The War on Plagiarism

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring2002/heberling51.html

I found this article by searching the TAMU Library database for ‘plagiarism in education’ under the articles tab. This article is by Michael Heberling, who is the president of Baker College Center for Graduate Studies. This article is about plagiarism, specifically about plagiarism in online education.

This article starts with a little history and background information on plagiarism. It talks about some contributing factors of why students choose to plagiarize, such as laziness. It shares different ways that students can cheat or plagiarize in the classroom such as cutting and pasting passages found online. Then the author writes about different ways of catching students who are suspected of plagiarism. He brings up reverse internet searches using google, as well as websites that detect plagiarism for you. A few of these are turnitin.com, plagiserve.com, IntegriGuard, and EduTie. Heberling comments on digital paper mills, which are companies that provide papers to students for a fee.

The articles main points are that there are tools to fight plagiarism, which should be used to maintain academic integrity. The author concludes that there are many ways to cheat in an online class, as well as a traditional one, and that although plagiarism cannot be gotten rid of completely, it can and should be fought.

The article does make a successful rhetorical message by bringing up several good points on how to combat plagiarism. It does take for granted that plagiarism is wrong in that it doesn’t really back this point up with any hard evidence. The intended audience for this seems to be educators such as faculty and administration in schools. Therefore the fact that plagiarism is wrong should be accepted by the audience. His message contains a subtle call-to-action sort of moral that is encouraging readers to put an end to plagiarism wherever they are able. Overall, the author uses good points and good evidence to back them up.

Originality Checking

Growing up with technology at our fingertips affects many parts of our lives. In recent years, technology and the availability has especially affected our education system. Technology has brought change through many good and bad avenues. Plagiarism is one of the biggest negative aspects of technology in schools. Today more than ever before, plagiarism is easy to do and the means to commit plagiarism are readily available. There are numerous websites that allow someone to buy essays or papers to turn in to your high school class for an assignment, simply by paying money. Two of these are www.customwritings.com and thepaperexperts.com. Other students may choose to just copy and paste things that they find off of Google. It is so easy in this world to do this because Everything is available online.

This makes it difficult to be a teacher and to have one more thing on your plate to combat against in the battle of educating students. Most students don’t really want to learn, and if there is an easy way out, you can be sure that most will take it. Why would they want to spend time putting in extra work writing a paper when they could just copy paste something and have a better end product? The only real reason most wouldn’t is because they might get caught and have consequences.

One website that teachers have been using to fight against plagiarism is turnitin.com. This website checks the papers against a large database of other papers to see how similar they are, which will reveal with surprising accuracy if a student has copied someone else’s work. Turnitin’s website says this: “Turnitin’s proprietary software then compares the paper’s text to a vast database of 12+ billion pages of digital content (including archived internet content that is no longer available on the live web) as well as over 110 million papers in the student paper archive, and 80,000+ professional, academic and commercial journals and publications.”

Plagiarism

The focus of this blog is digital media. Thus far, the main topic that has been discussed is piracy and the illegal reproduction of digital media. In this post we will introduce a new topic about the ownership of digital media. We now move our focus to plagiarism.

According to dictionary.com, plagiarism is defined as "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work, as by not crediting the author." I find it interesting that the definition includes without crediting the author. It seems that so much plagiarism could be avoided simply by citing your source of information. However, this is not always the case. Many people plagiarize because it is an easy way out on an assignment or a presentation. They do it because they are lazy and don't want to put in the work themselves.

Why else do people commit plagiarism? What is the cause of this and what problems does it cause? In the next few weeks, we will delve into these topics. Specifically we will look into the effects on the educational system, including cheating and plagiarism in high schools.

Toulmin Analysis

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/17/us-eu-piracy-idUSTRE62G3BU20100317

The link above connects to an article addressing internet piracy in the European Union. It is from Reuters.com which reports on business and financial news around the globe. We are all familiar with piracy and what it is. This article goes into some of the potential impacts that it could have on the future of the entertainment industry as well as the economic world.

The main claim of this article is that internet piracy, specifically illegal downloading of music and movies, has cost the world a lot of money and lots of jobs, and that it will continue to do so in the future if nothing is done to stop it. The evidence that the author provides is in statistics saying that in 2008, 10 billion euros and 186,000 jobs were lost to piracy. Also, a study implies that if that trend follows what has been happening, then up to 1.2 million jobs and 240 billion euros of European commerce could be lost within the next 5 years. The warrant in this article is that piracy is bad, and that the audience wants there to be more available jobs and money that is poured into the economy. 

