About a hundred years ago when I was still a middle school teacher, I can recall periodic staff meetings at which media specialists reviewed the Copyright Act as it pertained to educational settings. Teachers, as a group, always believe in their hearts that they are “doing it for the kids,” and, that, if that is their mission, whatever they are doing must be all right.

Unfortunately, sometimes this perspective extended to photocopying (or mimeographing in the earlier years) entire coloring books or even other types of books, to use as an extension of the lesson plan.

Copyright infringement remains a sticky wicket in my world. I have had conversations with my own kids about why free music file sharing isn’t cool and why it’s not only not nice to rent videos or dvd’s and make copies of them for personal use. It’s an issue on which many individuals opt to “fudge” by violating what is, in fact, clearly against the law.

Whether they convince themselves it’s “for the kids,” or “for personal use,” it’s still theft and it isn’t right. Unless they are a writer, composer, photographer or other type of visual artist, they’ll likely never personally experience the theft of personally created intellectual property, but I am damned sure no one would like it if their iPod, DVD player or photocopy machine was stolen.

As a person who works with original content, it’s part of my job to educate my clients about the use of intellectual material, whether print or digital. Most often, I get a response of gratitude when I explain why a client can’t use this or that material on their website without permission. Occasionally, I am sure someone just chooses a different designer rather than be scolded by a contractor (me!) who they are paying to do what they ask.

Meantime, back at my own design “shop,” I was reading a professional discussion list yesterday on which I found a reference to a colleague’s discovery that her web content had been plagiarized. She made this discovery as a result of going to copyscape.com at the recommendation of another professional.

I hadn’t checked my own web site’s copy against this resource in a long time, but when I did last night, I found that I had also been plagiarized.

Right away, I sent the link to copyscape.com to another colleague of mine which turned up evidence that she, too had been plagiarized. What’s going on here?!

I can report a happy ending to my own situation.

After discovering the offending site, I reviewed fellow Virtual Assistant Vonnetta Booker-Brown’s excellent article, which you will find here: “Your Content Without Consent: how to guard against Internet Plagiarism.”

Vonetta, whose company is Right Hand Concepts, references the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA—Google it to find the explanation that is clearest to you), which spells out very clearly what you can do if you have experienced infringement.

I followed Vonetta’s instructions to the tee and immediately contacted the party who had lifted my copy. I heard back from that individual within a matter of hours, that she had removed the copy and apologized for her error.

Ok. So isn’t that what it’s about?

Let’s say my plagiarist knew what she was doing was wrong at the time. All I wanted was for her to correct her mistake and not do it again to anyone. Or, let’s say she didn’t realize it was specifically against the law to “borrow” someone else’s words and use them as her own. Same deal. She needed to correct the problem and not do it again, and hopefully learn something about business ethics in the process.

Wouldn’t it be great if, in the real world, wrongs could be righted so quickly?

Hats off to Vonnetta Booker-Brown for writing about her experience with plagiarism, and hats off to MY plagiarist for doing the right thing when confronted.

Now, as for those teachers, keep up the good work with kids but stop copying material wholesale! And, kids - buy your music from a music store or iTunes! Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law!