A Business Owner’s Plea to Stop Plagiarism

As we all know, a website is the lifeline of any small to mid-sized business in today’s internet-driven world. There is a lot of work that goes behind developing and maintaining a website - from creating the design to writing industry-specific content, to producing high-quality product images and, in Ferrier Wire’s case, generating unique product specification sheets. Apart from the countless hours put in to create an online presence, business owners spend thousands and thousands of dollars to ensure that the website can compete with other big businesses within their industries.  The current version of our site and ecommerce platform took over three years to create.  

Ferrier Wire was one of the first companies in the wire mesh industry to have a professionally created website back in 1999.  Imagine your dismay when someone simply copies and pastes your content and/or images, without any due credit, notification or warning.  In this unique and specialized industry, we never thought about the possibility that we would be struck by content thieves. In 2008, a Canadian competitor lifted an entire inventory list and presented this content as their own.  Further illustrating their dishonest business ethics, when contacted to ask them to remove the stolen content, we were repeatedly ignored. After conducting some research we decided not to pursue a legal challenge as we felt that it would be a waste of money and would probably not achieve anything substantial.  

Unfortunately, as of November 22, 2021, they still have our content on their site; they have been using and benefitting from our content for over 12 years. To further illustrate this widespread problem, one of our preferred partners in the USA has had to deal with content thieves on numerous occasions, with one still being an ongoing problem. 

Through this post, Ferrier Wire and Design Metals, would like to appeal to the conscience of businesses indulging in plagiarism. Maintaining a website, while juggling through the highs and lows of running a business, is challenging.  It requires dedication, patience, time, effort, and a significant financial investment to build and maintain an online business presence. We urge businesses to stop stealing content as it adversely affects the efforts of other, thoughtful and caring business owners and directly and indirectly eats into their profits and growth. For the lack of a better word, plagiarism or content lifting is actually theft. 

At this point we believe that it is important to note that sometimes business owners may not be aware of the theft.  This happened to Ferrier Wire early on.  We learned that several of the images that had been posted on our site by our web developer were stolen from a company in the USA.  We ordered them removed immediately, apologized profusely and severely admonished the developer (later we stopped working with them).  

To all the online customers, we request that you question your decision to support a business who participates in content theft as it undermines the hard work of other entrepreneurs in the market. To be sure, these questionable practices lack morals and business ethics and is a sign that they wouldn’t think twice before choosing profit over an honest job.  We propose this knowing full well it is difficult to know if someone has stolen content, and it is not the responsibility of the consumer to determine this. 

Lastly, to all the businesses that are fighting against plagiarism, there is hope in the form of many tools and resources available online to remove stolen content. Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows you to send a DMCA takedown notice to the internet service provider that is hosting plagiarized content. 

Ferrier Wire Goods Company Ltd. can attest that all the content and images on Ferrier Wire and Design Metals’ website are plagiarism-free, are original content and have been carefully created by us and our online content provider.  In cases where images and/or information has been provided by others we have written consent to use it (which we keep on file at all times).  We are constantly working on content with the intent to inform and educate.   

If you have any thoughts or comments regarding this issue, please feel free to reach out to us at info@ferrierwire.com.