Wednesday, October 24, 2012
October 24th In-Class Blogpost
Essentially what we have covered is an ethical guideline in order for us to not be a "crook" in the world of academia. These topics have a lot to do with the way we study and live our lives through certain mediums such as, television, internet, radio, and most of books! (Cliche' alert!!!) As we go about our collegiate career we tend to approach many research papers and many other assignments that require us to use sources, and we must cite those sources in order to be credible and honest members of the world of education. For Instance we go to the library to find a book to use for our research paper on corn (just a random topic). We then find a book that is suitable for our basic corn-researching needs. One must cite the book and then paraphrase the content in the book in our own words in order for us to not "steal" the information.
Plagiarism and Copyright Licenses are related to Library research because they are all directly correlated to the way we can use certain things, and also the capacity at which we execute the information within that particular source.
Very few questions remain unanswered , and due to that I feel as though I am informed and well-learned about this issue, but then there comes to the point that plagiarism and Copyright infringement are not always easily detectable, there are no concrete borders, It seems to get caught by chance and luck of the draw, and when determining which is which it seems to be based mostly on personal discretion. So the bottom line is...
HOW DO YOU REFINE THE LAWS OF PLAGIARISM AND COPYRIGHT PROCEDURES TO FORMULATE A DEFINITE GUIDELINE?
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I have a friend who studies corn, actually!
ReplyDeleteYou're right that plagiarism and copyright infringement are not clear-cut. Plagiarism is hard because it's tough to know what is a good paraphrase and what is just a little bit too similar to the original. My guideline in my own writing is "when in doubt, cite". I'd rather use too many quotation marks and put a citation after every stinking sentence than plagiarize.
Copyright, though, is intentionally fuzzy. The purpose behind the law is to encourage people to create new stuff -- by protecting it for a certain number of years, that means only the person who created it gets to make money off of selling copies. Why would I write a book if I couldn't make any money off of it? So you're not allowed to make copies and distribute them without paying me for a certain number of years... But, there needs to be loopholes in that. So, as a student, you need to be able to use small portions of books for your research without penalty -- otherwise, what is the value of that book? And a literary critic needs to be able to use small portions of a work as examples when publishing a critique... But how much is too much? And what about educational uses, like teachers making copies of a just-published article for students to read in class as part of their lesson?
So it makes sense for the laws to be fuzzy, but that does make it really hard for us to understand! I just want you to get that plagiarism is all about giving credit, no matter what medium we're talking about, while copyright is something different... And if you're going to use a song or image in a multimedia presentation, make sure you use open content stuff or get permission (and cite it properly)!