Plagiarism Boundaries—Is Imitation A Form Of Flattery Or Downright Offensive?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and on this week's Roundtable, we've got the usual suspects, except we're missing the big papa this week, whom had such a huge amount of volume over Black Friday, he's notarizing 10 deeds and as a result, cannot make the round Roundtable podcast. But we got Eric the Technician Peterson. What's up, Eric?

How you doing, Mark?

I'm good, I'm good. We've got Bear Land. Aaron Bearland.

Great to be here.

Good to see you. Oh, we've got Scott, the nightcap meister Bossman.

Hey, Mark. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.

I know you did.

We.

I know it was on that menu. By the way, is it wrong for me to be like, okay, save me some. Like, what does Aaron do, freeze the food in San Antonio?

Yeah, no, definitely. We can bring you some. We'll bring you some turkey. Turkey casserole. I'm making that tonight.

No, no pressure, no pressure. All right, we get the Zen master. Breathe in the mailing. Breathe out the marketing micro to the macro. Mike Zayano. Mike, how are you?

I'm doing great.

Likes to say, don't forget to breathe.

That's right. That's right. We've got the most fearsome woman in the country, Mimi, the terrorist hunter Schmidt. Mimi, how are you?

I'm great. How are you?

Good. Are we safer? Last but not least, we. And we got Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, about automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings. Postingdomination.com TheLand Geek. Scott Todd. Good Thanksgiving.

It was a great Thanksgiving, Mark. How about with you?

It was great. I went to D.C. i was in Mimi's neck of the woods. It was good. Show the kids the monuments. Did the whole DC Thing. Georgetown checked out American. I feel. Honestly, I felt smarter. I think people in the east coast are just more intellectual than us west coast people. The weather's nice. You know, I'm going out. I'm hiking. It's cloudy, it's cold. They're all reading. Oh, let's see what's going on here.

Yeah, wicked spot.

What you're saying is that based on that comment, what you're saying is that essentially we should be having another east coast boot camp soon.

I'm.

The room will be smarter.

Well, travel back to my left. My left here. We got to move on to our topic, because this is an important Topic. It's a philosophical comment topic. So essentially, what we've seen happen in the past, and this probably happens more often than we realize, is let's say that I create an incredible deal of the week, or I have. I mean, we can all argue I've got the best website out there, right? Is it okay for somebody to go out and plagiarize or essentially take, borrow, steal my content? Either word for word, right? Is it okay for someone to take pictures, plat maps, gis maps from the website and. I don't know. I'd like to hear what Mimi thinks. Mimi?

I don't know. I see both sides. I see both sides.

Let's look at the first side of it. What's the first side?

Well, beside, don't do it, right? Because folks have worked hard or paid for, right? Content, pictures, things like that, right? And create your own. I understand that. And then understand the other side, where you see it happen to you enough, and you think, well, and then you go to. You listen to roundtables and you go to boot camps, and you see other folks, hey, yeah, I'm going to do it. What's the big deal, right? And so. And I think, does it hurt? I mean, if you want to be at the top of your game, you got to be developing your own stuff too, right? So I see both sides of it. I don't really have a strong opinion either way.

Zen master, what's your thought?

This is an interesting question. You know, we do, I mean, ebay ads all the time. I'll tell people, if you see an ad that looks good, copy it. You know, enter your own data, go. I mean, you know, that's the way it is.

When you say copy it, what do you mean by copy it? Do you say.

Well, I do say copy format. It's the format. And so you have to change out certain things. I think maybe it depends on what a few things in my mind, right. You know, what exactly it is, right. That that's being copied. And maybe also the proximity. Like, if it was my. Like maybe say, Scott Bosman, I did something and I would. I would. You know, he took something. I think I would have liked to say, hey, geez, that's really cool. Do you mind if I use a. I mean, I don't. Because we're closer. We got a relationship, right? But I can't stop the average bear out there, that no bear land, pun.

