Why this page?
Before becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist, Jane McCampbell had a career in marketing and brand strategy in the publishing industry. As a result, she frequently receives questions from other therapists regarding advertising and promotion, and especially regarding websites. One of the crucial aspects of marketing on the web is knowing the basics of ethical best practices, such as avoiding plagiarism and maintaining appropriate collegial respect. Jane has therefore written this article to encourage the therapeutic community to adopt an ethical approach to online marketing. For a more detailed article on obtaining a website presence as a therapist, click here.

The problem of plagiarism
The exponential growth of the web has provided a significant headache for governments, academic institutions and corporations across the globe from an intellectual property standpoint, due to the fact that it is so easy to copy from websites without detection. Sadly, the therapeutic community is not immune to the unethical and unlawful practice of plagiarism. Although problems that arise are often due to ignorance rather than deliberate attempts to defraud or steal intellectual property, it behooves all of us to be aware of the issues at stake when creating an online presence for ourselves.

Copyright law basics
The biggest problem is due to a misconception that any information on the web is "in the public domain" and there for the taking, which is actually not the case. The rule of thumb of intellectual property law is that copyright lies with its originator. Therefore, while it may be very easy to copy text from a website, change a few words and make it your own, your actions constitute plagiarism whether or not you get caught doing it. The same applies to images, graphics and photographs which shouldn't be taken from websites any more than paintings should be taken from a therapist's waiting room. 

Text and Images
Another place of confusion arises when organizations such as TherapySites (the host of this site) provide standardized copy (text) for anyone who uses their service. If you are paying for the service, you are deemed to have paid for the copy, but as you start making small changes it can become very difficult to remember whose copy was whose. If you then take that copy and transfer it to a new website hosted by another organization, you are no longer paying for the right to use it and may inadvertently cross the line into plagiarism. Similarly, if you use a web design service that comes with an image library, it is not appropriate to download those images to use on another site or in your printed literature. If you want to use images in this way, purchase them from stock photography sites such as Shutterstock or iStockphotography instead.

Designs and Concepts
While it can be fairly easy to spot an infringement of copyright when it comes to the written word, issues of design-theft can be much more nebulous, but still happen. If you are designing a website from scratch, you are bound to look at other websites you like for inspiration. Perhaps the best suggestion is to be sure to draw your inspiration from multiple sources across different industries, rather than relying on just one, even if that "one" is on the other side of the country. If you are using TherapySites, the limited number of design options make it likely that you will, sooner or later, find another therapist nearby using the same design as you. Provided that the two of you have sufficiently different practices, this is not a problem. If your practices are similar, however, and your sites are likely to be viewed by the same client population, this can become a risk to your brand. An ethical approach would be to do a Google search for other therapists in your area BEFORE you choose or change your TherapySites template, and try to avoid designs already in use by therapists with similar practices. Unfortunately, if you do find that another therapist has suddenly adopted the same template as yours, there is very little recourse available to you, other than writing and appealing to their own sense of collegial respect, which may or may not be as attuned as yours. Unfortunately, if they do say "too bad", your only real choice is to launch your own, unique website which is what Jane ended up doing. 

Intake Paperwork and Policy Documents
A number of therapists choose to make their intake paperwork available on their websites so that clients can easily access it and complete it before their first appointment. Policy documents pertaining to sliding scale fees and privacy practices are also often made available this way. Please note that these documents are also subject to copyright, and should not be reproduced or adopted - in part or in whole - without the explicit, written permission of their creator. If you are looking for ideas for your paperwork, a great resource is Edward L. Zuckerman's The Paper Office which comes with a handy CD of downloadable templates.

Citing Scales and Inventories
If you make use of scales and inventories such as the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, A.T., Steer, R.A., & Brown, G. K., 1996) or the Dissociative Experiences Scale (Bernstein Carlson, E. & Putnam, F.W., 1986),  be sure to secure the appropriate permissions and/or pay the publishers for copies before posting them on your website. All such scales should be properly cited.

Protecting your intellectual property
Because the problem of website plagiarism is so significant, an organization called Copyscape offers a free service for anyone with a website to check for similar copy on any other websites currently on the web. Simply type in your URL and Copyscape will alert you to websites that feature similar text to yours. Copyscape also provides banners that you can put on your website to alert potential content-thieves that you will be in touch if your copy is stolen.

The rule of thumb
While there is no way to completely prevent or seek recourse for theft of copy, design or images on the web, the best approach is to adopt an attitude of ethical online practice and encourage others to do so too. In sum, only use it if you created it, paid for it, or received explicit written permission to do so!