Launching your own business is not an easy task, you have to take care of many aspects and this is because few areas are very promising than the other ones.Hence, choosing the right industry and making sure all the parameters are considered on your way to a successful startup is very important.
Among these parameters one major influencing factor is Plagiarism. Many beginners startup their own business by getting a bolt of excitement from few successful businesses around them.
While they think of how easy it’s to start up a digital business empire and start earning money within few weeks they ignore to look at the struggle behind their long-term success. Besides most beginners copy most of the things from their industry leaders and present them as their own.As a result, they find their website as non-indexed, or penalized on search engine and even disliked by the viewers.
The reason behind their failure is Plagiarism. Now because these beginners lack knowledge, they either intentionally or unintentionally become the victim of the Plagiarism act. In this article, we will be discussing how plagiarism affects a digital business and how to prevent it?
Before going deeper into it, people who are unfamiliar with plagiarism should be aware of:
What is Plagiarism?
According to the University of Oxford “Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement”.
With that being said it’s quite clear that using anyone else’s content, idea, thought from published or unpublished material without their concern is a disciplinary offence.
Similarly, under the lights of search engines algorithm this unethical act is disapproved and further leads to serious consequences like given below:
- Search engine penalizes or bans a website due to plagiarized content published on it
- Search engine de ranks a website due to plagiarism
- In most cases, the search engine does not even index the content
- Once caught, search engine keeps the particular website under their radar of high scrutiny monitoring.
Types of plagiarism in the digital world
Below are the common types of plagiarism
Mosaic plagiarism
Merging different pieces of content from different sources into a new one is a kind of Mosaic plagiarism.
Direct plagiarism
This type of plagiarism is also known as copy-paste plagiarism, in this, a person commits to copy and paste a paragraph, a text content as it’s in their piece of work from someone else’s work without any proper citation source.
Self-plagiarism
This type of plagiarism occurs when a person repeats or uses his/her previous piece of work again in his/her current work without citing it to the source.
Now some of you might be thinking that these circumstances are limited to text content only, but to increase your knowledge, Plagiarism has no boundaries, especially in the digital world.
Plagiarism goes beyond writing materials
It can be a video, picture, graph, book, computer code, logo, lyrics, illustrations, etc. One of the most common examples is copying a blog.It’s not new, besides very often bloggers and webmasters face this issue as many beginners copy their posts and publish them on their websites.
Similarly in other businesses, entrepreneurs are the ones to face this issue on regular basis.
To better understand the concept, you should check this example.
Suppose that a person has a clothing brand and is all set to launch his new clothing line. Suddenly one of his competitors gets a sniff and launches an identical clothing line before the real owner does.
Now the outcomes would cause damage to the real owner’s product even before it had reached the potential buyers.
Thus causing an illegal act. Ideally, the general laws of business don’t allow an individual to copy or steal the idea of another person or company, it’s also called as copyrights infringements.At times business owners are not aware of this “Plagiarism act” but in some cases, business owners intentionally copy others hard work to cut short their efforts.
Another example
Many new YouTubers create YouTube channels to boost their brand, meanwhile instead of they work on producing new and unique content. Usually, they copy role models by utilizing their deep researched content and name it as their hard work.
By doing so, intentionally or unintentionally they mark themselves as a thief in the eyes of the search engine, hence, they fail to impress their viewers as well as search engines from starting itself.
How plagiarism can affect your online business in an unprecedented way?
Building a positive reputation in the digital world is not a simple cup of tea, you have to work hard and out beat your competitors in many ways to build a good reputation for yourself and your brand. But this hard-earned tag can be vanished in few seconds by a single mistake.In past, there have been cases reported as a lot of businesses shut down due to unauthorized copying or stealing of their intellectual property.
Some common negative influencers attacked with intellectual property plagiarism are as mentioned below:
A bad reputation in the long run
Copying or stealing of Intellectual property is a violation of general business ethics as a result it damages the business interests. Now if a business sells a copied product, it loses its credibility immediately, and once a business loses its reputation it becomes almost impossible to restrain your trust back in the consumers.
Guaranteed loss of trust
In every sector few unique brands host the maximum market share in their particular sector.Consumers think this way that if a brand does not has unique things to offer than it is worthless to be dependable on it.
Similarly if one of these trusted brands starts to copy out products or services from other intellectual properties they would be making big blunders, this can lead them to guaranteed loss of trust.And eventually, this call of action would come under the Plagiarism radar.
Hence, the brands and business owners should avoid at all costs copying ideas to prevent their corporate reputation from blemishing forever.
Also Read: 10 Business Ideas to Start in Nepal within the Budget Range of 10k
How to prevent it?
Different copyright laws are existing to protect ones intellectual property.Hence, using someone else’s intellectual material without their consent can lead you to Copyright infringement.
However one should know how to prevent from falling victim to plagiarism act.
- First of all, you should know what is plagiarism and its different types.
- You should know what is fair use? There are minor exceptions where one can use another’s intellectual property without other consent but only within restrictions as per the law.
- Use Royalty free stock Images, Videos, Music, Templates, Codes, etc. These are free for all, anyone can use them in their piece of work, even multiple times.
- Moreover, if it’s writing material, you can give credit to the authors, cite the source properly.
- Use a plagiarism checker with sources to detect any plagiarism leftover in the content.
How Plagiarism Can Ruin a Digital Startup
No doubt technology has changed our lives in many aspects, showing many benefits along with few drawbacks. Of course, plagiarism is no exception.
Many new digital business owners, unknowingly choose to cut short their hard work by simply getting information through the internet and use it easily by copy-pasting it on their platform. They might get an initial advantage by copying others work, but later on, once they are caught in violation of plagiarism they might have to face serious allegations and bad consequences which are mentioned above
Hence, for long-term success, becoming an authority in the digital world and improving your brand’s credibility, it’s essential to produce unique content and avoid plagiarism at all costs.One can also use different online plagiarism checkers to take precautionary measures while writing down content.