History of Internet Piracy

Piracy is something that we frequently see on a daily basis in this culture and in this time. Most people have stumbled upon a torrent site or a file-sharing program when surfing the internet. However, many people don't just find them on accident, but instead go looking for them. Today piracy is very prevalent, but how long has it been like this? 

Since the time of our parents generations, we have seen music progress from records, to cassette tapes, to CDs, to in our generation, mp3s. Many people wanted to share their music and not have to pay for it. With technology improving the sharing capabilities the piracy of music increased with it. Piracy first became big  when CDs came around. CDs allowed individuals to copy and distribute music quickly and easily. 

However, when mp3s came around, the opportunity for piracy increased exponentially. This website, called computerdjsummit, provides some interesting information on the history of piracy. It reports that mp3 replaced sex as the most searched word on the internet, and that in 1999, over a billion music files were downloaded. This was likely spurred on by the invention of Napster.

Napster was the first of its kind. It was a peer to peer file sharing program. Basically what this means is that people log into Napster to get connected with each other and share files across this platform. They can upload and download. A way to get all of the free music you could ever want! Napster seemed too good to be true... and it ends up that it was. In 2000, the RIAA, which is the Recording Industry Association of America, filed a lawsuit against Napster for copyright infringement, and a year later they shut down. This form of piracy eventually was replaced by the torrent system, as was discussed in an earlier blog. This is often how piracy takes place today. 

Rhetorical Analysis

http://piracy-unlimited.blogspot.com/

This particular blog informatively discusses piracy. It specifically focuses on current events involving piracy, lawsuits, and bills passed. One of the most recent blogs discusses a court case involving the Pirate Bay, which is a big torrent website. The author makes good use of displaying the question and answer dialogue on the website. He often uses satire and sarcasm to convey his message and to ridicule anti-piracy investigations. He reverts some to pathos, but also presents good logical appeal as to why he believes what he does. Although he doesn’t refer to himself often, you can feel him through the tone he uses, especially his use of satire.

http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/10/19/my-views-on-software-piracy/

This blog portrays a little more of a professional look (being that it is a company’s blog and not an individual’s on blogger). In addition, it also portrays information with what seems to be less bias. However, they are both discussing piracy and current events involving it. This blog focuses more on software piracy as opposed to music and movies. This blog makes good use of visual representations, such as the chart on the latest blog, displaying the different amounts of people who will or will not engage in piracy or hacking.

I feel that both of these blogs are successful at conveying their messages and make good use of their rhetorical devices. However, they are definitely catering to different audiences. The first blog is directed more towards people of likeminded distaste for anti-piracy ideals, whereas the second blog is more informative to someone with little knowledge in the subject of piracy. 

Torrential

Torrents are somewhat amazing to me. A torrent is defined as “a stream of water flowing with great rapidity and violence,” or a “violent downpour of rain.” Oh wait, that’s not what we’re talking about, is it? A torrent is also described as “a rushing, violent, or abundant and unceasing stream of anything.” That’s getting a little closer, and I would bet that that is where torrents get their name. The torrents this blog will discuss are also known as bit torrents. A bit torrent is defined as a “pointer file used for file sharing.” Basically, when you download a torrent you are taking bits of different files from different users all over the internet. It is a file sharing network that allows you to quickly download things from other people who are a part of that file sharing network. So what are you downloading when you download a bit torrent? These files can really be anything. The most popular are music and movies, but there are also copies of operating systems, instruction manuals, Microsoft Office, computer games, pictures, and all manner of different computer programs and software.

What amazes me about torrents is the volume. I mentioned earlier that describing torrents as an “unceasing stream of anything” might have been where they got their name. I believe this to be true because there is simply no end to the effervescence of illegal materials that are available and growing online. Living in college dorms for two years I saw endless gigabytes of torrents downloaded to my friends computers. It was commonplace to see 500 gig hard drives in every dorm room my freshman year. Sure, in high school I heard about a few people getting caught with downloading music and movies, but only like 2 or 3 people out of hundreds that I knew were doing it. I really think that that was a scare tactic. I heard of a few people being caught who were going to have to pay a few slap-on-the-wrist fines, and I never heard anything else about it. 

