|
|
Advertisement:
|
|
OCAU News |
Online Plagiarism: Your Thoughts?
(0 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 2-November-2005 09:07:41 (GMT +10) - by Mred32
|
Something interesting came across the news desk today, the topic being plagiarism. www.dictionary.com gives a definition of plagiarism as: "noun 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own." I think it's something which we all have done at sometime or another be it for a school exam, a work memo, or a web page article. In this case it is the later. One website writes an article and another allegedly grabs all/some of the text and posts it as part of their own article on the same topic, without giving credit to the original author. As a news writer for Overclockers Australia, I often receive emails from other websites offering links to their latest articles or reviews for consideration. I usually filter through these to try and separate the news of interest from the news destined for the trash. Sometimes I don't quite get it right but I do try.
Anyway, some of these emails will contain a 'blurb' or quote from the article in question which is usually provided for posting, along with a link to the article itself. I will often include this text in my news post and usually I will differentiate it from my own text by placing it in quotation marks and/or placing the text in italics. Sometimes though, I won't. On occasion I will simply include the text as part of my own post without credit or reference, but I have some rules which govern how I do this. If the copied text is little more than an advertisement for the article itself (Hi, we have posted an article about the new blaa blaa from blaa blaa..) then I might just incorporate it into my own text without giving credit, which strictly speaking is plagiarism of sorts. Although, if the text provides actual core material from the article itself (.. in testing the new blaa were was able to achieve an overclock of blaa blaaMhz with a maximum temp of blaa blaa) then I would usually add quotes or italics to denote that the information came from someone else. I guess the point here goes back to the Dictionary meaning and the section where it mentions "is presented as being your own work". Am I presenting my own work? Often the answer is no. I'm offering someone else’s work which they have invited me to present. Yet, when we complete an assignment or study document we usually end up working from other peoples research or information. We have to put it into our own words. Is there a set amount of letters we must change in a sentence to make it our own? Do we just re-write the whole thing? Is it percentage based? Do we have to re-do the research from scratch?
In the past there have been several instances where other websites have posted articles or information taken directly from OCAU without giving credit where it was due. In these cases, the site was quickly found to have copied the text and has been asked to remove it or credit the author, usually resulting in swift compliance by the offending site. Many websites, especially those in the I.T. scene rely on the efforts of volunteers to supply much of the content they provide. These people value the recognition of their peers for the work they do in this area and they deserve the small amount of credit they receive. Lets face it, without the work done by these people, many of our favourite websites would fall by the way side very fast. In this case the site with the complaint is NGOHQ and this is what they had to say about it.
Well, I guess in this news post I am asking for your opinion as to what is fair copy and what is breach of copyright. Having asked that you will notice that I have left out the word copyright until the very end. Copyright Law itself is a very detailed and complicated worm to try to dig out, one which I really didn't want to delve into if I could avoid it. I suppose I'm asking the moral question of "What can you copy and what should you credit?" I've opened a forum thread for your responses and look forward to reading the opinions of others.
Return to OCAU's News Page
|
|
Advertisement:
All original content copyright James Rolfe.
All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.
|
Advertisement:
|
|
|
