Plagiarism and other smelly Fungi

I guess everyone has their pet peeves, and in that sense no one is really free from the biases that come attached with them. I have to admit, that one of the things that really grinds my gears the most is plagiarism, but I'm trying to find out the reasons why, and this post is somewhat an exploration into that question.

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Of course, it's hard to explain my position to those who don't see things in the same way I do. Meaning, that someone might understand my words, my concerns, but feel little to no sympathy for my sense of ethics. That is something I've learnt to accept, as much as it feels like a rock in my shoe.

You might be surprised to learn that some prominent steemians believe that as long as the content is valuable, it really does not matter who the original author is. They have a simplistic view that I have a hard time subscribing to: "If it's good, that's all that matters" - It's obvious that I have a problem with that, and have expressed my point of view on this matter, even when it was a whale defending the simplistic position.

But... I guess if we think of Steemit, as social media, as strictly social media, then it makes sense that plagiarism is irrelevant. After all, I don't remember grandma getting dislikes for sharing her favorite prayers, and that is probably her favorite thing to do.

In my view what makes things different here is the monetization aspect of it all, and possibly nothing else. Because lets face it, if I was to go to Peter's job and collect his paycheck for the work he did all week, there would be absolutely no one defending my strategy.

I am however fascinated by the elasticity, the moral contortionism that some of the plagiarists seem to have on this platform. In other words, they not only feel it's ok to plagiarise, they feel they are owed money for doing so, even if they have little to no investment on the platform. This, of course, is quite different from the whales that oppose my worldview since we at least can agree that their stake gives them a power to decide where the rewards should go.

Just today I found one of those little gems on the Hive account@buildawhale discord, one of those accounts who feels like plagiarism is completely OK. This account demanded that it got the STEEM transfer back, because all the other promotional services that had blacklisted it for plagiarism had the decency to do so.

Strawman moment

Your honor, the last two times I killed a man, I was caught and exiled, but they gave me back my knife. I demand that the officer has the decency to at least return the knife to me, it's mine after all.

I'm sure that Hive account@themarkymark got a kick out of that distorted logic, because I sure did. However, I'm convinced that the little fellow of this story has a clear conscience, I would even bet money on it.

This strange ideas on plagiarism really bother me at the core. Being someone who has spent countless hours writing songs and producing albums, the thought of someone taking my work and claiming it as their own feels like a kick in the gonads of newtonic measurements I'm not willing to accept.

About a week ago now, a ring of musical plagiarists was disbanded. I won't list them all, as this has already been taken care of, but it all started when Hive account@shadesofblack was ousted as a fraud and it lead to us finding more than twenty accounts from indonesia using the same bittrex address to cash out, using Hive account@dsound as their little cash cow. Needless to say, it made me sick to the core, it still angers me.

But maybe, just maybe, I'm wrong. Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe my biases are getting the best of me and I should find a way to not be annoyed by it, to not be so upset when I find them. Why does this bother me so? All this writing and I still don't know.

The self exploration continues I guess...