Intended.

Bear out there from going and doing that, right? It's gonna happen. And I guess it's to be. It's commendable that I have such a great. Whatever it may be that they take that. But I don't know, I do feel that we do that a lot with pictures and things of that nature. A lot of us do that, you know, so that's. But then there is some more creative type content that maybe is more private.

I don't know.

I think it's the relationship too. Like, I get if it was someone like one of us here, right. I would think to be like, geez, Mike, you know, and I'd actually be.

Quite honored if you guys said that to me.

So feel free at any time. That's a great content you put out there.

Can we.

Can we utilize some of that? And, you know, I don't know.

Just.

It's kind of a very difficult question to answer, Mark. I think, because it crosses over to personal relationships too, if it is. I don't know if we're talking about, like, again, an average person, I don't know, or someone that's like a close friend, like one of you. I think that might make a difference to me.

Would it make a difference if I just did it without asking permission?

If you did it without.

Weird.

Yeah, I think. I think that would probably.

I just did it. I didn't ask permission. We have a good relationship.

I think that would stick with it.

I'd be like the relationship a bit.

I'd be like, mark, Mark, why didn't you ask me what's going on? I feel like it would have been a communication like, Mike, that's a really cool thing you did there. I'd like to work off of that. And I'd be like, great.

Yeah.

Here's some other things about it. We talk about it, right? And I'll give you some input as to why I did. And we'd have a nice conversation and it would come out. You would have your version and I would have mine, and it probably wouldn't be identical, but you'd be inspired by what inspired me. And I think we'd have a deeper relationship more than if you just said, ha, that's great.

Got it.

And it didn't, you know, because we're all close here, so I think it's proximity.

Okay, well, okay, Scott Bossman, let's say you've got an ad out there. I don't take all the content. I just take your pictures. You hired a photographer to go out there. Let's say you paid 100 bucks. They shot video, they shot pictures. I have property in the same area. I don't ask permission. I utilize your content. It's not copyrighted, it's not watermarked. It's easy to do. Would you be upset by it? Do you think it's wrong?

This is an interesting question because I've been victim of this.

But.

But I also have to be honest and say that I have. I have pirated some pictures myself. Right. So.

What'S that got the pirate bossman?

Right? Right. So. So I will say that. That, that a few years ago, I actually did take some pictures and use them on my website. I did disclaim on my website, this picture is not of the property. It's a mile away, that type of thing. I have a couple pictures on my website right now. You know, Google Earth images. How many, how many of us have taken Google Earth images if there's not a copyright seal on it, a watermark on it? But I will have to say I did hire a lady one time to take some pictures for me, and her pictures were phenomenal. And I have used them in my marketing material over and over and over again. And someone did take that picture. Now, partly, it's partly my issue because I didn't watermark the picture, right? And maybe, maybe I should have done that. So maybe I don't own the material in that regard. But it did sting a little bit. And I found out the person actually asked me afterwards and I'm like, yeah, that's fine, whatever.

So.

So it did sting a little bit knowing that I had paid that person. Now, that being said, I think, you know, there's a difference between, to get back to kind of the, the base of the discussion, there's a difference between copying and maybe emulating and stealing. And I think it's a boundary issue. Boundary issue. And I've gotten better with having discussions with myself about that. You know, I don't want to cut. I don't want to steal content, but I make copy to a certain degree.

Maryland. Aaron, what are your thoughts?

Well, as far as things like pictures, I have used a picture from actually somebody in this group on one property. It was disclosed that it wasn't the property, that it was taken by a colleague of mine, but the land, all the land in the area looks identical kind of thing. So. But, you know, and I have used pictures like action or activity kind of photos that I found on the web, you know, to advertise and show, hey, you know, this is stuff you can do out here. I don't ever claim it's the property. And if there is, I don't Like, I check to see if they're copyrighted, that sort of thing. The only things I try to grab picture wise anymore is commons, you know, stuff that's rights free for the most part. As far as ad copy and stuff.

