Homeschooler Steals Online Content

It’s a sad, sad day when a fellow homeschooler steals another homeschooler’s content. It’s sadder still when that homeschooler is caught, and still says, “Too bad, I’m keeping it. Oh, and by the way, here’s a cookie.”

Deborah Markus, of Secular Homeschooling Magazine, was robbed. When she asked the thief to give back her content, he said that he was making too much from it, and he wouldn’t give it back.

Basic rules of blog etiquette:

• Don’t publish other blog’s or website’s content without permission, unless it’s within the “fair use” clause, which means it’s OK to reprint a very small portion of a larger work with proper credit.
• Don’t take credit for other people’s work – explicitly or implicitly.
• Put an obvious link to the source of any content you quote. Also, if possible, add the author’s name.
• If the quote is long, include only a paragraph or two at most, and include a link to the original site (unless permission was granted to reprint).
• If you are making a lot of money or getting a lot of clicks because of something someone else wrote, then it’s not only illegal, it’s immoral. Give it back. Let the original author benefit from what they wrote. You didn’t write it. They did. This is called stealing. This is exactly why copyright laws exist.

This is very uncool homeschooler behavior, IMHO. Just because we can get away with things, doesn’t give us the OK to do them.