In today’s digital media landscape, copying someone else’s work may be easy, but it undermines local journalism, violates copyright law and ultimately hurts the communities good reporting is meant to serve.
Locally crafted journalism has never mattered more than it does right now—and paradoxically, it has never been easier to exploit.
We live in an era where the tools to publish “news” are abundant, cheap and instant. A website can go live in minutes. Social media accounts can declare themselves media outlets overnight. But while the barriers to entry have dropped, the barrier to professionalism apparently has not. All too often, what passes for “local coverage” today is little more than recycled work—stories, photos and entire articles lifted from real reporting outlets and republished elsewhere with little effort, little attribution and even less shame.
Let’s be clear about what this is and what it is not. This is not a criticism of legitimate news aggregators or platforms that operate under formal agreements. There are many respected companies and apps that compile news through partnerships, licensing agreements or syndication models. In those cases, the original outlet is credited and linked directly, readers are sent back to the source, and advertisers receive the benefit of exposure where it actually counts. Folsom Times works with several such partners, and those relationships help extend our reach while preserving the sustainability of local journalism.
What this column is about is something else entirely.
It’s about the lazy, unprofessional and increasingly common practice of “right clicking”—a convenient shorthand for copying and pasting someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. Sometimes a few words are changed. Sometimes nothing is changed at all. Sometimes even the original watermark is left intact, which is a bold move if the plan is to later deny it happened.
If your “content strategy” starts with someone else’s work already finished, it’s not strategy—it’s scavenging.
When people right click, everyone loses.
Original journalism doesn’t appear out of thin air. It requires sending representatives into the field, making calls, requesting records, verifying information, photographing events and spending real time crafting stories that serve the community. That work costs money. It is supported by advertisers and sponsors who believe in strong local news and understand its value. None of that happens accidentally, and none of it happens from behind a keyboard hoping someone else did the hard part first.
When another outlet simply takes that work for free, they are not just stealing content—they are stripping value from the very system that makes community journalism possible.
It’s also not just unethical. It’s illegal.
Fair use is often cited, but it rarely applies in situations like these. Courts examine several specific factors, including the purpose and character of the use, the amount and substantiality of what was taken, and—most importantly—the impact on the original work’s market or value. Simply reposting an article or image for convenience, engagement or traffic almost never qualifies, particularly when that use replaces the need to visit the original publisher’s platform. When infringement is found to be willful or repeated, the consequences escalate quickly. Under federal copyright law, statutory damages can reach up to $30,000 per infringed work, and in cases of willful infringement, courts may award up to $150,000 per work, not including attorneys’ fees and court costs.
In other words, stealing a single photo or article can cost far more than paying someone to produce original content in the first place.
Technology has not made this harder to detect. Quite the opposite.
Modern tools allow publishers to track when and where their work appears online, whether copied word for word, lightly rewritten or reposted outright. Watermarks help, but they are no longer necessary. The digital trail is there, and it is easy to follow and provide plenty of evidence of wrong doing when needed.
Right here in our own market, we have seen instances where another outlet crossed this line multiple times—at one point even publishing images with our watermark still visible. That makes the deed pretty undeniable. But even without watermarks, misuse is easy to identify. In that same ongoing situation, multiple copyright infringement notices have been filed with Meta, which takes these violations seriously. Repeated infringements are tracked, and when a pattern develops, accounts can be restricted or disabled entirely. Social platforms don’t care how “small” you think your outlet is—rules apply the same whether you have ten followers or ten thousand.
There’s another angle to this problem that deserves attention, and it involves paywalled journalism.
Many reputable news organizations rely on subscriptions to survive. Readers pay a modest monthly or annual fee to access reporting that isn’t primarily funded by advertising. This model is common among nonprofit and investigative outlets. When someone copies and pastes an entire article from a paid site and posts it publicly so others can read it for free, they are not doing a public service. Helping friends dodge a paywall might feel generous, but what you’re really doing is helping put that publication out of business.
We don’t operate behind a paywall. Folsom Times is free to read, supported by advertising and community partnerships. Our readers never hit a subscription wall to stay informed about their own community. But that doesn’t make our content—or anyone else’s—free to take. And for outlets that rely on subscriptions, this kind of behavior can be financially damaging. It deprives them of readership, revenue and the ability to continue producing the journalism people claim to value.
There has never been more technology available to help people create original content—and yet, somehow, copying still feels easier to some.
Here’s the reality: copying someone else’s work is not innovation. It’s not competition. It’s not journalism. It’s lazy.
Locally crafted news matters because it is rooted in accountability, presence and trust. It exists because people show up, do the work and invest in the community they cover. When that work is respected—through proper linking, ethical sharing and professional standards—the entire ecosystem benefits.
So the next time you see a story or image you want to share, do it the right way. Link to it. Send readers to the source. Support the people doing the work.
Because when you right click, everyone loses—but when you respect original journalism, the whole community wins.
Bill Sullivan is the co-founder and managing publisher of Folsom Times, a digital product of All Town Media LLC operated in Folsom, California.
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