Like that.

I won't, I won't do it. You know, I might read somebody's ads or, you know, something like that, or browse, you know, maybe listings on Land Moto. I might get some inspiration from them. But that's inspiration, you know, that's definitely not copying. And I'm not going to copy, you know, word for word or even really close to what somebody else has written because it just, it's like the line you don't. I'm not gonna cross because that's not. That's their work, that's not my work, you know. So for the most part, you just kind of don't do it, you know.

Would you be offended if someone.

Yeah, I mean, we, we've had it happen. Melissa wrote a great ad about a year ago, maybe a little more, and it. We used it on various similar properties and we've used it several times and it works really well. And not too long ago, she found that ad on somebody else's property. And she was pretty. She showed me. She was pretty steamed about it. And, you know, it was her intellectual property. She put her hard work into it and she was upset that somebody else took it and was, you know, reaping the benefits of her work, you know, so. Yeah, and there was no. Nobody asked permission or anything like that. I mean, you can look at the flip side and you know, imitation is the, you know, is the flattery. But that's not really imitation, is it? That's just copying laziness.

Right. You know, Eric Peterson, the technician, what are your thoughts?

So, you know, I think, you know, in terms of content and things like that, I mean, if you're gonna. If you're gonna utilize maybe an idea or add content or whatever from someone else, I think it's really important to rewrite that and make it your own. Because in this business, I mean, first of all, we're all kind of like our own people, right? Like, we, we connect with different buyers and sellers differently, and it's because we communicate differently.

Right?

So to take, you know, someone, if I took Aaron's ad and ran that ad, it wouldn't really be my voice necessarily. Like, you know, there would be things about it that don't really identify the way that I do with my customers. So if I put a spin on it, and make it my own. You know, maybe I was inspired by it, what have you, you know, then it's, it's gonna do better for me anyways. And then I'm not, you know, taking Aaron's ad word for word, for example. And likewise, you know, in, in kind of the graphics world or photography world, like, you know, I would say the same thing when it comes to websites. You know, if you're out there and you see a land investors website, or any website for that matter, and you're like, this is a great site, I want to do something like it. Well, do something like it. Don't do the same thing because again, you know, your audience is very likely different from, you know, whomever's website that might be. And obviously, I mean, there's, there's all these underlying aspects of that too. Like, you know, whoever built that thing or wrote that thing or whatever you know, put time and effort into that. And it may not only be just the, the actual physical creation of it, but the actual thought and kind of concept behind it all. So there's, there's a lot to it. It's definitely happened to me in the past in different areas of the business when someone talks to me about it first and they're like, hey, you know, I love your website. I want to do something like it, or I love this or that or whatever, we have a discussion about it. You know, one of the things I always talk about is, you know, I feel flattered that you like this or that or whatever. But, you know, let's make sure you make it your own when you actually implement this. And I think that's, that's really important.

I like it. I like it. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

Oh man. How much time do we have? So, Mark, here's the deal. I think it's kind of been said there is a difference between kind of, kind of a copy and a steal, right? Like, so when I got going, you know, you, you know, you made a big deal out of, hey, you need a lead up magnet. Okay, and so like your lead magnet is like the what, the fatal land buying mistakes or something like that.

3 fatal land buy mistakes. Okay?

So I needed an idea. Like I needed something new. So what I did was I created the, the three biggest land buy mistakes. Very, very, very similar to what you did, but yet different. Okay, So I took your conceptual idea, I changed the title very simply, but then I wrote all new content. I read what you wrote, right? Like I read what you wrote, but I didn't, I didn't paraphrase it. I didn't steal it. I basically sat down, said, I like this about it. I don't like that about it. And I rewrote the document. It's like six pages. It's not that big of a deal. So, you know, if you're gonna go out and you're going to keep to use ideas as inspiration, so be it. But then improve on it. Make it better. Make it your own. But to go into steal something, like, word for word, not cool. I've had that three biggest land mistakes I've had. People I've had coaching, my own coaching students have stolen it from me. And I'm like, that's not cool.

