Plagiarism

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Raymott

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I note that Barb D has been deleting posts which are unattributed copies and pastes from other sites.
I agree with this.

Plagiarism is not a common concept in some countries, so some members might not have heard of it. The idea is that you do not write or post something that is not your work unless you give its source.
This sometimes happens with poems, dictionary definitions, etc.

There are several main reasons for this (at least to me).
The first is that whoever wrote the poem/article should be given credit.
The second is that whoever copies and pastes it, should not be given credit. It makes you appear as if you know something which you don't.
Thirdly, other readers might want to check the source. If the source isn't you, you should say so, and say who it is.

Is there anyone who disagrees with this concept, or wants to discuss it?
 

Tdol

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I'll second it completely. To start with legal issues, the site is run under English law, which enforces copyright strictly, as it is the company is registered there and the servers are stored there. Fair use allows the quoting from texts with referencing, but reproduction of entire texts is republication and may not be allowed- a complete dictionary definition is OK, for instance, but an entire article is not. Also, links to any downloads of files that infringe copyright will be deleted. While copyright laws are not enforced strictly in all countries, the legal background to this site is a system where they are enforced, so we will try to enforce this wherever we see it.
 

Ouisch

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I also agree. As a writer, I must emphasize it's all about the credit. (It's about money, too, but in the grand scheme of things, particularly since the Internet age, credit has become a much more vital component of the publishing process.)

For example, years ago I wrote a "Behind the Scenes" article about reality TV shows that was published in a national newspaper. Over a year later, I was contacted by my editor - he was investigating an accusation of plagiarism. Someone had informed him that one portion of my article was on the IMDB in the "trivia" section of that particular TV show. Sure enough, that trivia fact was word-for-word exactly the same as a paragraph in my piece, but fortunately I was able to provide my original date-stamped MS Word files as evidence to show that someone had simply copied my text and had submitted it to IMDB. My editor never really doubted me, but it was nice to have the evidence to prove my innocence, and the whole situation could have been avoided had the IMDB submitter simply attributed his fact to the appropriate source.
 

5jj

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I agree entirely with what others have written.

There is one problem area that I have enountered. I often try on this forum to help people with questions on grammar. Sometimes I check my answers with one of my serious grammars, sometimes I am confident enough of the reliablity of my own knowledge to give my own answer.

There have been times when I have checked my answer to find that the words I have used are almost, occasionally exactly, identical to the words used by Quirk et al, Michael Swan, etc.

Have I plagiarised in that 'my' words were written from my memory of something I had originally read? Or did I independently come to the same conclusion - in the same words?

For example, I might write: The 'STATE' use of the Simple Present is found with verbs expressing a temporally stable state of affairs. It is also called the 'unrestrictive' present because it places no limitation on the extension of the state into past and future time: Honesty is the best policy.

A week later, I am glancing through Leech and find exactly the same words. How do we know if I have plagiarised or not? When we are dealing with a whole paragraph, then there is usually no doubt, but with a sentence or two it is difficult to know.

Leech, Geoffrey (2004) Meaning and the English Verb (3rd edn) Harlow: Longman.
 

alphaspeller

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The bottom line is that it's stealing. It's taking something that was someone elses and making it yours. Not good. Especially because the person who really wrote it worked, thought it through and edited it but the person stealing it just copied and pasted it and, in doing so, took credit for that work when in fact they did no work.

Be a good person and don't copy other people's work. It's stealing, cheating and lazy!
 

Raymott

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The bottom line is that it's stealing. It's taking something that was someone elses and making it yours. Not good. Especially because the person who really wrote it worked, thought it through and edited it but the person stealing it just copied and pasted it and, in doing so, took credit for that work when in fact they did no work.

Be a good person and don't copy other people's work. It's stealing, cheating and lazy!
That's true from our individualistic Western culture.
But not all societies think the same. That is why Chinese students often have a problem with this. (I'll use the example I know - I'm sure other cultures also find this concept confusing).

When I was doing my BInfoTech, there were many overseas students in our class - two in my assignment group. Neither could grasp this concept. When I compiled the assignment I could not use any of their work (actually, some academics work copied from the internet) because I did not want to risk failing the course. It meant working twice as hard.