Torrents are not legal, but it seems that nothing is being done to stop them. Perhaps there is just too much of it that prosecuting everyone who has committed this crime will take too long. But just because there are so many people doing it does not mean that it is right or that we should allow it. I don’t propose any solution because in all likelihood there probably is no good solution on how to stop this from happening. However I don’t understand why these websites can stay open when there is so much illegal digital media passing through their hubs. I assume that the sites aren’t actually breaking any laws because they aren’t hosting the files themselves, and if law enforcement agencies report on an illegal or copyright link or file, the site just closes that link or file down, and someone opens five more to replace it. Gotta love the legal system…

"You Can Click, But You Can't Hide"

This visual rhetoric is a piece of propaganda against piracy, specifically downloading things onto ones computer. The ad plays on the movie rating system such as PG for Parental Guidance, or R for Restricted. This ad displays I for Illegal Downloading. It plays off the common phrase of “You can run, but you can’t hide,” but changes it to relate to the theme of piracy. It says that you can click, meaning download music or movies, but you can’t hide. It is trying to scare the idea into people who practice piracy that they will be found and punished eventually. This is definitely a persuasive message and an attempted scare tactic. It is designed to put doubt in the person’s head.


The people who made this ad also want to create awareness that downloading these things is illegal and that there are people who are seeking to find out those who do practice piracy in order to punish them.


In addition to the movie rating theme and the play on words of “you can click but you can’t hide,” The ad includes a picture of someone about to click a mouse. This too sends a message: The finger is raised and about to click the mouse but hasn’t clicked it yet. This seems to suggest that there is still a chance for someone to not click and stop their illegal downloading. In addition to all of these things the ad makes use of different coloring. The picture is in black and white which makes it look more bleak and foreboding. It creates an emotion in the viewer to see this as a bad thing and ads to the persuasion.

What is Piracy?

So before we can really get into deep discussions about piracy and plagiarism, we have to define what they are. Concepts such as these deal very much in relativism and are thin lines to walk along, or at least they seem that way for many. In the earlier part of this blog I will focus on piracy and move on to plagiarism at a later time. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, piracy is defined as “the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright.” So what does this mean?

When I think or piracy a few things come to mind: The piracy video that plays in theaters with the intense music, the copyright warnings before movies, downloading illegal movies and music, torrents, Napster, Limewire, etc. So basically, we are using or taking someone else’s things without their permission and without paying for it. It sounds a lot like stealing to me.

The video below suggests that you wouldn’t steal a DVD out of a store, so why would you steal or pirate a video online? Is it only because we are less likely to be caught doing it online? Or is there something more? I think that pirating movies and especially music has become so commonplace and ingrained in our culture that we don’t see it as wrong. I wonder if part of this is due to the websites that offer music and movies to be played for free but are still legal. These sites make their money through advertising and perhaps by selling your email addresses to third parties, but we don’t have to pay for them so we think they are going unpaid for.

Because there is so much piracy that goes on and we can so easily find free music and movies (as well as many other free things), we have started to come to expect to get these things for free. We don’t deserve them for free, right? Someone else put their time and money into creating the movies and music and software. That is their livelihood. If they were intended to be free, the people wouldn’t get paid to do them. If they didn’t get paid to do them, the creators likely wouldn’t have as much time or as many resources to devote to creating those things, and in turn we wouldn’t have them. But somehow we have gotten into the mindset that we deserve to get the latest songs, movies, and software for nothing! 

Inception

I have grown up heavily immersed in the digital world. Being born in 1989, I grew up along with the internet and was able to start learning about it and experiencing it from the time I was young. I have always been adept with computers and digital networking. Because of this I learned at an early age how simple life can be made through the information accessed in the digital world. There is a plethora of information that is available on the internet, and I have often been told that anything can be found there if you know how to look for it and find it.

                     

Because of their interactions with the digital world from a very young age, many people (especially those who are kids now) have grown up with expectations about what they can find and what they deserve to find online. This blog will seek to examine these expectations and their effects on the law and education. Specifically, I will investigate the ideas of piracy and plagiarism and the change in the perceptions of these ideas in recent history. Some of the topics I will explore are:

• How we really define piracy in the modern day?
• Is piracy now accepted as the norm in our culture?
• What are some different ways of information sharing and appropriating?
• What is the background and history of piracy? Where did it start?
• What does it mean to own digital media?
• How has plagiarism through the digital world affected the education system?
• How has the ease of access of information online affected the modern day student?
• Has the digital world spurred creativity or has it allowed for an easy way out to learn information?