is the idea of goddesses putting up various points of view. If that is used - even with Indian, Scandinavain or whatever goddesses - it does not matter whether the other contest entry puts up better or even different points of view. It is not always the central idea but sometimes the presentation that may be original.

Let the copiers be at large !! Submitting a post on the last day deprives me of a dialogue that i can have on my post with the regular bloggers.  Sending in early makes it susceptible ,completely one's choice what you prefer.

Personally i think i write for the pleasure of it and if someone is bent upon taking a quicker route to readership and prizes let it be. One can steal few ideas from me, he or she can't take away my creativity  and that's the core of my existence.

I agree with u completely :) nobody can steal away your creativity from you :) very well said. Nobody can steal your art and knowledge you posess.

And yeah the main thing is that it should not be copy pasted exactly. rest the thing about the idea, it can come in anybosy's mind and believe me with so many entries the ideas can surely clash. Some may have written it in other way. But theconcept or the idea will be the same. If any firm makes nimboo pani with name lemon drink and other firm makes same with the name lemonade .........the product remains the same. Well that was just an example that ideas can be same no matter but the stories or the formulation should be different as we Indians have limited resources of knowledge due to n number of reasons.

That is exactly what many many legal battles on patent are all about - whether an idea is a very basic idea that can not be patented or a very unique idea that can be patented. In general I would appreciate if someone takes my idea and does value addition and evolves it to the next stage - won't like if someone just markets it better and sells it off as his own as the example of Edison Renie has given. But within confines of contest, this is making lot of bloggers insecure and that is increasingly making people post an hour before contest end time making the point of keeping contest open for a month or so meanigless.

As far as contests go, maybe contest entries can be opened out only once the submission deadline for the contest ends. Anyway, Indivine votes do not matter, so it won't make a difference. But that way at least, people won't have that open a market to 'pick' ideas from. For those who are blogger friends and already are on each other's reading lists - I honestly have no solution.

Sometimes it happens without realization. I agree with Renie that they should be notified if something like that has happenned. Actually in a theme with 300 to 350 entries there are many entries with same concept but story wil will be different for sure. An idea for the same theme can clash between I can say n number of people. The problem is who is to blame? Actually all is a coincidence and no one is stealing theideas. the knowledge is limited, we have deadlines so everybody wraps it up in the limited knowledge only.

By the way, don't say no one is stealing ideas. Just say you don't. In your case you were questioned and your reply was satisfactory. Matter closed. But the overall issue at large still exists. Tomorrow someone may steal your ideas also. There are other people who do steal ideas.

Rightly said but we can't say all is coincidence, In entire discussion I was thinking of coincidence. What if the idea of me is exactly matching with you and every word you wrote same as me without realizing or without copying from it from me. . If this kind of thing happen  whom to blame.

History is full of people with great ideas - and very few know what they actually did because somebody else marketed it better than they did.

We've seen an increasing number of plagiarism reports over the past few months, especially with contests when stakes are high. Every time we receive a report, and verify the same, we email the perpetrator and ask for their point of view, hoping for a good argument, or a simple apology. Till date, every perpetrator has opted to keep quiet and hope it all goes away, at which point we remove them from IndiBlogger altogether.

Unfortunately, there is only so much Google, Copyscape and other tools can do at this point as compared to human judgement. However, thanks to bloggers knowing each other quite well and reading each others blogs, there is a very good chance of getting caught. It all comes down to us - if we allow plagiarists to give Indian bloggers a bad name, we are the ones who lose out in the long run.

So true, Renie. Humanity progresses through a good marketeers stealing ideas while the individual suffers. But I was wondering if judges think an idea is very innovative, could they give credit to the post on the earlier date with that idea rather than one on a later date that has been packaged much better? I don't know how the judging works. But just a suggestion in case judges do patiently take a lot of time and pore over every entry and take decision purely on merit independent of commercial considerations.

TF, the problem is blogger lets you change the publish date too. I am not sure about Wordpress. But what's to say that a person who copied a post doesn't publish it with a past date? How do you stop him then? Like I said, the wider the market, the more the restrictions, the more getting through the loopholes!

one solution is not to display the entries to everyone, only see your own. But that is limited, one who is on the "hunt" for copying or such ideas will search

Actually situation becomes even worse when person with ideas is not good at language and visual appeal and the person copying uses much much better language and visual appeal.

the person who copies in exam gets 100% and the boy whose paper is copied gets 95%

I had had this happen to me recently. When everything that I was doing on my blog, from adding gadgets to enabling options, highlighting dialogues to using font colors to distinguish character voices was being 'copied' by someone. Here's what I posted on Facebook about it to simply give it a light edge. "To those who have followed their heart: Life is pretty simple. You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else. If you're going to do something original you can count on being copied. And when you are, remember, imitation is a sincere form of flattery. Take it as a compliment."

Honestly, stuff like this is always going to happen. There's only so much we can do about it. For every restriction or protection you put in place, there will be people finding loopholes and getting around it. Applies to any and every field of life, doesn't it? Yes, I agree with TF, that sometime's people post at the last minute to stall this kind of behaviour, but how do you do that for books? Like Saru Singhal says, someone else might come out with the same idea for a book. The thing is, its a wide open market. We just have to do our best research, give it our best shot, market it well and hope that you get what you aimed for. Sorry if it came out too philosophical, but after a lot of debate with the angel and the devil on my shoulders, this is what I concluded.

PS: Well, even the first part of the quote that I posted is 'copied' - well, from googling for imitation quotes!

very well said .

I think it is better not to share your ideas to everybody or the ones who are not really very close to you. But come on stealing ideas is so lame! It shows have bad a writer you are and it also shows that one lacks creativity! 

Upto how much limit, you can hide your idea? In blogging world, your writings represent you and your ideas. You can't hide it. All you need to be so authoritative that people may fear to copy your content. Idea scrapping is that you can't stop at all.

My idea to avoid plagiarism to write the post in such lengthy detail with lots of pics and with so simple english that it becomes so difficult for content copier to scrap my article in other voice and they prefer to press the cross button :)

Even if your write in simple words, they can write the same in flowery words and put different pictures that mean the same. An idea especially for a contest is just one small brain wave. Details afterwards one can flesh out on his own if he is half good. It is fine in general posts. But in contest?

Submit the post on last hour on last day :)

ankit, that's the only prper solution,but some time date is exrended, but that is rare

Posting at the last minute to avoid plagiarism is a desperate measure and the contest managers should address the problem. One way is to simply ask the participants to submit a short summary and an an excerpt along with the the entire article submission. That way the work can't be copied To understand this see this site where writers submit their article which is put up on display after approval for SALE. So if you want to buy, pay and take it or ask for a discount. you cannot read the entire article only a short summary and an excerpt are on display.