Many students don’t know what plagiarism is. I mean, they haven’t really understood it – why it’s an important issue, why it is important for them to avoid it. I get the feeling that most students see anti-plagiarism rules as annoying obstacles. After all, if someone has said it better than I can say it, why should I waste my time trying to say it again, but not as well? The other mindset is laziness and fear: I can’t write so I need to crib someone else’s writing, I can’t make mistakes, I would rather be doing something else.
Turnitin has released a white paper on plagiarism (via Mind/Shift – Turnitin white paper). From the Mind/Shift article:
…the white paper asks if our new digital culture — one that promotes sharing, openness, and re-use — is running counter to some of the “fundamental tenets of education — the ability to develop, organize, and express original thoughts.”
I feel like this issue is staring us in the face and we’re willfully ignoring it. Originality is being leeched from our world by the fanatical need to be social and to operate in groups. It should not be surprising that students are confused about plagiarism.
http://www.psfk.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/jarmuschquote.jpg
Jabiz, never disappoints, always provocative.
Well, then this is a semantic game, then. If by posting this quote you are claiming that plagiarism is an illusion because any re-use is good re-use, then I’ll just have to flat out disagree. But if by the quote you are intending to imply that all great and profound or even just meaningful creation is indebted to what has come before, then I’ll agree whole-heartedly. But part of the problem with that statement during a discussion of plagiarism is that plagiarism is dishonest, it’s not authentic. So, to be clear, I’m trying to address the problem with INAUTHENTIC re-use. Yes, as Jarmusch points out, you ought to celebrate what inspires you to go beyond what has come before. But isn’t “going beyond” the exact sense of what we mean by “being original”? In which case I don’t understand why Jarmusch would say that originality doesn’t exist. He himself is original. Originality is not meaningless – I know full well what you mean when you point to something that a student has done and claim that it is original. You mean “this is an authentic expression”, where “authenticity” is bound up with the intentions of the person making the expression. So, I can, for example, quote Shakespeare in an original manner.
Actually, I have a problem with the culture of re-use in general, but I haven’t fully formed my opinions so I’ll leave them for a later post. Thanks, J.
http://bit.ly/jrOclD
More soon. I promise. I have been thinking about this and will respond in full later.
Hey Greg,
There are a few approaches I want to take on this post, so I apologize if my thoughts are a bit convoluted and sporadic. I will try to find some kind of point and wrap it all up in the end, if I don’t I hope you can piece together something comprehensible from the threads.
To start with, I am not sure whether I am saying that “any re-use is good re-use” or “that all great and profound or even just meaningful creation is indebted to what has come before.” In a sense I guess I am saying both. The whole idea of re-use is not to simply plagiarize, but to take what has already been created and add a layer of the self to it. To recreate what has already been created again and again. It is post-modernism at it’s best.
I think we both agree that all art, thought, work etc..is really a derivative of other work. You mention that Plagiarism is dishonest and I agree, but re-use culture is not one that tries to take credit for ideas, but tries to recast ideas through new lens. This is not semantics. I hope you can agree that to re-use what is out there is not stealing it, but rather re-shaping it, thus giving something that exists an extra layer of originality.
But perhaps you are right we are quibbling over semantics. This post was not necessarily about re-use culture or postmodernism, but one about the INAUTHENTIC re-use or plagiarism of others thoughts.
Which brings me to my next point: Ownership of ideas and thoughts. Much of this conversation, unfortunently is still mired in an academic ownership society. Only in academia are we so worried about ideas and knowledge belonging to any one person. Why can’t student still be able to re-use, analyze and synthesis material and still be original. I am not saying that students should ever be allowed to take ideas, words, or content and pretend they have come up with it. That is plagiarism and I am not advocating that. I am just saying that to say a culture, “that promotes sharing, openness, and re-use — is running counter to some of the “fundamental tenets of education — the ability to develop, organize, and express original thoughts” Is a bit of hyperbole.
No sure who deemed development, organization, and expressing original thoughts” as the fundamental tenets of education,” but let’s go with that. There is no reason why students in a shared open culture cannot do these things. Originality must not be confused with ownership.
So was there a point? Not sure. Was it original? Damn right. I am sure there are 100′s of posts I could have sited and reworded to make my point, but that would be dishonest. I will let you sort through it.
