Something must be in the water.
A couple weekends ago, an internet marketer paid for advertising (without getting approval first) in The Portable Business™, our ezine for clients. He didn’t submit the form until later. When I went to the link to see what he was wanting to advertise, it was one of those contemptible sales pages for–guess what? ARTICLE SPINNING!
(As many of you know, there has been some rampant plagiarism on the Internet increasing and many, many conversations about this on various listservs.)
I promptly refunded his money. I could barely keep myself from adding a note: “We don’t support this kind of garbage!”
I think we’re going to see more of this, folks. And I guess they now even have software programs that will do this “article spinning” automatically. What a sad freaking state of affairs.
Plagiarism is plagiarism is plagiarism. You can do whatever you want with your own stuff. Repurpose to your heart’s content. You should, by all means. But you don’t get to do that with other people’s stuff. No way, no how, and anyone who promotes and condones the idea that you can and should is completely unethical.
Then one recent morning, there’s an email from a business owner wanting to purchase a couple of contracts because they are hiring a Virtual Assistant, but they wanted a preview first.
(First of all, if you need a preview on $7, you shouldn’t be in business.)
I don’t normally respond to these requests, but I had to let this person know that our forms are for Virtual Assistants and that it is not the client’s place to be providing contracts–it’s the Virtual Assistant’s as the service provider.
There are some places that would be more than happy to take this kind of money and not give a darn. I’m not one of them. Obviously, I can’t tell who is buying stuff (whether they are misguided clients or actual Virtual Assistants), but if the opportunity arises to properly educate these business owners, even when it means I don’t make a sale, that’s exactly my first and utmost priority. I’m in this to actually help Virtual Assistants in business and help our industry gain some improved professionalism and respect.
Thanks for commenting. Yeah, the virtual assistant term is really completely idiotic to...
