Copyright: Why it's important.

Hello Robloxians,
For the first time ever, this article is not about Roblox, but an ever important issue that needs to be discussed among our readers. That issue is copyright.

Copyright: What is it, and why does it matter?

Copyright is the legal concept, in which the author of original works receives exclusive rights to their work. Copyright means that if I make something, and my content is original (Ie: Writing an article, making a movie, composing music), then I hold exclusive rights to it. The main thing with copyright is the fact that since I created the original content, I have the right to be credited for my work, and elect who can use my content for their own purposes.

Why it matters: When watching a DVD, and you see the copyright warning, what does it mean? It means that since the creator of the film made an original creation, which is his/her property, he can set how he/she wants others to be able to view/use it. If the creator of the movie chooses to do so, he/she can elect to make it so people cannot copy his/her movie, and pass it off as their own.

This applies to any creative works, ie: Books, letters, movies, music, artwork etc.

Example: I copy the new hit movie, "Wreck-It-Ralph", and rename it, "Wreck-It-Felix." Next day, it goes to no. 1 in the box office. I'm bathing in money, while the original creator of the film is getting nothing.

Plagiarism: What is it, and why does it matter?

Plagiarism is where you take someone's work, modify it a bit, and pass it off as your own. Plagiarism is an actual crime, in which real consequences can be applied to the person who passed it off as their own.

Example of plagiarism:

Original work: Roblox News started way back in 2009, when I was still fairly new to the game and it's rich community. In 2011 the site's pageviews skyrocketed when John Shedletsky (Creative Director of ROBLOX) added Roblox News to the ROBLOX Developers Blog (now simply called the ROBLOX Blog) blogroll. This helped introduce a large amount of ROBLOX users to my blog, including future staff members. During that year RN went on to be featured by the staff at the ROBLOX Rally 2011 and reached over 150,000 pageviews. (From about page of our blog.)

Plagiarized work: Official Roblox News started way back in 2009, when I was still fairly new to the game and it's rich community. In 2011 the site's pageviews skyrocketed when John Shedletsky (Creative Director of ROBLOX) added Official Roblox News to the ROBLOX Developers Blog (now simply called the ROBLOX Blog) blogroll. This helped introduce a large amount of ROBLOX users to my blog, including future staff members. During that year ORN went on to be featured by the staff at the ROBLOX Rally 2011 and reached over 150,000 pageviews. (Copied work)

Even though the plagiarized work is different from the original work, it's still using the same wording from the original work. Plagiarism has serious consequences, frequently fines, or lawsuits against the person who copied it.

The reason why I bring this issue up:

Here at Arbirator's Roblox News, we love to see fans create their own fan sites. Each fan site is unique, and they all have different perspectives on what is occurring in the Robloxian community. However, we are noticing more and more cases in which fan sites are copying our creative content from our blog (Mostly articles, images, and passages of text from certain pages.) We do encourage creativity for users who make their own fan sites, but we cannot allow users to blatantly copy the content off of our site. We recently had a case of which a certain user's blog (Who I decline to name) copied our latest article, changed one word of it, and passed it off as his/her own.

The content on Arbirator's Roblox News is original, and never plagiarized. Users who are found to be plagiarizing our content will have serious consequences for their actions. With this user, we filed a DMCA (That's the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown request, and are awaiting action. Google/blogger comply fully with the DMCA, and will take down blogs, and/or ban the owner of the blog.

We encourage creativity, but we cannot condone copying. The reasons are two-fold.
1. Users who copy our content draw traffic away from our Blog, and we lose viewers and traffic to our site.
2. Users who copy/plagiarize content in their early years are destined to copy/plagiarize content in their later years. If you copy an essay paper from a site/another person, try to pass it off as your own while in school, the school will immediately expel you, regardless of your previous offenses/reputation.

All we ask from our readers is simply, please don't copy our content, and please don't copy content from anywhere else. It's much better to write your own creative content than it is to plagiarize the content from others (The consequences far outweigh the benefits.) Besides - you might be the next big blog that is far more popular than Roblox News, or any other fan site. You'll never know unless you try.

This has been a post by zinc707, and I thank you for your time in this serious matter.