Go.

And I mean, these are not people who can't write either. Like, these are people that they just wanted, like, something to do. And as Eric said, it's not their voice. It's not their message. And I don't think it's cool to go. And I mean, like, there is there. There's somebody that took. That took one of the courses that I made. They went out and they basically, like, replicated it with their own little spin on it. We won't name any names, but basically they took my content, and instead of adding to the community, they basically went off and started their own community. So that's. That was their choice and whatever. But what's not cool. What's not cool is to take something that somebody sat down and wrote and like, and put thought to. And I think it's in that other course that they say, like, just flat out steal other people's ads. That's not cool. Like Aaron mentioned, Melissa sat down and she. She had creativity, she had thoughts, she had intellectual property. And, you know, my point to Scott Bossman is, look, man, just because you didn't watermark it does not mean it's not yours. I have sent people out there to take pictures. I've paid people to go out and take pictures. When I got going. Those pictures are my intellectual property. They're my copyrighted material. And you know what? When I see people that are using them, we enforce it, okay? Like, we enforce it because they did not pay. It's not cool.

Yeah, I mean, I always think about, you know, let's just take, for example, the movie theater, right? We can all agree the popcorn is exorbitantly high. The candy, we are being taken advantage of. Nobody's gonna pay $7 for a package of Skittles, right? It's very easy to go bring and sneak in your own candy, right? But I always like to think about it from the, okay, the owner's point of view. So if I own that theater, right, how would I feel if everybody snuck in popcorn and everybody snuck in candy? Now, ultimately, I know that there's going to be a percentage of people that are going to do it, right? And it's not going to be worth the bad PR to police people doing it. That being said, should people do that? Well, I think if you have empathy for the actual owner, you won't necessarily do it because you wouldn't want it done to you. So if we golden rule it, right, if you don't want somebody taking your pictures or taking your content, right. You wouldn't do the. You wouldn't do it yourself. So it's just that simple. Now, if you're the kind of person that doesn't care if people steal from you or you, it's a little bit nuanced like what Scott said or Mike said. Depends on the relationship. That might be a different philosophical issue. I also like to think of I don't watch the Good Place, that show the Good Place. No, it's like a really cute show. It's, you know, you watch it. Yeah. So. Yeah, yeah. So one of my favorite moral philosophers is Immanuel Kant, and he always talks about, you know, essentially, you know, what if everyone did that, right? What would the consequences be? And what if everyone just stole pictures? What if everyone just stole content? What would it look like? It would just be one creator and then a bunch of copies, right? So there'd be one purple cow and a sea of brown cows, and it wouldn't look right. So I think it's an interesting sort of moral dilemma as well. Let's just face it. Yeah, go ahead, Mimi.

How many of us are actually writing our ads? Because I don't. And so if I'm putting out 300amonth, I'm certainly not going and reviewing each one all over Craigslist land, Moto, Facebook to see if they're similar. Now, I don't write my ads. I do pay for all my pictures, right? Now, if I have a poster that I have people that create, like Google Maps or Google Earth pictures too, if I'm pre selling something, right? So I don't have the time to review everything that they're doing. Now, do I spot check things? Am. I am. And when I'm running my own ads, do I check the links and read through things when I'm responding to people and sending them links from my website? Of course I do. So I mean, I think there's a challenge in that too. And how much oversight you've got on your ad writers and your VAs.

Hey, go to landmoto.com and just copy their, their content. You know, I've got property in a similar place.

Of course. Right, of course. You don't tell them that.

That would be wrong. Right, of course.

Of course it would be. And recently had an issue where I paid like $120 for some material that turned out was copied.

So.

