When it comes to plagiarism on Instagram, ideas cannot be protected in the same way as they are in the publishing, art or music industries. So when another Instagram user starts copying your work, is there anything you can actually do?
Well, that's exactly the predicament fashion blogger Jenn Lake found herself in recently, so she took to her site to (without naming any names) call out another Instagram user for copying her ideas.
"Someone has been using my Instagram account as a template for their own," she wrote. "This person has systematically copied my channel, captions, location concepts, and personal style for more than three years… As a result, I've taken immense steps to try and evolve the look and feel of my Instagram account to further differentiate myself and push the creative boundaries. Every time I pivot into new territory, the individual does the same soon thereafter."
According to Chicago Mag, the Instagram user in question is a woman named Rosie Clayton, who does not have her own blog, but has plenty of followers and apparently used to be good friends with Lake.
If you look through their accounts, you will see that some of the posts are almost identical and usually – although not on every occasion – Lake's posts come before Clayton's, suggesting that she is copying her.
However, when Chicago Mag spoke to Clayton about the story, she said that it was Lake that was in fact plagiarising her work.
"I'm not connected with certain big fashion bloggers and I don't have a blog," she said. "Because I have less followers [119,00 as opposed to 149,00] it looks like I'm the one copying."
In a further twist to the story, Lake wrote to Jezebel after it covered the story to say that she was not referring to Clayton when she said someone was copying her work, but did not respond when asked who she was referring to.
We may never know who copied whom in this particular Instagram war (and of course there is an argument that the two influencers are just doing this to get attention and followers), however it is a good reminder about the lack of protection artists and influencers have on social media in comparison to other industries.
