The Pros and Cons of the Internet

The computer has had a tremendous impact on society as we know it. It gives a voice to those who cannot speak and those who cannot breathe on their own receive mechanically computerized help. The computer has given us many wonderful things used for wonderful purposes, but there are vast ways in which these things have been misused by our people. One of these things is the internet and a common way it is misused is by way of plagiarism.

Plagiarism is an act in which one person, in essence, steals the work of another and uses it for their own purposes (Cafferty, Serwer). It is an ugly act used these days for many purposes. Many students use the internet to get pre-written essays. Writers will use the internet for source purposes and forget to cite them or use parts of pre-written information.

A student uses the internet to surf, looking for sources to cite in an essay. While looking, he comes upon an essay on the subject that holds a wealth of information. It is too much work to print it out, read it through, pick out the parts that can be used, incorporate it into their own essay in their own words, and then cite the work that the information came from. Instead, he decides that no one will notice if he simply prints off the whole essay, putting his own name in place of the author’s.

A researcher is paging through the internet in search of information to use in her new article. In her searching, she comes upon a likely looking source and prints it out

After going through it with a highlighter, she transforms most of the information she wants into her own words, but leaves a few alone to use as quotes. In writing her article, she uses the information, both the summaries and the quotes. She forg...

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...hey have done, but they have not tried to track down something that has been plagiarized before. If they had, they would know that it is just as simple for an authority figure to track the article or essay down as it was for the culprit to find the information. That is part of the grandness of the internet. It makes things easy.

Plagiarism is becoming a real problem now that we have the internet(Cafferty, Serwer). More people are using the work of others, but the ways of spotting it have improved. Many more are being caught than before due to the good and bad aspects of the internet. As one can see, the internet provides both advantages and disadvantages, but we take the bad with the good in stride.

Work Cited Page

Cafferty, J and Serwer A. "Beware of Internet Plagiarism." The America's Intelligence Wire. 2004. Financial Times Information Ltd.