Four Reasons to be Happy about Internet Plagiarism

When the newest cheating scandal surfaces at some prestigious southern university known for its military school style “honor code,” the headlines leap across the tabloids like stories on child molestation by alien invaders.

It’s almost never suggested that all this might be something other than a disaster for higher education. But that’s exactly what I want to argue here. — Russel HuntFour Reasons to be Happy about Internet Plagiarism  (St. Thomas University)

Found via the Plagiarism Resource Site.

9 thoughts on “Four Reasons to be Happy about Internet Plagiarism

  1. Russ, are you familiar with Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age? There’s a philosophical debate underpinning the cyberpunk action in the novel, regarding how to control tremendous technological power. Do you put tremendous resources in policing the technology, or do you put those resources in training people to use it properly? An interesting read.

  2. I imagine it’s too late to respond here, but I just discovered Dennis’ blog and this thread. And I wanted to argue that I’m not suggestions, as Mike Arnzen suggests, that “crime improves society. Does terrorism, for example, improve society? It does, if it gets people to start talking in order to overcome cultural differences. But tell that to the victims.” I’m saying something else: that crime tells us there’s something wrong with society. Unfortunately, it’s pretty difficult to fix. But when plagiarism tells us there’s something wrong with the educational situation students are working in, well, we can begin to fix it. And I’m pretty skeptical that the way to fix it is to “build in better security devices.”
    — Russ

  3. It’s true that plagiarism is not always a copyright violation and there are many instances where plagiarism is innocent or accidental. But in other cases, if plagiarism isn’t a copyright violation, then it’s fraud for profit (I see college credit as a chunk of capital, just as gold is a chunk of capital — it has value and can be ‘traded’ to get you things)…and even if said plagiarism doesn’t break governmental statutes, it’s still almost always a direct violation of a campus’ own policies or “student code of conduct.” So it is illegal, in a general sense of the word.
    Will’s logic about the bank robbery interests me; I’m not sure I buy the logic, but it raises the issue: when is the victim of a crime innocent and when is the victim culpably negligent? On the topic of plagiarism, it suggests that the teacher who isn’t knowledgable about, say, the internet paper mills, is partially responsible for getting papers bought from internet paper mills. At the same time, I wonder if using a service like turnitin.com is a way of buttressing the bank vault of education. Although banks might build in better security devices, they don’t, as Russell Hunt suggests, retrain or rehabilitate bank thieves.

  4. Thanks for laying it all out so clearly, Will. Plagiarism that doesn’t do financial harm to the original author is still wrong, even though there may not be a law against it. That’s why universities sanction the students or professors who plagiarize, and why newspapers fire reporters who plagiarize — there are internal ways to deal with the “wrongness” of the action, that don’t involve the courts. I think some non-programmers probably feel powerless because there is no method of providing internal correction, so they have to turn to the courts (where Microsoft is equipped to win, at everyone else’s expense). The fr33kb0i who writes the virus seems like an easier target than the corporate behemoth.

  5. As a student who writes english papers for class, but not to be published, the “crime” of plagarism is somewhat theoretical. If I published something that simply copied large portions of another persons work, then I understand – I’m taking their work and effort and using it to compete against them – that’s unfair. However, if I’m using their work to complete a paper that only my professor will ever read, well, it’s not so much a “crime” against the original author, as I haven’t taken anything away from them. (Note that I’m talking about copying a paragraph or two, rather than “paraphrasing” it, I’m not talking about copying an entire paper).
    The reason geeks quickly believe the mentioned slashdot story is that it’s something we already believe anyways. The most common attitude is that it’s not right to write a virus that spreads and deletes all the files on your computer. But if you write a virus that simply propagates itself about using some exploit in windows, causing no irreparable harm to the user, that’s just being helpful. Non computer people say – “It did harm me – I had to spend a great deal of time dealing with it – I have more important things that I need to do!”. And certainly you do have more important things to do. But we tend to think of the bigger picture. Isn’t the phone system run by computers? Is the power grid? If there was a real enemy, whether a competitor to your corporation, another country we went to war with, or even terrorists, that had both the skill and motivation to write a destructive virus to do real damage, can you imagine the outcome? If clogging a corporate network with emails is a “major problem”, just think of what a virus that spread itself by email, plus deleted every single file it could find on your computer and on your network would do! You may laugh at my reference to terrorists, but while it wouldn’t be as severe as crashing a plane into a building, think about the number of deaths it would cause it someone brought down the power network during one of those weeks of 100 degree temperatures. Not as severe, definitely, but it seems like every time we lose power during one of those times, a number of people die from heat stroke.
    Now, there are two reasons why this really gets to us. First, unlike traditional security which constantly requires money to hire security guards, keep cameras working, etc, once you write secure software, it doesn’t have any maintenance fees. Once it’s written, it doesn’t cost any more to run secure software than insecure. It’s understandable that although it might be nice to have security guards patrolling around your house, it’s just not worth the constant cost – but it would be foolish not to install locks on your doors. Second, it gets to us because of the first reason, combined with the fact that the software being attacked isn’t secure because big, fat, rich corporations like Microsoft didn’t just didn’t feel that it was profitable enough to be bothered to make your software safe. Please – try to tell me that it costs Microsoft to much money to make windows secure. Microsoft.
    People who don’t program often don’t realize that a when a computer virus takes down their corporate network, it’s not like when a robber comes into a bank waving a gun and demanding money. It’s like the bank left their vault open, unlocked, and unguarded overnight, and then complained that someone stole the money. Sure, the thief still had to break into the building. But it’s much the bank’s fault as it is the thief’s.
    * note that the key phrase to “beneficial” viruses is “no irreparable harm”.

  6. Plagiarism should not be confused with copyright violation. I may have the right to copy something (fair dealing for small amounts, public domain, certain forms of licence, etc.) but it would still be plagiarism, though not a copyright violation, if I passed it off as my own work.

  7. It’s similar to the argument that authors of computer viruses benefit society by inspiring corporations to create better protection of customer privacy, or something like that. Slashdot was all over that story a couple months ago, and nobody listened when I told them the supposed expert they were cititng was a hoax. See “Slashdot takes ‘gullible’ out of dictionary.”
    I don’t think Russ Hunt is a hoax… I can vouch that he’s a real person!

  8. Yes…and no. I really liked this article and I was impressed by all the sources on his site. But Hunt’s argument is analogous, I think, to suggesting that crime improves society. Does terrorism, for example, improve society? It does, if it gets people to start talking in order to overcome cultural differences. But tell that to the victims. It’s still a crime. Plagiarism is still a crime, too (it’s called copyright violation), and teachers are victimized by it. Inasmuch as it presents a “challenge” (or threat!) to conventional teaching, it’s also an affront to the social contract that exists in the educational setting. His argument was convincing to some degree, but still essentially counter-intuitive. And not pragmatic, at all. As much as I’d like to agree with him in theory, and also celebrate his original perspective, my gut tells me he’s wrong.

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