Their idea was this: Why put in inferior grade work when you can copy good work from an academic who has researched the issue, and present that? Everybody does this. It's not cheating. It's simply gathering the best that has been written on the subject and submitting that. It's collaboration. In the best traditions of socialism, the ideas don't belong to someone just because they were the first to publish them. Published ideas are common property. If you asked to answer a question in an assignment, and someone has already answered that question better than you could ever do, then the correct thing to do is to copy the better answer.
This subjugation of the individual to society makes it almost impossible for some non-western students to even imagine why someone would object to posting some wise advice or information without attribution. Ideas of copyright and plagiarism don't occur in their culture. Individual credit where it's due is not a cultural value. You can tell them it's stealing, but they won't comprehend.

Now, regardless of the virtues of this viewpoint, this is not how academia or published discourse works in English-speaking countries. And it's not how honest people are expected to behave on English-speaking newsgroups and forums.
 
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Golferman

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It's one thing to copy or borrow a certain point or piece of information like say, "According to the studies of Dr. Smith, Omega 3 fish oil lowers inflammation."

But to use someone's writing word for word is where it becomes stealing and Plagiarism. If you put it in your own words it's generally fine.
 

5jj

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It's one thing to copy or borrow a certain point or piece of information like say, "According to the studies of Dr. Smith, Omega 3 fish oil lowers inflammation."

But to use someone's writing word for word is where it becomes stealing and Plagiarism. If you put it in your own words it's generally fine.
In English-speaking countries yes. I think that Ray was simply saying that some cultures do not regard it as 'cheating' in the way that we do. This is not to say that we should accept it in our culture; indeed we must ensure that people with such cultural beliefs know that it is unacceptable in our culture.

However, Ray's post was useful - to me, at least. I shall still fight against it, but I shall try not to regard all who do it as wilful criminals.
 

Pokemon

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You can tell them it's stealing, but they won't comprehend.
</p>
In this country, which also has a socialist past, lots of students write course-papers by pasting from the Internet. Is it because they don't comprehend that they are stealing? I don't think so. I'm sure they realize what they are doing. The thing is they look at stealing as something natural, something happening everywhere around. A corrupted society produces corrupted minds.
 

5jj

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A corrupted society produces corrupted minds.

That's a little bit of a generalisation.

Let's return to Ray's point: In the best traditions of socialism, the ideas don't belong to someone just because they were the first to publish them.

Most of us nowadays in English-speaking countries, and in other places too, do not share this belief. I think it's a bit harsh to consider it to be the product of a corrupt mind.

I think that most of us would probably agree that the Nazi period in German history was corrupt, and that it produced corrupted minds, but that is not a good analogy with the socialist view of plagiarism. Our belief on that is the one that most of us hold. It is not right in absolute terms.
 

Pokemon

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Let's return to Ray's point: In the best traditions of socialism, the ideas don't belong to someone just because they were the first to publish them.

Most of us nowadays in English-speaking countries, and in other places too, do not share this belief. I think it's a bit harsh to consider it to be the product of a corrupt mind.
.

What does Raymott know about socialism? :) Paraphrasing Napoleon's well-known aphorism, "from a small lie to a big lie there is only one step".
 

5jj

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What does Raymott know about socialism? :)
What does Pokemon know about what Raymott knows about socialism? To paraphrase Napoleon's well-known aphorism, "from a small lie to a big lie there is only one step".
 

Tdol

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There have been times when I have checked my answer to find that the words I have used are almost, occasionally exactly, identical to the words used by Quirk et al, Michael Swan, etc.

Have I plagiarised in that 'my' words were written from my memory of something I had originally read? Or did I independently come to the same conclusion - in the same words?

Many concepts explained by people using the same terms will be almost identical, so I doubt that that would constitute anything at all. If all your answers, or many of them, were simply copy and pastes from a text, it would be different.

Our Phrasal Verb and Idioms will be broadly similar to those found in dictionaries, and definitions will be similar and possibly the same in some cases, but we haven't copied them. However, there are sites that have just nicked ours wholesale, which is different.

It's not unexpected that people working in an area answer common questions in a similar manner. In fact, it would be more of a surprise if the answers were very different.
 