And I have a dispute in with Upwork right now. So, I mean, it's something that, that's important, but I can't spend all my time reviewing all my ads either.

So, you know, so I think, I think it's really how you, I think it's really how you, you approach it. Like, what practice are you going to be cool within your, your own business, right? Because if you, if you go out, like you just said, if you go out and you train a VA that says, oh, look, to create content, just go here and steal it. Well, then that's the organization that you have created. However, if you find that it's. If you find that it. Someone did that and it's not the way that you train them or maybe you even told them, like that is unacceptable in your training, like that is unacceptable. That's not cool. Well, then what's, what then do you enforce it, right? Like it's, it's, you know, it's a copyright violation of somebody, somebody's copyright violation to do. We have a zero tolerance policy on that. And if you do it, you're gone. And you tell them that, you train them that well, then it won't happen. And if it does happen, then you have to enforce it. They're gone.

Okay?

It's all about the kind of company that you want to be, right?

If you see it, right. Let someone know, right? So that they don't have to review all their work and so that they can make those kinds of cultural policies with their staff, with the teams they lead.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, if we throw out morals and ethics and philosophy and we just get down to the cold, hard economics and capitalism of it, right? The right thing to do as a capitalist is to be unique completely. Right? That's really ultimately in your best interest. It is easier for me to steal from Tate, right? Because let's face it, I have a little insecurity about not being creative. But that being said, I spend an extra five minutes, right? And maybe I was inspired by something that Tate did, but I Could actually make. Maybe make it better. That's my own creativity. That's my own, you know, thing that's better for the customer in the marketplace. Because I'm coming through the unique me everyone else is taking. You might as well just be yourself. Right? And that's the beauty of the marketing. But so I would even say that. I mean, Eric, do you agree? I think you said that in a way.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

It's just better marketing practices to be. Right.

So, Mark, you know, I mean, another great example of that is find a. Like, find a flaw in something or find a way that you can. Like you just said, like, you find a way that you can add value to something and go create more value in the world. And, you know, like, you. You did that with geek pay, right? Like, there was another. There was other softwares out there that did similar, but yet lacking, right? Like, you know, you. You came to this and you're like, hey, it's all cool. You use these other products and you. You didn't just say, go and cut. Let's just go. Go copy it. I mean, that would be ridiculous. What you did was you said, hey, listen, I could do this better if this, this, this, this, and this added up. And that's what you did. You went out and created a solution not. Not to, like, steal other people's business. But what you did was you went out there and you created a solution of something that was missing in your eyes, and then you went out and you created value in the world with that. And so it's unique.

It's.

It's not necessarily new, but. But it has a unique spin on something. There's better takeaways, and I think that that's what kind of gets missed sometimes. Do you want to be the cheap knockoff, or do you want to be an originator?

Right, right. Well, I think it's a really interesting topic, and I'm glad that we discussed it for sure. Does anybody have anything else they want to add? Because I got a pretentious hard stop in three minutes. Mike.

You were saying about, you know, was a purple cow, then a sea of brown cows. I say be green, be yellow. You know, like you said, just because you can doesn't mean you should be unique and capitalize on that, like you said. I think you made a good point.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to learn how to capitalize on this, how to be unique, how to be effective in the marketplace, there's an easy place to go. It's called flight school. And they Run every month, sometimes even twice a month, depending on class sizes. If you want to learn more about going up that land, investing mountain quickly, efficiently, effectively, uniquely, I feel like Johnny Cochran here. Just go to thelandgeek.com training schedule a call with the nightcap meister Scott Bossman or the zen master Mike Zaino. They will give you a free strategy call to see if it is the best fit for you. So thank you for. For listening listeners. I hope you're getting a lot of value from the podcast. And if you are, all you got to do is three simple things. Subscribe, rate, and review the podcast. And there's a screenshot of your review to support thelaninggeek.com we're going to send you for free our $97 passive income launch kit course. And so please do that. By the way, guess who just jumped on a few minutes ago? The big papa Tate Litchfield Tate. You missed the discussion.

