A Question of Ethics

I’d like to start by admitting that I’m “old school”. I believe that when a person posts an article that they did not write, that they should give credit to the original author. Just because something is posted online does not mean it is free; it’s just another method of publishing and the author retains all rights.

Occasionally I’ll see articles on LinkedIn or various business blogs, that I have reason to believe are not written by the person who posted it. Sometimes these articles will say “Posted by”, and that lets me know that the person posted it is not the original author. I’d still like to know who the original author is though, so I often turn to my friend Google. I’ll search for the first two sentences of the article, with varying degrees of success.

Other times, the person posting the article lists themselves as the Author. Being old school, I believe that’s called plagiarism. I also believe it speaks to the character of the person who does this. It’s dishonest, misleading, deceptive, and leads to me question how much I can trust any other assertion they make about their skills and abilities.

There’s a plethora of examples currently on Linked In, which makes me wonder if there is a subscription service somewhere that provides these articles on a regular basis for a fee. I wonder this because it’s the same group of individuals posting the exact same articles. I’ve commented on a couple, asking if such a subscription service exists, but nobody is answering me.  Despite my best efforts, I’ve been unable to locate the original authors.

So I’m throwing it out to the community at large (meaning my contacts on Linked In). Is there such a service?

Here are a few examples - try searching these phrases and you’ll see what I mean:

“Where Hackers Go to Shop for Malware

You might recall how the Silk Road, an illegal online drug market, was recently shut down. Similar to the Silk Road, there’s another distributor of sensitive information out there; this one dealing with zero-day vulnerabilities. These types of cyber threats sell for top-dollar, and hackers are willing to pay in order to access your network.”

“How to Monitor Employee Communications Without Taking What’s Said Personally

There seems to be some confusion in the workplace regarding the privacy of digital communications made over a company network. Can an employer read an employee email or record a phone call without employee consent?”

“Do You Trust Your Employees Enough to Offer Unlimited Vacation Time?

As a business owner, you know how difficult establishing a paid time off policy is. Providing too little can make your business seem unfair, but giving away too much might make you feel like you’re losing money.”

This work by Suzette Leeming is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.