Copyright Violation and Content Marketing

There is a major argument that I’ve faced in a number of places where the content team seems to think that it is alright to source images from other websites as long as you credit the source. This is most definitely NOT alright in content marketing or anywhere else for that matter.

I have had clients send images of Popeye (yes, the sailor man, anchor tattoos and all) and insist that the image be used on their business card or in their logo – do you know how hard Disney would come down on you if they found you out?

What about that stunning photo on Shutterstock that you want to use but don’t want to pay for? Sure – you could find a copy of the image on Google Images, but you still shouldn’t use it and just credit the website you found it on. What you are in effect doing is stealing some income from the photographer who created that photo and placed it on Shutterstock to sell. You are also stealing an image from the website that you are crediting (assuming they paid for it in the first place). The point of the matter is that someone, somewhere paid for that image or content, whether through actual financial investment or through time and effort, and now you are using it for free on your own material – that is theft and theft of intellectual property is never acceptable.

It would seem that Google is very much in favour of stamping out copyright infringement wherever it can. They have gone so far as to remove the “View Image” button from Google Images. This is apparently in response to a concession made with Getty Images with regards to reducing copyright infringement. 

Over and above that small change recently rolled out, Google has long penalised duplicate content. It is their view that content marketing should make use of unique content. They are not interested in showing the same article to their users time and time again. 

Sure, there is a lot of content on the web, so how can you be sure that your content marketing material is not violating copyright? How do you know that you are not accidentally using someone else’s words?

Firstly, the odds are slim that you will use the same words that someone else has used. Languages are vast and people are unique and think in different ways. You may have the same idea as someone else, but you will not write your content in the same way.

If you have just read a really interesting article and you are concerned that your take on the topic might be too close to the other article, run your content through Copyscape. This is a service that will check your content for similar content across the web. It is not fool proof, but it is pretty good. I’ve caught content writers on more than one occasion trying to pass off someone else’s work as their own thanks to this great tool.

Content marketing is not about having a unique idea every time you write something, it is about expressing yourself in a way that makes your content and the idea attractive to other people and to Google. That is what will get you noticed. 

Copyright violation is a big thing and, as the producers of most of the content on the web, it is up to content marketing professionals to toe the line and keep the rest of the industry in check as best we can.