Plagiarism!

Blessings Darlings!

Plagiarism (from Wikipedia): defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work.

I've been running into an astonishing amount of plagiarism on Pagan sites and pages online lately.  It's hard to find an original thought.  Instead, you get a picture of an athame with text that comes from Wikipedia.  You look, and the person posted it after taking it (with permission) from another site which may or may not be the one that original plagiarized the text.  Okay, in this case, the text was originally plagiarized by Ravensgrove Coven  on Facebook. 

But that one group isn't the only one doing it.  Lots of groups on Facebook, lots of blogs, lots of websites, have scraped all their content from others, usually without attribution.  And in the cases where the stuff is copyrighted, without getting permission from the writer/artist.

Honor? The 3-fold law? The Wiccan Rede? Karma? Common decency? "The Christians stole all our stuff"? Some Pagans have no ethics, no morals, no honor, and lie about their belief in the Gods, the Rede, the 3-fold law, etc.

Like what someone else has written, and want to share it?  Great!  Write a summary mentioning who wrote it and provide a link to the original source.  That way you share it AND the creator gets the traffic/attention.  I've done that with many folks blogs posts that I like.  You will NOT read their entire blog post on MY blog.  I will link you to THEIR blogs.

Want to incorporate someone else's words that inspired your work, and don't have their permission?  Look at what I posted on Thursday, Sept 6, 2012 (with luck, I'll remember to put the link in!).  Instead of quoting the words, which I didn't have permission for and ... uh ... was pretty sure that the writer wouldn't want to give me permission for, I did a bullet point summary.  The source being from a closed group I could not link back to it in general, and since I also wanted to protect the privacy of the 'bad example', I also did not want to post her name/identifying into, like an avatar.

Today was one of those days when I called out plagiarism when I saw it.  And I discovered that some of the people ... well, I'll leave out what the Lala called them ... before she was bounced from one group ... don't seem to understand the difference between plagiarism and copyright violations.

Let me explain the difference between plagiarism and copyright violations: plagiarism, as noted above, is ANYTIME you pass off the words of another as your own (not giving credit) even if the words are public domain (that is, wikipedia); copyright violations muck up an author's 'exclusive right' to their words.

Honestly, plagiarism is explained to US kids thoroughly in high school, when they are taught to do research papers.  It's not rocket science, it's not a PhD level concept, it's not a 3rd degree mystery. 

Frondly, Fern

The Threefold Bitchslap

Blessings  Darlings!

Some neopagans say that they live according to the Rede-as-harm-none (which I covered earlier here) and the Threefold Law Of Returns.  And that the three-fold law, they will tell you when asked, is "Whatever you send out you get back three times over".

Well, no, that's not what the Threefold Law is.

The root of the Threefold Law seems to be in the "long version" of the Rede, as written by Lady Gwen Thompson .... who was not Wiccan but but BTW .... and BTW at the time was NOT "British Traditional Wicca" but "British Traditional WITCHCRAFT".  It was published in Green Egg in 1974, don't recall which issue.

The line in question reads "Mind the Three-fold Laws ye should three times bad and three times good." I copied that from  http://rialian.com/wiccrede.htm 
 
That's not about you getting back three times over what you send out. That's "Whatever someone does to you, good or bad, do back to them three times over."  Yes, I checked this with a Gardnerian, in case anyone was asking.  It's supposed to be YOU being the manifestation of the hands of the God/dess/es handing people karma logical response to their actions. No room for passive-aggressive behavior here. 

It's not you sitting in front of a picture of the dude that dropped you and repeating "The three fold law will get you" and expecting some bean counter in the sky doing it for you. 

It means that you are expected to take an active, involved role in creating Justice right here on Earth. 

It's easy being nice to someone who's been nice to you.  Co-worker jumped your car and you bring them cookies or whatever.  Easy peasy, no risk.

It's harder, especially for women, to take an active role in bitchslapping someone who has worked to do you harm.  We've been rather socialized to just walk away, to be non-confrontational.  It's DANGEROUS, we've been told, to say "No, that is not allowed, stop that". Bullies are supposed to be out for attention and we've been told that to ignore them makes them go away.

But that's not the case.  Bullies get worse without confrontation.  Silence ENABLES abuse -ALL types of ause - rather than stops it.  I can't find the scholarly article right now, but last year I read one that pretty definitively showed that social confrontation did not CAUSE conflict - it ENDED conflict.

Yeah, it might take doing it more than once.  Like, maybe three times.... or more. 

But when pushed - push back ... or make dang sure that the push-ers momentum is used by you to make sure that they fall. Hard. And in public.

Administer the Three-Fold Bitchslap.

Frondly, Fern