Erika L. Rich
March 28, 2015
Assignment #3
LSTU E–120

Reputation Management and Ethical Considerations for
Members of the Warrior Forum Message Board

The internet marketing world is filled with gurus, coaches, and high dollar specialists that spend a lot of time and money on their products and release them to the public via many avenues such as Facebook, marketplaces, and online message boards. Unfortunately, there’s a segment of marketers out there that will poach others information and repackage it for their benefits, ultimately selling it back on the very groups they stole it from. This information misuse or dishonesty is very hard to police in a consistent and perfect manner. Many in the industry like to compare it to insider fraud since there are many times it happens in close knit groups such as the WarriorForum.com. With almost 1 million registered members, and over 7.8 million posts, it is a hotbed for unscrupulous marketers to feed on.

Ultimately when it occurs, it is the problem of not only the victim whose work was misappropriated, but also the reputation of the forum where it occurred. If that malfeasance is not tackled appropriately, an opportunistic one-off misuse of information can become systemic and spread throughout an organization, creating a culture of fraud and theft. When it transpires, fraudsters will ultimately fail to note the difference between an info that is originally theirs and one which is not they do not own.

The WarriorForum thrives on moderation by its members and in fact has a sticky post announcing that very fact. “If a spammer comes on board it only takes few of you to make his posts vanish into thin air. Just use that Report Post button. Their posts will go into ‘Moderated’ status and no one will see them. It gives admins and super mods time enough to come along and delete them for good.”1

I will be writing the final version of this paper as viewed through the lens of Lessig’s work. Lessig acknowledged four powers that are capable of putting constraints on our actions in life. One is the social norms that are normally enforced by the community members. Two, is the markets through which the demand and supply of various goods and services are responsible for setting a price for the various behaviors or items that people possess. Three is the existence of laws that threatens sanctions in case they are not obeyed. Lastly is the social architecture. It implies that all the features in the world, whether naturally or artificially also put constraints on our daily activities. The main reason behind the creation of code by the people worldwide is to protect the values which we believe are very fundamental in our operations on the cyberspace.

Some of the observed major challenges that the community face in dealing with these forces on the internet include the deception by users that the original idea is theirs when it is not. There is also the theft of either the intellectual property or the data from the website without the consent of its original producer (Lessig, 2005). The assignment of ghost writers to by the thieves to reconstitute the work they steal is very common practice.

Sometimes the people stealing the work have the audacity to publicly state that is their exact modus operandi. In one such instance the person whose content was copied, Jeff Gaudette of RunnersContent.com, outed the theft on his website’s blog. He outlined the exact content by comparing the fraudulent copy with his own, and even posted screen shots from the WarriorForum where the person who repurposed his content, publicly told others how he did it and gave them tips for doing it themselves.2

Widespread plagiarism and theft of material from the WarriorForum has been such a problem over the years that someone has started a website title "Warrior Forum Sucks" to out specific instances of people sell their fraudulent version to the community and products they had ripped off.3 How this affects the perception of newcomers to the WarriorForum would need to be further researched.

The Warrior Forum message board can take the subsequent observed steps to eradicate the misuse of their information in accordance with the four main forces of Lessig. Here are some that can be fleshed out and researched more thoroughly.

·  Assess cyberspace users systematically.

·  Device a whistleblowing guiding principle in the case an individual is found guilty of the act.

·  Inflict clear levels up to which the ideas or work of a person can be copied but with their recognitions in the final product.

·  Sporadically audit the internet search engines for instances of copied work.

·  Stimulate a culture of eliminating any forms of copycatting job on the cyberspace among the users.

·  Strictly implement a zero tolerance policy towards stealing the works of others.

·  Have a clear reaction strategy in place in case the problem is discovered.

The forum owners have a responsibility of protecting their users through the creation of a fair and manageable system to protect their work. They should also consider actively participating in a plagiarized info or data sharing scheme so as to eliminate stealing issues completely.

References

1.  http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/300-you-moderator.html

2.  http://runnersconnect.net/running-tips/runner-academy-theft

3.  http://warriorforumsucks.com/warrior-forum-plagiarism-piracy/

4.  Lawrence Lessig, class reading: Code 2.0

5.  Lessig, L. (2005). Free culture: The nature and future of creativity. New York, NY u.a.: Penguin Press.