Does plagiarism flatter us at BoliviaBella.com?

Plagiarism is illegal. Let's make that clear before we go on. BoliviaBella.com is being plagiarized by several websites and sources across the net. So what do we think of this?

First of all, we like to take a positive outlook on things. Being plagiarized means that we ARE doing a good job of providing the top quality, first-hand, personally researched information we promise our website visitors. So in that respect, it could be said we feel flattered.

However, we would like to remind those of you who are "borrowing" the information on this site, posting it as your own, copying and pasting it into another websites, or uploading our pages as "articles" on article sites, that this is NOT cool and constitutes plagiarism.

Let's say, just as an example, that your name is Zoe S. and you are uploading our pages as "articles" into an article collection site. If you provide a link back to BoliviaBella.com is it plagiarism?

Well, although we are grateful for the link back and the traffic it might bring to our site, if you are attaching your personal name to them and you are being ranked, voted on and awarded by other readers of that website for your "contribution" of said article, then YES the answer is that posting our pages as articles "contributed or written by you" DOES constitute plagiarism.

This also creates another problem - because this detracts from the ability of the webmaster and true writer - personally - of all articles on this site to post her own material as articles on article websites online and claim them as her own.

When you post articles online, most trustworthy, top quality article collecting websites have Author Terms of Service. These terms of service most definitely state you MUST be the original author of any article you post.

In addition, any truly good quality, high-standard "article collecting" site would make contact information publicly visible so that should a dispute arise over authorship or copyright, the true author of the articles could contact the website and proceed to make a claim. An article site that does not contain these three things (publicly visible contact information, author terms of use and article terms of use) should not be considered trustworthy.

Does capturing BoliviaBella's blog in a FEED and posting it on your site constitute plagiarism? We believe if you do NOT attach your name to our blog and articles, do NOT state you personally contributed them or wrote them, and make it clear that you are only FEEDING our articles to your site, then NO - that is not plagiarism and we thank you for our support. However, feeding our blog means you feed ALL the articles it contains and some may randomly be highlighted or featured (or chosen by you to feature) on your site. If you are hand-selecting some of our articles and posting them as ARTICLES belonging to you, then you are guilty of plagiarism.

Does copying our content, photos or even maps constitute plagiarism? Even if you "re-word" our content? Well, it very well could. Many of the photos used on this site are being used by BoliviaBella.com under license (meaning we have paid to use them). Your use of them without paying the original photographer or stock photo site where we obtained them could constitute copyright infringement. Same goes for maps. All content on this site has been personally written by your webmaster and other website visitors who have contributed their messages and stories. Therefore your use of our (or our visitors') content without permission would also absolutely be in violation of copyright laws.

In addition, MOST of the photographs on this site were taken by Charis Barks, your webmaster. And your use of them without her permission does absolutely constitute copyright violation. It would be VERY easy to contact your webmaster Charis to request permission to use them. Our contact information is available on EVERY PAGE of this website (just click on the TELL BELLA button). In fact, in MOST cases webmaster Charis will be happy to oblige. However, only we know which photos belong to us and which we can authorize you to use. Therefore, please ask first.

We're sharing this information with our website readers because we want you to know we're VERY proud of the fact that BoliviaBella.com provides ONLY first hand ONLY personally researched information on the site.

In other words, we don't write about something unless we have PERSONALLY been there. And that's why the information on BoliviaBella.com is highly TRUSTED by our readers.

So although you are free to "share" our information across the net, tweet it, upload it to your social network, etc. and in fact we actually ENCOURAGE this, please don't claim it as your own.

An awful LOT of work has gone into creating this website and gaining our publics trust. Our website visitors know this and appreciate it - and we like to keep them happy.

Truth and trust - it's a Bella thing.

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