Plagiarism and the Internet

Plagiarism and the Internet

My first memory of plagiarism is from grade school. I can remember having to do book reports. The teacher would always say, "write this report using your own words, do not just copy out of the book". So what did we do, we used a combination of both. In grade school we didn’t realize the seriousness of plagiarism. For the most part we didn’t even really understand what the word meant. It was something the teacher talked about when she assigned essays or book reports.

Webster’s dictionary defines plagiarism as this, "to take and use as one’s own the ideas or writings of another." I would suspect plagiarism is as old as the written language. Inevitably, as soon as someone committed their thoughts to paper, someone else read it and used the words to express themselves without giving credit.

Plagiarism goes on in all aspects of our society. It does not discriminate. Plagiarism is an issue in our schools, on our college campuses, and in our media. It weaves its thread through our entire culture. The news media and book publishers are all too aware of the nasty concept of plagiarism. Just recently the author J. K. Rowlings of the popular Harry Potter series came under heavy fire. She was accused of stealing another female author’s ideas. It seems in the early 80’s this author published books about the character Larry Potter. Her character names were the same as those in the J. K. Rowling’s series. The differences between the characters in the two series were what the characters actually were. Nimbus is a name used in both series. Nimbus in the Harry Potter series is a broom, however in the other author’s series Nimbus was an actual being.

So, there in lies the crux of the matter. Almost every article I read, mentioned the importance of intent. Did the writers style of writing lead him in the direction to naturally produce the work or did the writer intentionally pass off someone else’s work as their own. In the above mentioned case, J. K. Rowlings stated Harry came to her fully formed. She did not willing use the other authors ideas. In the news media pointing the finger of plagiarism at a journalist can set off an event similar to the Salem Witch trials. Plagiarism is taken very seriously in the news media. After all, credibility is at stake, not to mention ratings as well.