Plagiarism, Let's Not Carry It Too Far

I have been writing a lot of blogs about plagiarism already. This week, I want to give it a new point of view. As we know, plagiarism is always a big deal. Actually, it is so big that it can make your hair on end if someone is accusing you of it.

Not only the severe consequences that could be caused by plagiarism, but also its wide existance. Plagiarism can appear anywhere in your academic life. It could appear with an inappropriate citation in your essay, a picture you used in your lecture powerpoint without declaring the resource, or even an refering in your public speach without noticing the original contributer of the idea. Plagiarism spreads so wide that it could even become a threat. It threatens you constantly as long as you are thinking of using some information that does not originate from yourself. However, the truth is there is too much to share, especially with the help of the internet. In this era of the socalled information explosion, there is barely anything new now. Anything you find, anything you say has a great chance of being found or said already. Does that mean we are all thieves of ideas? Are we all plagiarists? I think it is time to set a boundray. Let's say do not carry it too far.

We are never original.

Resource:http://pic.newssc.org/0/12/47/10/12471083_999474.jpg

Now, plagiarism is a regulated thing that any violation would be considered crime with punishment. However, tracing to its very beginning, it was basicly a moral thing.Plagiarising is not right because it makes people feel bad. It would cause a feeling of injustice because someone would obtain a credit with other's hardwork. It is simple and straight forward in the beginnning. Then step after step, we came to this place.

"Your professor copied a chaper from a book and handed it out to you, so your don't have to buy the textbook? Was she allowed to do this?"

"If the owner of an article gives you permission to make copies of it, do you have to worry about plagiarism?"

"You are writing a paper and you copy a few words from another paper. Do you think this kind of copying is considered plagiarism?"

Here are three questions in a survey of students' opinion about the range of plagiarism. I consider these questions are the most difficult to answer. Take the first one as an example. It is indubitably a violation of copy right, if you make copies of a book without the permition of the writer. However, what if your perfessor does offer you a copy. Will you refuse her kindness and but your own copy which could be hundrads of dollars? Will you report her for her academic misconduct? It is easy to answer the questions on the survey. As long as we stay strict, we would be fine. However, in the real world, there are so many "grey area" and there are circumstances that we just cannot be too strict and point out all the mistakes others make, especially the minor ones. The line of moral is wide and different for everyone, so the line of plagiarism is blur as well. What rules should we follow when we are really haveing difficulties define plagiarism? Should we tie ourselves up, so we can never make a single mistake?

Practically, put yourself at the position of the original creator and think about it. If I was the author, what would I like my work being refered? "If I spent three years and got a result, I would rather be properly cited." "If someone is using my material for his lecture, I would like him to inform me in advance." Transpositional consideration would be a good way to solve this problem. And I found, most of time a polite enquiry to the resource provider beforehand can save a lot of troubles, and most of the people are generous of sharing their work as long as you give credits to them.