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birdeen's call

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I hear there are quite many people in the Western world who find the idea of copyright loathsome. They seem to believe that it's immoral to obstruct others' access to knowledge, which copyright certainly happens to do. Many of them don't infringe it but try to fight it by issuing their own works under various kinds of free licences. Which is very cool. :)
 

Raymott

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There's a difference between plagiarism and copyright. When I began the thread, I was hoping the discussion wouldn't veer off into copyright issues.
Copyright is a legal concept.

What I was referring to was the moral weakness of ripping off someone else's ideas verbatim and presenting them as your own. For example, if someone gave a very good reply to a question on "Ask the Teacher", copyright issues are not likely to be relevant. But if someone dragged up an old copy of that post and presented it as their own (rather than linking to it, or saying that <author> wrote it), that's plagiarism.
The reason I wanted to make the distinction is to emphasise that just because something is not under copyright (say Shakespeare), that doesn't give you the moral right to post a Shakespearean sonnet and claim it as your own work.

This is about attribution not access to knowledge.
 

birdeen's call

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There's a difference between plagiarism and copyright. When I began the thread, I was hoping the discussion wouldn't veer off into copyright issues.
Copyright is a legal concept.

What I was referring to was the moral weakness of ripping off someone else's ideas verbatim and presenting them as your own. For example, if someone gave a very good reply to a question on "Ask the Teacher", copyright issues are not likely to be relevant. But if someone dragged up an old copy of that post and presented it as their own (rather than linking to it, or saying that <author> wrote it), that's plagiarism.
The reason I wanted to make the distinction is to emphasise that just because something is not under copyright (say Shakespeare), that doesn't give you the moral right to post a Shakespearean sonnet and claim it as your own work.

This is about attribution not access to knowledge.
I'm sorry I mentioned copyright then. I understand the difference now.

That's something new to me. I thought plagiarism was a legal concept too. I thought it was illegal to claim to have created someone else's work. I've just read some things on Wikipedia about it and I'm not sure if I understand it correctly.

Is it so that plagiarism is not itself considered a crime but it's often punished by law by applying other concepts to the act even when there's no copyright infingement? If that's the case, why don't people just call plagiarism a crime?
 

Raymott

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I'm sorry I mentioned copyright then. I understand the difference now.

That's something new to me. I thought plagiarism was a legal concept too. I thought it was illegal to claim to have created someone else's work. I've just read some things on Wikipedia about it and I'm not sure if I understand it correctly.
This is exactly my point, and it's why I claim that many student don't understand the concept.
If someone posts an essay on the internet, and writes, "This may freely be used by anyone for any reason", and thereby giving up copyright, it is still plagiarism to copy and paste this essay as a school or university assignment. And it is still grounds for failing that student.

Is it so that plagiarism is not itself considered a crime but it's often punished by law by applying other concepts to the act even when there's no copyright infingement?
Yes, possibly. While plagiarism might not be illegal according to criminal law, it is against University rules, and academics can rightfully be dismissed or have their credentials stripped from them, if it is found out that the work they purported to be theirs was, in fact, not.
If that's the case, why don't people just call plagiarism a crime?
Because it's not on the criminal code. It's an infringement of academic rules, and I would say forum rules, and the moral rules of not lying.
Basically it's lying about yourself. Fraud is a crime, but no one is going to prosecute someone for posting an old poem and pretending it is their own. The punishment is usually moral censure from colleagues, peers, or whoever has been duped. The main damage done by plagiarism is to the truth, and to the reputation of the plagiarist.
 

birdeen's call

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Basically it's lying about yourself. Fraud is a crime, but no one is going to prosecute someone for posting an old poem and pretending it is their own. The punishment is usually moral censure from colleagues, peers, or whoever has been duped. The main damage done by plagiarism is to the truth, and to the reputation of the plagiarist.
I think it may harm the one being plagiarized too. But I understand your point.
 

Barb_D

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They seem to believe that it's immoral to obstruct others' access to knowledge, which copyright certainly happens to do.

No, it certainly does NOT. Nothing in a copyright prevents others from reading it, seeing it, or enriching their mind from it. It prevents them from using it for a monetarily profitable purpose without the permission of (and in some cases payment to) the person who created the work.
 
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