Just a few minutes ago, I posted an article out of re-post from Copyblogger‘s 125 Tips for Building an Irresistible Brand. The content was well thought, well researched and well written that I couldn’t resist but re-post it on my blog because I knew that no matter how hard I try, I wouldn’t be able to come up with such a great post to share with my readers.

For many years, I resisted the desire to re-post articles no matter how interesting and amazing it can be because I know for a fact that the blogger or the author would feel bad when he discovers that there’s a duplicate of his content and worse things happen for some, the re-poster may even rank higher than the original post.

But then the post was just irresistible and so #ijustdid re-post the article only to take it down right away. Because I learned that no matter harmless my intentions may be, re-posting the whole article (with our without the author’s permission) still may cause problems such as Google would consider it a duplicate content, stealing revenue from the site where the content was originally created and posted as explained in this post Poetry Reposting: Is It Copyright Violation?

Reasons Why People Like to Re-Post and Why It Should be Avoided

After all, my purposes for re-posting are just the following:

1. Share the list of 125 Tips for Building an Irresistible Brand to my readers, with full credit and link back to the original post.

Since I don’t really have any intention of claiming it as my own, I thought it doesn’t violate any copyright law. So I posted it and even tweeted to Copyblogger and asked if they would mind if I re-post their article on my blog with proper credit and link to their blog.

However, I decided not to wait for Copyblogger to respond on my tweet and learned the The Ethics of Reposting Articles: Sharing vs Plagiarism which reminded me of the usual problem that most blogger face nowadays. There’s already so much content scrapers in the web world that take away the much worked hard for contents by sites and re-publish them on their own websites and eventually create bazillions of splogs or spam blogs (though with proper attribution but without the author’s consent and permission), and I realized that no matter how harmless my intentions were, it still boils down to the fact that Copyblogger owns the article and that I may post parts of the article but not the entire of it because the Big Ole Google will discover that I’ve duplicated the content and I will have the risk of being penalized.

2. Tumblr allows reposts, why can’t WordPress?

I noticed thousands of Tumblr bloggers who enjoy the freedom of re-posting the whole interesting photos and articles in their blogs then would only need to put in the (via) + link of the original post and no one (at least I have heard of none) that faced any legal charges of copyright violation. So I really thought if Tumblr allows such practice, I guess there isn’t really much problem if I try to implement it in WordPress.

Then this Tumblr Copyright Violation post helped me understand how Copyblogger would feel when they realize that I’ve just re-posted one of their contents of which I am certain Logan Zanelli has given a great deal of time researching and putting together.

3. Linking is Not Enough

Sometimes we want to share things and want to create the same impact when people could actually read the whole thing. You see, sometimes people just don’t click on links that you wish to tell them things as effectively as what you have read, but just not quite as attractive or persuasive. I wanted to share it on Facebook or Twitter but I want my blog readers to read the whole thing too.

Resist the Temptation to Re-post, Scrape or Steal a Content

At the end of the day, I knew I needed to take down the re-post even before Copyblogger responds to my question, “I hope I didn’t violate any copyright law” because I know I could do better than just re-posting. Great contents deserve to be shared and valued and that includes re-tweeting it (not re-posting) and sharing it on Facebook (which will then land to the actual post and not on your blog with the whole content copied then some link to the original one).

125 Tips for Building an Irresistible Brand is really an interesting compilation of how can could create an irresistible brand and set of questions that make one think. Let’s go ahead and read it together from the ultimate resource for all your blogging, branding, marketing and writing tips and guides, Copyblogger.

Image: Legal Cyber Tips