Knowledge is no longer the end game. Who owns it and who sites it is moot. We are in anew era, Originality is not being “leeched from our world by the fanatical need to be social and to operate in groups.” It is just taking new shapes and forms. We are living in an age of information overload. I for one do not care who owns it or where it comes from, I want to see how it will help us learn and grow and what we can look like by re-using it.
Add a Creative Commons license on all intellectual property and let’s start the game.
Most western artists throughout the last few thousand years were stuck heavily (very, very heavily) imitating whole lines and phrases from five or ten major sources like Homer, or the Bible, or Shakespeare. Talk about memes – think about how extremely specific quotes from the King James Bible like “by the skin of one’s teeth” or “the writing on the wall” are “stolen” by each of us every day.
I think the situation we have today, where we have more than a handful of Great Books to parrot, will lead to far more originality rather than less.
http://panini.northwestern.edu/AnaServer?eumaios+0+frame.anv
Click on “Aeneid Citations” and take a look at some of the approximately 7,000 times Virgil probably “stole” from Homer.
Nobody is angry at Virgil about it. Nobody will be angry at today’s great artists when they look back at their borrowings from the Web, either. That’s how art works.
And as for the students who can’t ever get past the stage of 100% blindly copying and plagiarizing (which I think is probably a pretty small percentage), well, those are the dullards and sluggards who would never have been able to produce good writing of their own 500 years ago, either. They would have memorized a few bible verses and passed themselves off as educated. At least now we have things like turnitin.com to check on imposters like that. So… again, I think the situation now is an improvement on the past.
One more thing I wanted to add is the notion that much of the work created which relies on plagiarism is school work that requires little imagination or authenticity. Sure a student is going to plagiarize the five paragraph essay or the IB exam that lacks originality. Maybe we should be looking at assessments that make plagiarism obsolete. Senior year project- write a novel dealing with certain themes etc..hard to plagiarize that! Until assessments become authentic and students find them relevant, they will copy their way through them to please the requirements.
This is in reply to Alex and Jabiz, together.
All culture is based on what has come before – if you want to call this “stealing”, fine, but that word makes it seem criminal, and of course, it is not. Culture builds on the past. This is a fine and fairly obvious thing that needn’t be debated. Virgil, Homer, Shakespeare, King James Bible, etc. The way we speak is in fact shaped by those texts. (I have to disagree with Alex, though, in his implication that everything used to be based on a “handful” of books, whereas now we have much more than that, I suppose in the form of the Internet. The Internet is largely filled with aesthetically mediocre content or just plain junk. In fact, the Internet encourages speed and quantity as opposed to carefully considered, quality art or literature. There is very little in the way of literature that appears on the Internet, or because of the Internet. Great ideas are still contained in books.)
Why is it important, then, to “give credit” to the past, or to “cite sources”? Why do I so strongly disagree with Jabiz’s sentiment that ownership, originality (that is, having a definite origin), and authorship aren’t important anymore? Why does it strike fear and dread and sadness into my heart when I hear that call to “everything is owned by everyone!” There is a practical reason, and there is a philosophical reason. These two basic ideas are better and more fully explored in Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”, but I’ll explore them briefly here.
The practical reason is that by recognizing originality and authorship, we place a tangible value on creative works, which allows creative people to make a living from their creativity. By making ownership into an evil, greedy enterprise, you encourage a culture that does not in fact place tangible value on creative endeavors. Creativity suffers.
The philosophical reason is that encouraging the re-use, common authorship world of the Internet as it is today de-emphasizes individuality. It degrades the individual person. It waters down personhood. How can I best say it?
You’re right, there were a lot of ideas in your post, but you lost me in two specific places.
You cast authorship as ownership (which connotes greed), and you claim that “only in academia are we so worried about ideas and knowledge belonging to any one person.” But of course you’re wrong about both ideas. Authorship is not the same as ownership – no one happens to “own” e=mc2, but everyone knows who figured it out. And there are plenty of people outside academia who are worried about authorship – authors of books, for example, of which you are one! And musicians, filmmakers, photographers, journalists, inventors, etc. All of these people, who make a living from what they create, require the notion of authorship. Often, though, if someone argues that they should be compensated for the use of their creativity, or don’t just give away their work for free on the Internet, they are in danger of being labeled “greedy” or even “undemocratic”.
