Hi! I was just wondering if it's illegal or if we can get into trouble for rewriting an article. I understand that copying an article (without permission) is not allowed, and that editing it very slightly is not allowed. However, are we allowed to read the article, then rewrite it totally in our own words, from scratch? I'm guessing we can because nobody will even be able to tell it was the same article (because essentially it isn't). Would just like this clearing up. Thanks.
If you include a substantial amount of you own creative dialog while you rewrite I doubt anyone could really complain. That said, people sue for no reason other than you being there at the wrong time and they can make money - and they do win... so just because a forum member says "you should be ok" means squat if some other forum members says "hey buddy" I have a way we can both make big bucks and thinks they can win a case against you.
Totally forgot about this thread... thanks for your reply. Righto... so if I keep myself to myself and nobody knows I'm rewriting articles/info then I should, in theory, be fine.
An idea cannot be copyrighted. I could write a book about a young wizard and base it on the idea of Harry Potter and JK Rowling couldn't say a thing. However if I copied slabs of text from Harry Potter and just changed some bits, then she could sue me. And quite rightly, too. So you can write an article based on an idea you've read in another article as long as it does not actually contain parts of the original article itself and is not very similar. Completely rewriting it should be fine
Rewritten articles are unauthorized derivatives of the original writer's work. There is of course nothing wrong with reading articles for inspiration and then writing on the same topic. What you don't want to do is read the first sentence, reword it, second sentence, reword it, etc... If your general concept was the same (your character goes to wizard school and similar things happen there), she could say a lot.
We all said pretty much the same thing... the caution here isn't how little or how much but someone proving a work your wrote was a retooling of theirs. "IF" I was the original author and I could see similarities in your work... I could search for background info on how you possibly came across my work (I have my logs and records and I can match those up... uncover this forum, thread, your comments, subpoena DP logs and admin reports - backtrack the user to your IPS and your private information which correspond to your work... which appears strikingly like mine and that would go a long ways to confirming DubDubDubDot reference to unauthorized derivatives. That's a great work of fiction... but quite plausible.
from my point of view i can say that copying a whole article is not a good practice at all. My advice for u is that on which topic u wanna write first read as many as article over these topic and then make ur own article. U can use the idea taken from other article. But dont use the same languages in ur article. Try to make it a unique. Thank u
Rewriting news articles or the like in your own words is done all the time. It's not unlawful although there are times when there are other issues, e.g. reporting on sports information in real time. There is a lot of argument with regard to "sweat of the brow" work involved in articles but the bottom line is that, from my understanding, it has not been protected.
I've always thought that plagiarism was where the copyright infringement appeared. Plagiarism is deliberate copying and then claiming the work as your own. A rewrite that has been totally reworked from the original piece cannot really be proven unless the author can actually point out where his work has been used. Most rewrites are completely unique from the original, so I don't think there's much of a problem with it.
Plagiarism goes beyond blatant copy & paste. The bottom line is this....... Serious webmasters don't need to ask themselves if their text content will get around Copyscape or if someone is going to recognize it as a rewrite. They know their content is totally legit. The only two groups playing the rewrite game are perpetual noobs and 100% of the freelancers from the middle east and Asia (which is why I advocate using western world writers ONLY).