To put it lightly, anyone can “borrow” personal profiles and information from others. It’s easy, and millions have already done it by simply performing cut, copy, and paste. Meet the one of the most challenging online identity issues – “Cut & Paste Personalities”.
In the U.S. alone, there are over 150 million people who visit social and professional networking sites. Common issues such as “borrowing” people’s profiles and identities are on the rise, with such large numbers of people looking to promote themselves on the web as distinctive brands. Representing yourself online and managing your reputation is not an easy matter, especially when the words you write about yourself are on the basis of how people perceive you. The esoteric belief that it is justified to copy other profiles is derived from the lack of inspiration, moral direction, and the pressure to over-represent ourselves on the web. The drive to be “different” contradicts this very tendency that infringes on others’ unique and inimitable content.
According to a MySpace.com study, there are more than 800 comments and complaints made by users that their entire profile was “stolen”. In a recent Internet survey commissioned by Engage.com, over 9% of respondents said they copied from another person’s profile, and 15% suspected that their own content was stolen. Donald McCabe, a founder of the Centre for Academic Integrity at Clemson University, conducted a survey and found that over 40% of university undergraduates confessed to copying directly from online sources. “People are still trying to develop a sense of how to represent themselves online,” says Joseph Walther, a communication professor at Michigan State University.
The Internet has become a tool for people worldwide to plagiarise and violate copyright issues. And, while there is no one solution for tracing authenticity on the web, we may want to start questioning our aesthetics, practices, authorship, originality, privacy, and most importantly – question ourselves.
