Plagiarism

I definitely think that most of the time plagiarism is unintentional. It is so easy to be working on an assignment, throwing ideas together, connecting those ideas with other ideas, and in the end forgetting to properly cite where those ideas originated. Also, there is this whole idea of “common knowledge.” Supposedly “common knowledge” does not have to be cited. However, what exactly constitutes “common knowledge,” is it what your audience knows or is it what they should know? Either assumption is problematic and leaves the student without a clear definition of when to cite information.

While the definition of plagiarism may be vague and changing, the consequences of plagiarism are explicit. People who plagiarize will be caught and punished for plagiarizing. Since students understand that plagiarism demands a high price from violators, this is the reason that most acts of plagiarism are unintentional. Students do not choose to purposely plagiarize they just do not know how to properly avoid it. Students have either never learned when or how to properly cite another’s work, or they have been feed this “common knowledge” crap and are just flat-out confused about the entire process.

We are living in an age of information overload. At any second during any given day we have instant access to the internet through cell phones, iPods, and computers. With this internet access we can locate virtually anything we seek. Since it is effortless to gain this information in the first place, why is it necessary to accompany it with an in-depth documentation of where it came from? If information is out there for anyone to see and use whenever they want, how can it be so protected by copyrights? If this information is so valuable, so defining, so irreplaceable, shouldn’t it be more protected, more inaccessible? Looking at plagiarism from this perspective, it is easy to see how technology has muddled its clean-cut definition and how technology will ultimately reshape the perimeters of plagiarism.

Since college students are used to the idea of watching, posting and downloading various media from the internet for free, this only serves to further blur the understanding of plagiarism. Too many students are living by the rule of finders keepers. They think that because they have easy access to the information it must not be wrong to use the information in any way they need to. After all no single person owns the internet, so shouldn’t the information that is posted on the internet be free to use in any necessary way? Sadly, we live in a country where people want recognition for their accomplishments. People want to protect what is theirs. We don’t want to share. We want credit for our hard work. We want to leave our distinct mark. For this reason, plagiarism is frowned upon and cannot be tolerated in any setting.