As I tend to do with any topic I have trouble describing, I looked up quotes on plagiarism. The two I’ve posted are bold statements. They imply that there is no such thing as original thought, which I suppose is fair enough. In 2011, we are encouraged to seek out knowledge and make discoveries, but the knowledge we acquire was supplied by someone else. The information we regurgitate in assignments prior to looking at it analytically, are the words of another. What are the odds that no two people have ever perceived something in the same way? Slim to none. To a certain extent, there is a universal unspoken agreement on this matter. So what is plagiarism? I think George A. Moore had it right, it’s actually  ”taking something from one man and making it worse“. Why? Because no one cares unless it’s obvious. But then, I’ve found that in the case of copyright infringement a lot of the cases are about taking something from one man and making it better/a success (i.e. making more money of it). Suddenly, obscure writers come out of the woodwork and sue or demand Royalties (e.g. Born This Way debacle).

I found this Harper’s Magazine essay particularly interesting, because it is an in depth discussion of plagiarism. It provides different takes on the topic- what worries people, the intellectual property concept, as well as the ideas of originality and public knowledge. It was interesting to read it before seeing this article. According to the Washington Post, students are becoming

“a bit fuzzy on the difference between original and copied work…[they] can assemble a 10-page paper on any topic in a few minutes simply by doing a Google search and copying blocks of text from here and there. One-third of all unoriginal content …. came from social networks, including Facebook and … various “content-sharing” sites where users post and share information, such as Answers.com.”

This was interesting, because the article made it sound like students were creating coherent and (possibly) eloquent assignments, by collecting information from various sources on the internet.  The study did not mention whether the works were cited at all which is doubtful considering the sources included wikipedia,  and Yahoo! Answers- good personal resources that are rarely  cited in academic work. If this is the case, then I would agree with accusations of plagiarism, however, does the quality of the work matter at all? Granted, the majority of the words do not belong to these students, but compiling a piece and editing it to the point that only detectors like turnitin.com are capable of tracing the original sources seems like quite a bit of work. Should credit be given for the effort that goes into selecting and reworking these snippets of information? If we liken these “cut and paste” papers to seemless mashups like the Grey Album, does it make any actual difference? Also, if we excuse the behavior now, are we likely to be condoning future copyright infringement?

Is academic plagiarism infringement’s gateway drug?

I find it funny that this ruling is the first of its kind since, as the article states, the act of selling term papers is an age old practice that originated long before the Internet. In fact, I vividly remember my own excitement while researching for a final paper for Social Foundations, and finding a history paper that my friend wrote while in High School (being respectful of the rules of plagiarism, I obviously avoided copying him!) The thing is, he sold his paper to this website, and he’s not the only one. I know plenty of other people who have sold their class notes and term papers to websites like GradeGuru, which is actually owned by McGraw Hill. By selling their notes and papers, these people are essentially giving away the rights of their creative works to anyone who seeks it using a simple Google search.

But this doesn’t change the fact that once that material is used without citation, it becomes plagiarism. Is one supposed to cite any Jane or John Doe in their research papers just because the information was legally obtained? Would a professor possibly consider this a valid resource of information? Most likely, the answer is no. In this recent ruling, the district court ordered the company to shut down, unless they could prove that all those papers used by Internet users across the globe were posted with the consent of the authors. I highly doubt Mr. Carroll will be able to get himself out of this mess…

A link to the article featured in USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-02-01-term-papers_N.htm