I heard the most of it. I think we're talking.

Do you have a view on it?

Yeah. Don't steal people's work. It's not nice.

There it is.

It's just. That's just the way you got to look at it. It's not nice.

It's not nice.

Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten. Right?

It's really that simple.

Exactly. Right.

Yeah. All right, well, are we ready to do this? One, two, three, let free. Pretty good.

Not bad.

Did Bear Line Aaron say anything on that one?

No, he's still waiting to hear it.

He doesn't know we're doing it yet.

Ring.

I'm glad I got on in time to do that. I was gonna be kind of sad if I missed it two weeks in a row. Oh, that wouldn't be good.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you were able to jump on. It's always good to see you.

Makes the weekend.

The holiday haircut tape. Loving it.

Yeah, the in laws were in town trying to impress them.

By the way, if you're listening this bonus part, I forgot to mention, San Antonio boot camp is filling up. Go to lan Geek.com Boot Camp. Get that going. Are we all going to be a boot camp?

Yeah, gonna be there.

It's gonna be awesome. San Antonio. Mike's gonna bring his cowboy hat. Cowboy.

I got a jacket.

A hat and boots.

Y' all be there.

I'm bringing.

Why do you need a hat? Why do you need a jacket, man? You're coming from, like a Steven Seagal jacket.

And it was on clearance at the. At the last time we were there.

And I couldn't resist.

They got me with good marketing.

Come on, man. Like, dude, like, you're from Massachusetts. It's cold, and it's supposed to be warmer in Texas, so.

It'S like light leather.

I've got one more minute. You know, we forgot to do the tip of the week. I got so wrapped up in the the discussion, I forgot to do the tip of the week. So as is land geek tradition. Mimi, what's your tip of the week?

Okay, so it's a monthly report that lands of America land and farm puts out. And I put the link there. Usually if you just search for, like 2018 land news trends, they'll come up. We talked about how the those big platforms, how their market's different from Land Moto. I specifically mentioned it last week how lan Moto is made for our niche. This kind of shows that if you scroll down to past the pictures, you know, it kind of gives the highlights. The biggest ranch, the newest listing, that kind of thing. But what I find interesting is these most searched counties and the top 10 most searched counties on land and farmlands of America. All those are all in Texas. So I think that right there shows how land Moto is different because. And our market is different from what's being sold on these sites because they're all in Texas. Right. And Texas is not our top state that we sell land in. So they have to make a second category for other non Texas counties, which I find very interesting. And so those are in a lot of the states that we use. But I just find it interesting to look at. It is a little different than our market. But I do read them, look for trends and things like that. You'll see the county name. For instance, it says Edwards County, Texas, plus one. It probably last month it was the second most searched county. So that's why it says plus one. Looks. It probably moved up one and the minus two. It probably moved down two spaces. I'm not sure that's making sense the way I'm describing it, but. So that's not a good tip. You can go ahead and say so.

I gotta razz you.

I liked the tip. I thought it was really good. Data is, you know, key in this business.

Yeah.

Mimi's so well respected that, like, no one will slam her tips and I won't. That's a great tip.

If Eric gave that tip, we'd all be eye rolling right now. Oh, that's so geeky. But since it's Mimi, it's like, oh, that's a great tip. No it is a good. I'm just joking, Mimi. It is a good tip. It is a good tip. I'm not trying to be a jerk. Just. I mean, I'm trying to, like, really go after Eric and his tips. Because it doesn't matter what Eric says.

Right.

It could be the greatest tip. Are we ever gonna be, like, great tip, Eric. Every once in a while, I do that.

Yeah.

I'm close, I think.

But you.

Scott. See, Scott. Scott comes to your rescue.

Yeah.

He's always got your back, which is nice. All right, well, thanks, everybody, and we'll see everyone next week.

Thanks, Mark.

Thanks.