I don’t know what’s more appalling – the fact that you’re here reading an article to know why plagiarism is wrong, or that I am having to write out some five hundred odd words trying to explain why. Asking why you should never plagiarise content is almost like asking why you should never rob money from a bank. I mean, the reasons are obvious, and also quite similar – it’s not yours, it’s wrong, and you’ll eventually be caught. Okay, I’ll admit that the consequences of plagiarism won’t be as severe as those of robbing a bank, but if you’re a professional writer working with the content writing agencies in India, or if the person you’re plagiarising from happens to be a vindictive, highly-skilled assassin, you just never know.
For those who still need convincing on why not to plagiarise, here are a few more reasons:
Google hates it
Yes, Google hates plagiarised content – more than it hates Bing or Yahoo, just saying. If you want your content to be viewed by people, you need to make sure it is easily discoverable on popular search engines. Google knows it when you publish plagiarised content, and it doesn’t take kindly to those who engage in plagiarism. Plagiarised content essentially kills your SEO and makes your content undiscoverable, which defeats the purpose of creating (or copying) the content in the first place. And it’s not just Google, all search engines hate plagiarism as much as they hate each other. So unless you want to be the only one reading your content (not), you should avoid plagiarising from anywhere.
It’s bad for business
This goes without saying, but originality is one of the major elements of outstanding content. Nobody likes copycats, and potential customers visiting your business site are no different – especially if you provide B2B services. Plagiarising website content will make you less credible and may disqualify you as a trustworthy business partner. Nobody likes doing business with untrustworthy people, except for other shady people – and you don’t want that, do you? So, if you need good, original content for your business website and can’t come up with anything original, you should hire professionals to do the job for you.
It’s illegal
There is a copyright to every content.
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Anything original that you write is your intellectual property and is entitled to legal protection. This means that if someone copies your content and publishes it as their own, you can sue them. If you plagiarise content, you risk being sued by the original creator. A writer owns the copyright to everything he writes, without requiring any registration or documentation for proof. So don’t assume it’s okay to copy-paste content just because it doesn’t have a copyright symbol on it.
It’s just not cool
Plagiarism is not cool. It’s just not what good writers (or creators) do. Plagiarism doesn’t mean copying ideas, it means copying the way ideas are expressed. For instance, I’m not the first person ever to think that plagiarism is bad. This means that the underlying idea behind this article isn’t originally mine. However, this article is my original way of expressing it. So, if you write an article about the evils of plagiarism (like this one), you won’t be plagiarising. But if you just copy-paste this article to your website and tell people you wrote it, then you’re plagiarising. Considering how easy it is not to plagiarise, you have to be exceptionally uncreative or hopelessly lazy to do so.
Hopefully, by now you are convinced that plagiarising content is a bad idea (although it’s hard to imagine why someone would think it is good, to begin with). If you create content, before judging if it’s good or bad, ensure that it is original. Quality can be subjective; originality isn’t. If you need original content for your business website but don’t have the time to write blogs or articles, do not resort to copy-pasting content a.k.a. plagiarism. Instead get it done by professional content writers from one of the numerous content writing agencies in India. If you know any more reasons why plagiarism is bad, or if you’re one of those rare creatures who think plagiarism is justified, let me know in the comments section below.