The Ethics of Making Copies of "View Only" Google Docs

Last week I published a blog post about how to make copies of Google Documents that are shared as "view only." In that same post I included a video on how to find public Google Documents. That post raised a good question from a reader who asked about the ethics of making copies documents that are shared as "view only." I shared my thoughts on that question in the following short video.



For those who can't watch the video or don't want to, the short version is that I think it's fine to make a copy provided that you don't then try to pass-off the work or a derivative of it as your own. Of course, if the person who published the document has disabled the option to make a copy of the document then copying and pasting the text would be unethical too.