The Plagiarism Problem

A commenter posted an innocuous message a few minutes ago, but when I went to the commenter's URL, it advertised "undetectable and plagiarism-free" essays for sale. I zapped it as comment spam, but it also hit a sore spot.

This semester I flunked four students and gave a D to a fifth, all because of plagiarized work. It was the worst outbreak I've seen in years, and after forty years in the college teaching business I think I'm pretty good at spotting it. Probably not good enough, though: All these cases involved simple cut and paste from websites. All I had to do was type a typical sentence from an essay into Google Advanced Search, and bingo—the source was usually the first hit.

Back in the dim days of typewritten essays and print sources, this was what I called lazy plagiarism: transcribing almost random chunks from easily accessed published sources. Smarter plagiarists went to the trouble of finding more obscure sources. I'm sure their descendants are using sources like my spammer's, or otherwise swiping stuff not easily found on the web.

I've even found a few folks who plagiarized my writing advice, presenting it as their own. Since this material is also available in different, copyrighted form in my book on writing SF and fantasy, my publisher always swings into action with highly intimidating emails that get the material removed very quickly indeed.

In some cases it's flattering to be quoted at length, as long as one's cited as the source, and plagiarism might be seen as the insincerest form of flattery. But it's clearly a major problem for educators, and no doubt for web writers and editors as well. So I'm curious to know if you've run into problems with people swiping your stuff—whether you've written it for your own purposes or for your client/employer. And where do you draw the line between common knowledge and intellectual property?

It should be a fascinating discussion, but I won't be able to take part in it until sometime late in the month: This afternoon my wife and I are off for Ottawa on a family visit. I won't have much computer access until I'm home, which is probably just as well...I hope to make some progress, in longhand, on my long-neglected novel.

Comments

[Loic Duros]

Trying to fight for our copyrights online seems to me like a Don Quichotte issue. Copying books is a fastidious task and is usually limited to a few pages. Unfortunately, it is not the case for electronic content, everyone can do it with an "innocent" copy and paste trick.
With the huge flow of information online you have little chances to find the forum/egroup in which some of your content is displayed...
I think everyone publishing online should accept this fact and write in a certain way so that it is harder to copy it out of the context.
Also, because plagiarism cannot be avoided, maybe using creative common license is a fair way to keep a certain "intellectual property". I have noticed that people tend to cite the sources when it is under creative common restrictions much more than when they have the feeling to violate a copyright law...

Loic

[Artorios]

Nowadays cut-and-paste from e-books and pdf articles is as easy as copying from websites.

Moreover there is no way to check the plagiarism in Google, unless you own that digital book/magazine and can search it on your computer.