Copywriting and Plagiarism. What is the Difference?
The access to information we have today is something our ancestors were dreaming of many years ago. People exchange messages, status updates, comments, and ideas without even getting out of bed now. All they need is an Internet connection and a computer (lap top/tab/smart phone). This makes our world much more interactive as people from different cultural backgrounds can cooperate and interact with each other which sometimes even results in great inventions that improve our living. But the development of the Internet technology has increased plagiarism cases in an online environment. Many people don’t bother generating their own ideas; they find it much easier to steal various ideas, such as texts, music, etc. from someone else and publish them as if they have created them. But there is another term we need to be familiar with – copywriting. Very often people don’t understand the difference between plagiarism and copywriting, so we decided to post a brief article on this subject.
Plagiarism vs Copywriting
The World Wide Web is a great platform of information available to millions of people around the globe. Most children and young people don’t even need to ask their parents today why the sky is blue or how something works – all they need is to enter the inquiry in one of the search engines and just get the relevant results found. Every day, the scope of information multiplies manifold. The network is filled with content of different kinds and genres. It seems like whatever topic you choose, you can always find something about it online. But in the quest to create and share the content, users sometimes forget the difference between such things as plagiarism and copywriting.
What is copywriting? It is primarily making copies for products for the purpose of promoting some business. A marketing copy aims at convincing the particular audience to invest in or buy the product/service. But what constitutes plagiarism then? Plagiarism is basically when one takes someone else’s work and presents it as one’s own. Therefore, these two concepts are very different as you can see. You have to understand that you will be guilty of copyright infringement if you choose for example to use the exact words of another person, not making reference to the true authorship of the work. If you take an idea (not the exact words) from another person and re-do the wording to express pretty much the same concept, it is not considered a stolen one. Legally, you are not liable for copyright infringement if you publish the text that contains same ideas but in your original words.
If it was complicated for you to understand clearly the paragraph above, we will just recap everything in simple words (just in case you are still asking yourself questions like “What is copywriting?”, “What constitutes plagiarism?” or “What is not plagiarism?”). Copywriting is allowed; that is something you can do in order to improve and promote your better business. It is when you take a text and make it relevant for people who look for the products and services that your company can offer. At this point, you don’t steal anything; you are just trying to engage with more people by means of SEO copywriting. Sometimes copywriters have to rewrite boring and irrelevant texts. Plagiarism, however, is when you take the text about certain products that was written by someone else and publish it on your web pages, claiming that you are the author of these ideas. It is both stealing something and then lying about it. Hence, it can be stated that in a way copywriting and plagiarism are antonyms.
Conclusion
After the questions like “What is copywriting?” or “What is not plagiarism?” have been briefly addressed, we would like to emphasize that there are no shortcuts to success. People involved in plagiarism usually look for ways to achieve success without any significant efforts being made. But sooner or later plagiarism becomes evident and people have to pay a big price for this kind of fraud. Therefore, it is our moral duty to create our own content, not trying to steal the content written by others and claim it to be authored by us.
