IIGS™ Newsletter - April 1999
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IIGS™ Newsletter - April 1999
I'd spent several hours writing my speech for a college class. I sat in the classroom that night waiting for my turn to make my speech. One of my classmates rose and went to the front of the classroom and I settled back to listen. He was only briefly into his speech when I felt my stomach knot up. The feeling changed to nausea as he continued.
The words coming out of his mouth were mine! A couple of years before I had produced a tourist publication for the county. All the articles appearing in the publication were written by me, although my byline was not on any of them.
My classmate's speech was, word for word, the article I had written for the first page of the tourist publication. He had no way of knowing that I had written that article, of course. But he knew someone had written it.
And he had claimed it as his own. My classmate was guilty of plagiarism---theft of intellectual property.
In her article for The Global Schoolhouse, "About Plagiarism and Pixels," teacher Diane Christian Boehm writes that "students lack an understanding of the concept of intellectual property, or fail to recognize the seriousness with which the academic community regards plagiarism."
Boehm says that her students usually do not understand "academic integrity," nor do they understand that plagiarism is more than just copying words---it's also copying ideas without giving credit to the originator of the idea.
Boehm's students have plenty of company.
Stuart Offenbach, in the October 1998 online edition of Purdue News compiled by Beth Forbes, says the Internet has created a new monster, "As of now there is no good form of electronic protection to prevent someone from just copying what's on your Web site. With a mouse and a few clicks, you can write the classics."
Academic institutions have always been the primary disciplinarians where plagiarism is concerned. It makes sense because their goal is to promote original and creative thought. Plagiarism at colleges and universities is a zero-tolerance kind of issue---if you're caught, you're expelled.
In the article, Offenbach likens plagiarism to kidnapping. "To the author," he's quoted, "it's the equivalent of stealing a child; there's nothing more precious for a writer than his or her own words."
Unfortunately, plagiarism is not considered a crime of great proportions to the thief, nor is it taken very seriously outside of academia. Authors have no criminal recourse. They can't report the theft to the local police department. They can only pursue the issue through the civil courts.
The Internet has made it easier to plagiarize and get away with it. Teachers, college professors and editors fret that it has become difficult to spot literary theft.
The guidelines for avoiding plagiarism are fairly simple:
- Use quotation marks when copying the exact words of another for use in your own work;
- Don't paraphrase, use the exact quote;
- Cite your sources, giving credit to the author and publication.
Genealogists are not above plagiarism. On at least 20 websites, an IIGS™ member found the following:
- Acquiring Land
- Acquiring Land (U.S.) Who could grant land? America was 'new land,' seemingly infinite in size, and it presented a new situation as far as land ownership was concerned. In order to get the Colonies to grow, inducements such as personal land . . .
It is important to make a distinction here. The authors of those websites may not be guilty of copyright infringement if the above passage was lifted from a U.S. government website (U.S. government works cannot be copyrighted, in most cases). However, at least 19 of them are guilty of plagiarism. And even the U.S. government can be plagiarized.
The point is this: Intellectual property (which is not necessarily limited to a literary work and can include other things such as graphics, photography or art) posted on a webpage without proper attribution as to ownership implies that the author of the webpage is the creator of that particular piece of intellectual property. If that's not the case, then the webpage author is guilty of intellectual theft.
Too many Internet users today say, "So what?"
Such an attitude is unethical. The theft of intellectual property is wrong and it is fraudulent to claim ownership of something which is not yours.
Genealogists should be asking themselves whether they can trust the accuracy of information found on websites authored by people who copy the work of others and fail to give proper credit or secure permission.
The days of free-wheeling plagiarism may be ending. At least one company has developed a way to track down plagiarists who steal from Internet sites and it's offering its services to colleges and universities. And a college professor has developed a program to detect online plagiarism.
So, plagiarists beware!