Plagiarism Made Easy In The Digital World

Marc Davis

December 14, 2012

https://www.digitalethics.org/essays/plagiarism-made-easy-digital-world

"Copycats in Crime "

First Impression:

Plagiarism has always been an issue involving students like me; thanks to technology, plagiarism has been pretty common and just easy to do in two steps, copy and paste, then viola. Personally, some people don't know the meaning of the words "paraphrase" or "originality" nowadays.

Quote: 

"In this digital age, stealing words is simply a matter of clicking a mouse, and presto!"

Reflection Proper:

In today's society, the words copy and paste are pretty popular especially in schools, and those words link to plagiarism: a term of which is a crime involving stealing one's words and claiming them as his or her words. By copy and paste, I mean the fact that students, when it comes to doing work, are always finding a easy way of doing their homework in a snap, so they just find a site, scan over it, find some words, copy and paste into a document, and presto----homework done. But plagiarism, as I have known for years, is not just limited to students since it is the World Wide Web we are talking about; it even involves bloggers, college applicants and researchers who are involved in respected and well-known medical and technological journals. Let's face the fact though: original ideas are hard to come up nowadays, and sometimes even if you come up with one, you will soon realize that either it is very impossible to too and probably rather childish or that someone already have already beaten you to the punch in creating that said idea you have. Also, one should realize this lesson that I have taken into heart a long time ago: plagiarism is a crime on its own accord: not only you are endangering yourself, but you are also hurting the person which owns the work that you have copied --- point being, it's a crime against truth, and let's face facts: there have been recent developments made in order to combat plagiarism such as the invention of plagiarism detectors, which by the way, is mostly used in colleges especially when it comes to checking their works such as thesis papers, academic and scholarly writing. So for those people who are known to plagiarize and even to those who don't know it yet: look before you leap, because every action has its consequences, and if you do something as stupid as copying or stealing one's work, well, the consequences are dire --i.e. worst case-scenario, you could be either be expelled or fire or sent to jail for a few years time.

5 Things Learned From Article: 

1. I learned that  we should respect other people's work when it comes to doing research work.

2. I learned about different cases of plagiarism in the news and writing industry.

3. I learned that it's not only students who are well-known for plagiarism, but even other people as well like researchers and bloggers.

4. I learned that in colleges, plagiarism detectors are heavily used. 

5. I learned that plagiarism not only hurts yourself via the consequences, but it also involves hurting the reputation of the author of the plagiarized work (victim).

5 Integrative Questions:

1. Do all people know that plagiarism is not a victim-less crime?

2. Why are people still doing plagiarism even if there have been lessons about it ?

3. How does one use other people's work in their research properly and with respect?

4. Do the penalties vary for what type of plagiarism is involved with the one who did it ?

5. How can you support anti-plagiarism in your own way?