Plagiarism
Plagiarism deals with the copying of someone else’s work
without crediting or referencing it, essentially claiming it as your own idea. The
problem with plagiarism is that it is so easy to do compared to actually
thinking up new ideas yourself, instead you can just take someone’s work and
just claim it’s yours. There are certain moral implications with this however
as it is a form of deception and software has been produced which can detect
the level of plagiarism the student has done, such as ‘turnitin’ and
‘plagiarismdetect’.
There are ways in
which you can take information from different sources for use in your work, and
that is to always reference where you are getting the information from. This then
shows that it isn’t your work but it can be used to further your point.
There are punishable causes for plagiarising work which
range from getting excluded from activities such as societies or school. As
well as that they will not get a mark on the work that they submitted and might
even not be able to take their remaining tests not related to the subject. In
North Carolina, plagiarism or even helping some plagiarise are unlawful and
thus can actually end the person up with $250,000 worth of fines or 10 years
imprisonment depending on whether or not the person is making money off of the
plagiarised material. A person can also be said to have self plagiarised work
as well, simply by referring to work that they had done previously but not
saying it is from past work.
In the case of ethical issues, there are also a number of problems
such as having plagiarised work to your name can create a negative stigma that
employers or lecturers would keep in mind when viewing the persons work and
this can severely damage the person’s credibility and originality. ”A degree is
evidence of its holder’s abilities and knowledge. If a student gains employment
on the basis of a qualification they have not earned, they may be a risk to
others.”, getting a degree on someone else’s work would mean that the
person did not really deserve the grade they had gotten and are not an actual
representation of the persons skills.
The closest law that I feel is to plagiarism would be the
copyright laws, as it deals with trying to stop people from just taking the information
without referencing the work. Having said that though, if the plagiarism
occurred due to the user using it for their work then this would not be an
offence as “there is no copyright infringement if a protected work is used
for the purposes of instruction and examination”. Another opinion would be to
consider plagiarism as theft as that is essentially what the plagiarised work
is. It is stolen work of the original content owner’s intellect which has not
got any credit attached to the original owner.
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