Thursday, September 27, 2012

Desert Moon's Diary Plagiarized

Whilst surfing the internet a few days ago, I was quite surprised to find some pictures and articles from my blog that have appeared on another blog. Whilst I honestly do not mind if anyone out there utilizes any of the information from my blog I wanted to warn the blogger about the fact that copyrights and infringement laws do exist on the internet as well. Next time, she may encounter the wrath of another blogger or an author who may disapprove of the fact that their intellectual property has been stolen.She could land up being in serious trouble with the law. We had quite a friendly chat on facebook . Excerpts below:


I would also like to send out a strong message to all my friends who simply copy and paste articles, pictures,poems and quotes randomly from the net on to their facebook pages. I use to be also equally guilty of doing this but not any more.Now that I have the proper information regarding copyright and infringement laws I am more aware about the concept of plagiarism and how to avoid it. Please friends let us all refrain from plagiarism. Always check the source of the article and acknowledge the person who has written the article. Remember that it is intellectual property and belongs to someone else who has probably spent long hours putting it all together.From an Islamic perspective as reported in an authentic hadith, the Prophet Muhammed (saw) mentioned the following: "He who credits himself with what was not given to him is like one who wears a double cloak of deception."(ibn abd al-barr Jami al Tahsil (1/98).
Ibn al-Manzûr commented on this hadîth saying:
The one who credits himself with what was not given to him is one who says he was given something which was never really his or who attributes to himself talents that he really does not possess, implying that Allah had bestowed him with these things or that people accredited him with what was never specifically his.
In this way, he has perpetrated a double lie: Firstly, he attributes to himself what does not truly apply to him or makes claims to possess what he really does not possess. Secondly, he lies regarding the giver – either Allah or other people. [Lisân al-`Arab(1/247)]
Hence from the above hadith or saying of the Prophet Muhammed (saw), plagiarism or copying other peoples work is considered to be a sin. Always ask the author if the article can be re - posted or utilized or use the article but make sure that you include the authors name as well as a link  that shows the original source of the article so that credit can be given where it is due. On that note, I encourage everyone out there to please visit the women24 facebook page as well as their website. I can assure you that you will come across some pretty interesting, thought provoking as well as entertaining reading material.

As a side note, I was quite surprised to find my pictures that were taken during our Malawi trip in the Laudium Sun newspaper. I personally have no issue with anyone utilizing my pictures if they are going to be used in a good way to promote a good cause. It would have been courteous though if they asked first.