Your final paragraph, which includes the following statements:
Who owns it (knowledge) and who cites it is moot.
I (Jabiz) do not care who owns it (knowledge) or where it comes from.
Add a Creative Commons license on ALL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
I will take you at your word and assume that you meant those things. The first statement is subject to the same objection I just made: you are confusing ownership and authorship. But you add that “who cites” things is “moot”. I can only surmise that you mean that since all information and all creative work is (or will someday inevitably be) available on the Internet for free, that citing a source isn’t really important. This vision of the future is missing the individual thinker entirely and is focused on, I’m sorry to repeat myself, the fanatical need to operate in groups. I urge you to read a great Russian novel entitled “WE”, and then get back to me on this. Or 1984, whichever is handy.
The second statement is destructive both intellectually, socially and economically. I think you’re thinking of the e=mc2 kind of knowledge, and forgetting creativity.
The third statement is simply bizarre. If all intellectual property were freely available for public use or re-use, there would be no value placed on invention or innovation, and fewer people would be interested in pursuing it. And don’t call me a greedy capitalist who isn’t interested in the Utopian future of Creative Commons – we both own Macbook Pros (saw a picture of yours on your personal blog!). We both sit at night pounding away on thousand dollar keyboards. But seriously, I’m not interested in the utopian future. Utopias are dystopias.
No kidding, read this book by Lanier. It’s crazy good, it’s got me all fired up! And thanks for the comments, always a pleasure.
Jabiz: Your statement – “Maybe we should be looking at assessments that make plagiarism obsolete….” is spot-on. I think that that’s also something Alfie Kohn points out in his essay on cheating [http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/cheating.htm].
My experience is that it’s very, very tempting for teachers to get going on the sins of plagiarism but how little time some of them – the WA editor, excepted – spend on looking at the teaching and the values that may, indeed, lead to the plagiarism in the first place.
I seem to remember that WA gave some good insights after the editor’s Italy trip that might be worth re-calling.
Phil
Your post and this topic have been on my mind all day, and I have just now found a few minutes to re-read the appropriate material and respond. Before I do that however let me just say that I was being a bit hyperbolic just to be provocative and push buttons.
I think like most things, we will find that we actually agree more than we disagree agree and we will most likely meet somewhere in the middle of this bizarre Zen inspired socialist-infused utopian vision where we have lost all notions of the separate self, vanquished our egos and are working toward a more consciousness aware super mind that- that I have painted and the sort of Ayn Randian super-capitalist ownership society nietzschean superman that you have outlined.
Let’s take a methodical look at your paragraphs:
All culture is based on what has come before – This is a fine and fairly obvious thing that needn’t be debated
Agreed let’s move on.
The Internet is largely filled with aesthetically mediocre content or just plain junk. In fact, the Internet encourages speed and quantity as opposed to carefully considered, quality art or literature. There is very little in the way of literature that appears on the Internet, or because of the Internet. Great ideas are still contained in books.)
I don’t want to splinter our thoughts too much, but we may already be guilty of tangentially getting ourselves spun into a chaotic web. But I have to pause and examine that last statement.
I don’t think it is fair to say that the INternet if filled with Junk and that books are the sole receptacles of our collective grace and knowledge. Every tool and medium- books, TV, Film Music, books or the internet are capable of genius or trash. I can point out several thousands of books filling libraries and landfills that are nothing but junk. I can also find corners of the internet that are home to amazing writing, authentic thought exchange ( Not to stroke our own egos, but this little dialogue here ain’t half bad.) Is it literature? Of course not, but it is also not the stereotypical short attention span drivel you are accusing the internet of fostering.
Great ideas are still contained in books, sue I agree, but there are great ideas all over the web. If there aren’t the beauty is that you can put them there. You now have the power to add to the great play. Yes, this creates an environment where a rising wave of mediocrity could drown us all, but i for one think it is too early to tell. We have only been adding yotube videos and blog posts and poems and pictures into the collective basket for a few years, no much in the grand scheme of things. Let’s take a look, if we are all still here in abbot 50, 100, 200 years and see where great ideas lay. Let;s then judge what the new literature looks like and who “owns” it.
