and, outside of breakthroughs in scientific discoveries and technology, are usually not all that new. This means that presenters, clinicians, website owners, riding instructors and trainers should be mindful and take care with what they teach and how they teach it. In this Facebook, internet world it is far too easy to click a few keys and copy other people’s work and then casually pass it off on your own website or as your own idea. Using someone else’s work, copying their ideas, their words, their illustrations, their exercises, and even in some cases their trademarked or copyrighted materials and passing it off as ones’ own work is stealing. I was recently involved with an individual who had produced a video, which they fully intended to sell for profit. The video
Imitation is Not Always a Form of Flattery
was presenting and teaching the princi-
– The Professional Ethics of Using Other People’s Work
own rather crude drawings and tracings
ples of an already well-known training and teaching technique. This person had the audacity to actually copy the illustrations from a book on the subject, making their and then trying to pass the information and ideas off as their own work. This was a young instructor, not very experienced, and shocked to discover that what they had
By Peggy S. Brown
done was illegal and a distinct copyright violation. They thought that redrawing the
Training and working with horses is an age-
horses, and if you think about it not much
illustrations and changing the words in the
old pursuit going back even before the ear-
information is really brand new.
book around a little bit made it ok to do. Wrong!
liest horse book, On Horsemanship, written by Xenophon in 355 BC. Xenophon taught
Most everything we are as horse peo-
about horse care, bitting and training and
ple comes from things we have learned,
How about an instructor who wants to be-
much of his advice and wisdom applies
whether from personal experience, from
come a clinician or presenter at horse ex-
to methods still in use today. Many other
instructors, perhaps clinics or expo pre-
pos? Perhaps they see someone else do a
books of horse instruction have been writ-
sentations, or from other educational me-
presentation that they really like and then
ten throughout history and even today the
dia we have experienced throughout our
they decide to copy it, with a few minor
publishers of horse books are still very ac-
lifetime. In the modern horse-world we
changes of course, and then perhaps they
tive. Nowadays besides books, we also have
often see trainers and coaches teaching
go on even further perhaps to use someone
videos, YouTube, the internet, educational
techniques that may be new and different
else’s ideas to write a book, shoot a video,
horse expos, horse clinics and more and
or techniques that may well have been
or to do expo presentations on their own.
more avenues that teach us about train-
copied from someone else’s work. Keep in
Where are this person’s professional ethics
ing, caring for, and riding horses; there’s
mind however that most things dealing
here? Transparent and weak individuals,
so much information available and yet the
with horses have been around, perhaps in
aren’t they?
horse world is a small world and horses are
slightly different ways, for a very long time
Summer 2021 | Riding Instructor
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