I have been interested over the past couple years on how "Internet plagiarism" would play itself out and what kind of decisions would be made over it. First, there were warnings to students but I personally always knew friends that ignored them and didn't care because they didn't think they would get caught. I was always too scared and also I didn't like turning in a paper that I could not recite for a teacher if asked to. The only way I figured I could plagiarize was if I read something and couldn't figure out any other way to say it that sounded like my writing. I think every writer has a certain voice and teachers who have read other things a person has written may see something and not believe it was from that person. Regardless of all the reasons, I was never a plagiarizer but many people were. Turnitin.com changed that a little as strict teachers started forcing kids to turn their papers in electronically so that a program could match it up against other papers found on the Internet. This worked for a while as everyone was scared, but I never actually heard of anyone getting caught or getting in serious trouble from turnitin.com. Since being in college, the problem has only continued and I have seen students copy and paste whole parts of papers, or just take the whole paper itself, and turn it in. I found this article that showed an example of a professional company being caught for plagarism and I thought I'd show it, but I don't think the problem will get any better in the future. In fact, I feel the more the Internet is up and running, the more articles and papers will find themselves published on it and the harder it will be to stop.
Link-http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/sunderland-based_magazine_cook.html
This is an interesting topic, Jeremey. I feel that we are able to learn through works of others. The thing some students forget is that writing is becoming more competitive, so there are authority prospects out there determined to eliminate those who cheat. Therefore,just cite the sources....
ReplyDeleteCandid, interesting thoughts. I've always been conflicted about plagiarism. Obviously, it's wrong to still the intellectual property of others but I think the use of the property should be taken into consideration. Stilling someone's ideas and writing a bestselling book with them is wrong. But referring to an online paper about the same topic you're writing about in llth grade isn't wrong. Being original in thought is hard and if teachers really want to stop plagiarism, they should stop giving the same assignments that have been given for the past 50 years.
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