I found this extremely interesting article on Jane Goodall’s book Seeds of Hope. Apparently she “borrowed” several passages in her book from other authors and failed to give them credit for it.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this plagiarism case is the way it was handled by the public, as well as the Post and the New York Times.   Apparently, “when the Post and the New York Times reported these findings, both avoided saying that Goodall had plagiarized—which, even by the strictest definition of the word, she did—instead writing that she “borrowed” passages, fully intending, apparently, to return them upon publication.”

The article also mentions the reason as to why Jane Goodall was able to get away with this act of plagiarism with very few repercussions–because she is Jane Goodall. She’s a cute little white-haired lady who no one wants to mess with. Do you think it’s right that Jane Goodall was essentially able to get away with plagiarizing because of this?

I found the plagiarism workshop to be more difficult than I had imagined it would be. It was extremely difficult in the last task (where we had to write a paragraph using different plagiarized sentences), to create a paragraph that flowed smoothly and made sense. I found that in my plagiarized paragraph, little of what I had copied and pasted made sense when analyzed as a whole. Here is the paragraph I created:

“Students often prefer the convenience of accessing e-books online, especially late at night when a project is due tomorrow. However, we must think wisely about technology, so let’s compare the technology of the print book with that of the e-book. What are the far-reaching impacts of e-books? There are some subtle distinctions that favor print, which may matter in the long run. In one study involving psychology students, the medium did seem to matter. “We bombarded poor psychology students with economics that they didn’t know,” she says. Two differences emerged. First, more repetition was required with computer reading to impart the same information.Second, the book readers seemed to digest the material more fully. In any case, what serious writer would create exclusively for an e-reader? It’s like farting into the wind. Writers hope, mostly in vain, that their work will endure for a few years or even centuries, in handsome printed and bound volumes. Why bother at all if your words are to be digitized into instantly accessible and disposable battery-dependent gas?”

After reading this, I’m sure it is easy to tell where the different sources of plagiarism change.

http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2010/03/e-books_the_good_and_the_bad_o.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/46793-books-without-batteries-the-negative-impacts-of-technology.html

So all this talk about plagiarism reminded me of a piece of news I came across 3 years ago. A light novel was withdrawn from bookstores after they found many lines that were considered too similar to ones used in another series. I find it interesting that a) these lines managed to be found and pointed out, and b) the author felt the need to pull that many lines to use in his work.

On the other hand, I know of other works that also pull and use lines from other works, but they are recognized as parody works, and the lines exist solely for the purpose of making clever references and jokes.

The last exercise of the plagiarism workshop was a bit hard to do. It was easy to find three sources that were all talking about e-books, but it was not easy to blend them together without changing any words or adding in some transitions. What I came up with sounds a bit choppy. But do people who plagiarize really do so to this extent where they will refuse to even add in transition words here and there to try to make the sentences connect more?
What I came up with:
No technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever. Things are changing, that’s clear. The question is, at what pace will they continue to change? In November 2010, 6% of Americans reported owning an e-reader; the figure is now 19%, with females aged 30-49 years old the most represented group.

Since I am a big fan of photography I immediately wondered about the plagiarism rules in that said world. I think that there definitely must be different rules for photography because the same pictures most definitely have been taken time and time again- easiest example being tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower. Of course those pictures are all probably slightly different, but does the fact that they have the same subject to them make them plagiarized? I think where the problem lies is with published photographs, or photographs that are on sale. I personally have some of my photographs that I have taken on sale on a website called Society6. Most of the pictures that I take are of nature scenes, usually without people. Thus, I am sure that some people have taken the same pictures at some point. Since my pictures are on sale, are those others therefore plagiarizing my work?

In this particular case two cartoonists both came up with Dennis the Menace around the same time. It was deemed that it wasn’t plagiarism and while the exact details aren’t clear I would assume that it was due to the fact that the two artists probably had no interaction and no way of seeing the other’s work. So just because your work is similar to someone else’s does  not necessarily make it plagiarism. However, in this age of technology and computing there really is no way to prove ignorance, we have access to pretty much anything at anytime. So while in the pre-internet age it would have been a simple matter to prove ignorance and therefore innocence in plagiarism, now it is virtually impossible.

This is the result of my copy/paste plagiarism. However, I needed to add in a few sentences and make a few edits just to make it flow together. Direct plagiarism felt pretty hard, and I probably would’ve had an easier time paraphrasing or outright writing my own thoughts.

Whatever the history of books may become in the future, its past shows how a field of knowledge can take on a distinct scholarly identity. This scholarly identity also paves the way toward the future, how books will develop and for what purpose. Starting from the creation of paper, the demand for paper was slight in the 1st Century Europe. Paper cost more than vellum, it was more fragile than parchment and it was associated with Jews and Arabs who were not trusted. In fact, The Church in Western Europe initially banned the use of paper calling it a ‘pagan art’ believing that animal parchment was the only thing ‘holy’ enough to carry the Sacred Word. It was only with the advent of printing in the middle of the 15th Century that the demand became greater. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440 marks the entry of the book into the industrial age. The Western book was no longer a single object, written or reproduced by request. The publication of a book became an enterprise, requiring capital for its realization and a market for its distribution. This development paved the way for future developments, making printed books more accessible to people.

After the exercise on Tuesday, I wonder how plagiarism is still thought to be the “easy way out.” After all, all the work it takes to disguise a work as your own is significantly more tedious than  writing your own paper. Not to mention the inherent risks with doing so. The issue I came across was finding segments that expressed what I wanted to say, that was the underlying problem that made it difficult. I already had my own ideas and views on my topic, so I knew what i wanted to write. Finding someone else that thought and wrote the same way was difficult, and even if I did find such a work, to be able to take a segment and add it to my own work almost never worked out.