Thoughts on Plagiarism

Last week in class we discussed a lot of interesting facts from  copy writing to plagiarism. What really caught my attention was plagiarism. To me plagiarism was only thought of as copying other people work as your own. I never realized that having a friend read one of my papers and adding quotes to help my paper is actually plagiarism. The interesting reason why it is, because I myself am not actually writing these quotes. which means the reader is doing the work for me and isn’t my thoughts. So someone might and could say that I handed in my readers’ paper. This is interesting because many people have read my papers and wrote things to include. I didn’t know this could me be seen as plagiarism.

subject Headings:

ZA- information resources

AC Collections. Series. Collected works

Plagiarism

In the article Isserman states “if we are all guilty of straying into that gray area of unintentional plagiarism, haven’t we forfeited the right to judge others, including those whose plagiarism may have been more purposeful?  I disagree with this. People who plagiarize and make money from it should be held accountable for their actions.  We all plagiarize in some way everyday. It is hard not to.  Most of the time it is not intentional either.  I do agree though with his statement “What we do is teach students to develop their own voices and establish ownership of the words they use. And, if and when we in higher education stop doing that, we have pretty well abandoned our justification for existence.” I totally agree once students can think for themselves and own up to it, then the teachers’ job is complete. Then the students become the teachers and it is just a cycle. All we can ask for is for when people speak their minds that it is really their own.

Class notes 9/30/10

In today’s class we discussed information ethics, principally the issues around intellectual property.

Ethical Considerations:
“A wealth of new possibilities awaits those who employ the new digital tools for creating and delivering compelling new content, yet these same tools make it easier than ever to plagiarize and pirate content” (Pavlik, Media in the Digital Age, p. 234).

We began by discussing academic integrity and plagiarism.

• This article from the New York Times discusses the case of Jayson Blair, a journalist who fabricated and plagiarized news articles while he worked as a Times reporter: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/national/11PAPE.html

• This article from Time Magazine discusses the case of Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard sophomore who lost her book contract when it was revealed that she’d plagiarized from another author: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1189282,00.html

For the second half of class we discussed copyright, public domain and fair use:

• The American Library Association created this digital copyright slider to make it easier to determine whether a work is under copyright: http://www.librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/

• This copyright expiration flowchart from a law firm’s website also provides guidelines on copyright: http://www.sunsteinlaw.com/practices/copyright-portfolio-development/flowchart.htm

• This clever flowchart highlighting some of the differences between purchased movies (with digital rights management) and illegally pirated films: http://www.geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2010/02/25/piracy-full.jpg, while this comic tackles the same issue with downloadable music files: http://xkcd.com/488/

• One less restrictive alternative to copyright that many creators are using is Creative Commons licensing: http://creativecommons.org/. The search engine on this website can help you find copyright-free images, sound, and other media to use.

• Copyright-free doesn’t always mean that the creator won’t be able to make a living. CASHmusic is essentially a cooperative that uses a subscription or pay-as-you-like model to fund releases from participating musicians. While all releases are available for free download, limited edition or special issues are also available for purchase: http://cashmusic.org/.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism a lie of the mind by Maurice Isserman was an article about how plagiarism affected her school and her thoughts on plagiarism. For me plagiarism was really acknowledge my freshman year in high school. The students in my English class were being caught copying and pasting other people work on the internet to do their essays. Just like Maurice I started paying more attention to plagiarism when one of our own got caught. Three students failed the essay because of plagiarism and after that incident my high school began teaching students what was plagiarism and how it was illegal and get you in trouble with the law. This is my second year in City Tech and this year teachers are acknowledging plagiarism more then the previous, i think it’s a good idea to explain what is it and how to avoid getting into any trouble.
J.Lantigua

Plagiarism

 

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as a transgression against our common intellectual values, carrying negative consequences for those who perform such bad action. Legally and educationally it could have negative consequences, since Plagiarism is consider a fraud. This theme is completely delicate since it has to concern with the ideas, words, proclamations, inspirations, etc, for these reasons and for our own intellectual convenience everyone should respect other people’s works or at least give some recognition of the people who wrote something. I think that schools, college or any type of institution has to clarify and explain the consequences of plagiarism, in order to create more conscience in people’s minds.

What is Plagiarism?

Larry makes me rethink the issue of plagiarism. Is it plagiarism to use others’ contents and create completely different ideas? Indeed, there are so many remixed contents online as Larry introduces in his video. As a kid I don’t really feel it is just copied contents. I think it depends on how they use the recreated contents. If the contents are related to money, it would be troublesome unless the original author allows them to use his/her contents. As an architectural student, I learned “Imitation is mothers of creation” in my first year of lecture. There is a famous architect who created incredible architecture through copying from one of the most famous architect ‘Le Corbusier’. His name is Ando Tadao, a world famous Japanese architect. His style of architecture as like Le Corbusier and he said he was inspired by Le Corbusier’s work. However, he didn’t just copy from his, he also recreated Le Corbusier’s word to his word. As Larry mentioned, in early 20^th century people existed as only readers; however, through the new technology, online and digital contents, people changed as creator and author. Digital media give public a chance to be a creator although people use others’ contents. I think it is time that people keep being reminded of what plagiarism is and people and law have to judge that points. Also, critical thought is important to keep others’ intellectual properties. People have to have a skill that which one took others’ idea, which one can be called as ‘Recreation’.

-Hyeongi Kim

Information ethics: some definitions

We’ll be covering a lot of ground in class tomorrow when we talk about the ethics of information use, so I thought it might be helpful to post some definitions for you to refer to. (We’ll go over this in class, too.)
See you tomorrow,
Prof. Smale

Some Terminology Relevant to the Ethics of Information Use:

Copyright:
“the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.: works granted such right by law on or after January 1, 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 50 years after his or her death.”

Fair Use:
“the conditions under which you can use material that is copyrighted by someone else without paying royalties ”

Public Domain:
“the status of a literary work or an invention whose copyright or patent has expired or that never had such protection.”

Academic Integrity:
“Academic Integrity is the idea of faculty and students engaging in the proces of teaching and learning with a high level of respect for each other and great attention to the values of trust, honesty, and fairness.”

Plagiarism:
“the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”

Open Access:
“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. ”

All definitions from Dictionary.com, with the exception of Academic Integrity, which is from the Academic Integrity at City Tech page on the college website, and Open Access, which is from Peter Suber’s Open Access Overview.