But we have a lot more work to do , so do let’s move on…
By recognizing originality and authorship, we place a tangible value on creative works,
So are you saying that work/ideas only have value when they are owned? I get the people want to make a living off their work. Yes, I am writing a book, I would like to make a few bucks from it, but I think it is too much to say that creativity suffers because we do not add a monetary value to it. One could argue the opposite what has our ultra-commodificational culture done to our culture. Take a look and privates, owned journalism, pop music, TV etc…Creativity, I feel is more valuable when it is not own and shared. To place ownership and value on everything we create foresee us to create to make money and I don’t think that is what you are saying.
common authorship world of the Internet as it is today de-emphasizes individuality. It degrades the individual person. It waters down personhood.
Yeah, maybe. But we are talking Buddha Ayn Rand again. Is there is anything wrong with the disillusionment of the ego and lepton the ideas and the work exists on their own? Not sure where I stand on that. Maybe I am being a bit too utopian here. I will give you that. If I do write and publish my book I would like to have some credit. But Creative Commons is not erasing citation. Just saying that the material is now open for further development with proper citation. The open sharing culture, the way I understand it saying my works is the continuation of others, and the first step for you to take it and run. Please cite it and carry on. It was never mine and it is now not yours, it has always been ours. Too hippy-dippy? Sorry.
The discussion of authorship and ownership is an interesting one. But most media is authored by one person and owned by another, usually a large media conglomerate. I respect and value authorship, and ironically going back to your original ideas feel that citation is important, but this notion that ideas are owned by those who thought them is a bit much. Your E-Mc2 example is a good one. If I write a poem about consciousness need I cite Walt Whitman as he is the one who really solidified those ideas for me. or perhaps Jack Kerouac.
Let me state now, that I do believe citation is important and a skill needed in the 21st century when ideas are so much nebulous in nature.
I am rambling now. Perhaps we can dilute all this drivel into a few talking points. In closing,
If all intellectual property were freely available for public use or re-use, there would be no value placed on invention or innovation, and fewer people would be interested in pursuing it.
Sounds to me like you are saying their is no value in knowledge unless it is profitable. True? Would not learn if there was no profit to be made. Has nothing to do with greed or MacBooks. I am not saying I live in a utopia or that i want to, just that I see the paradigms shifting and I am looking to the future on how I will function in this new world. I love books. I love ideas and that is why I want to know how my books and ideas will be shared and read by as many people as possible.
Writing a novel on your blog could be a great first step.
I appreciate all you have to say, and it is clear that you are eminently reasonable. You’re a little right: I think we were drawing lines in the sand that are far too definitive for the subtle truth of the matter.
I appreciate you more for the use of the term “hippy-dippy”.
I will go on record as both loving and loathing Ayn Rand, but always loving Nietzsche. Reading “The Fountainhead” was a singularly wonderful and confusing time in my adolescence. Howard Roark still jumps out at me from those pages, long forgotten. The only “love” scene in the book, which is essentially a sexual assault, bewildered me, and of course now I’m able to recognize the logical limits of Rand’s philosophy. But Roark is still a wonderful character, standing atop his skyscraper at the end, laughing at the beginning. As much as Rand rubs people the wrong way, how can you hate Roark, the visionary who wouldn’t compromise his ideals, who sacrificed himself and his connections with other people for the sake of artistic greatness? Making the connection back to MacBooks, he’s a little like the proto-Steve-Jobs, a great man and terrible asshole that you really hope wins in the end.
I don’t know, dude. I just hope genius doesn’t get smothered by the weight of the masses, like sand dumped on the fire. But whatever happens, I don’t like thinking that it is inevitable.
So, what shall we talk about next? Let’s have the next exchange on your blog.
Peace out, and good luck with your book, ya hippy-dippy.
I had s similar experience with Atlas Shrugged, so much of what she said made me crazy with rage, but also made sense on a visceral level. I love the individual. I love the collective. We will find a balance. I hope.
Great discussion for sure. I hope to write something soon that will ignite this sort of lively debate. Come to Shanghai and we can have these talks in person.
What?! Face to face discussion?!
Does not compute.
Weird this came my way a few minutes after my comment, much more to soak in:
http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/wikipedia-and-the-death-of-the-expert