Category Archives: Plagiarism

Blog Prompt: Plagiarism Workshop

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After this workshop, most people in our class probably agree that plagiarism, popularly viewed as taking the easy way out, actually involves  great deal of work. The copying and pasting process itself is effortless, but doing this alone will not produce anything of value. The resulting paragraphs will come out as a garbled mess, not making much sense and certainly not giving the copier any chance of getting a decent grade. Below I have included my own piece from that workshop. Let me know if you can decipher any meaning from this:

Probably the most important role journals play is that they help with the creation and continuation of knowledge. Most people would agree that journals form the most thorough, complete, and legitimate archive of information in the various major fields. Obviously, the accuracy and quality of the material contained in this archive is of central importance. Peer review ensures that this information will be accurate. Research leads to “compression” of observed phenomenon into compact ideas, in order to better understand the world, and still retain key information. Academic journals are a major medium through which research findings are published.

Plagiarisimo

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It’s pretty hard to plagiarize. Really it is. Just as much work goes into stealing another person’s ideas as formulating and expressing your own. And even if you plagiarize, it will probably come out all wrong. I mean, look at this:

Piracy in our day serves nothing more than to undercut the academic community; it is an evil threatening not just the victim, the writer, but too the victimizer. For, though any expert man can judge by himself, or by indeed the general counsel of others, it is better to by labors intuitive to come to the conclusion. The work of others should be used only sparingly. The most of our literature should be meant for discussion; they should tasted, chewed, but not swallowed. To swallow would be a terrible avarice, consumption wholly of another. It may be fine, very so, to take from others and learn from them or with them, but to take in so entirely as to forget to whom it owes, would be a grave sin.

Do you see this? Awful. Truly it is. What the h am I trying to say? Am I even saying anything? Can you hear me?

Thursday’s Class

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Many things took place in Thursday’s class, but my favorite part of the entire class period was the discussion of the knockoff Harry Potter books. The example given in class was very poorly done, and made no attempt to hide the fact that it was a copy of other source material. Like many other examples of copyright infringement seen in the class up to this point, this particular example came from China, a country notorious for violating copyright laws. It makes me wonder what other popular works from our country have been copied in one way or another in China. I’d imagine that there would be other hilarious examples.

Copyright Controversy – The Verve

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This week, I’ve spend much time working on the essay for the first portfolio, with the central theme of the essay being the history of copyright laws. Doing this made me think of an instance involving one of my favorite bands, The Verve. During the mid-90’s, while working on an album, the Verve came to an agreement with Decca Records, the company that deals with the music made by The Rolling Stones. Both parties agreed that for a small fee, the Verve would use a five note sample from a relatively unpopular Rolling Stones song in the composition of one of their own songs, “Bittersweet Symphony”. When the album as released in 1997, “Bittersweet Symphony” became a worldwide hit, bringing The Verve both enormous fame and album sales.

After seeing the success of this song, former Rolling Stone manager Allen Klein filed a lawsuit against The Verve, arguing that they had used “too large of a sample” from the original song. This was an absurd claim, as not only did the Verve use the exact amount they agreed to, but their resulting song was essentially unrecognizable from the song that the five note sample came from. Nevertheless, the case went to court. Facing a difficult legal battle, in which there was the potential to lose much money and still lose the case, The Verve had no choice but to hand over 100 percent of their royalties from the song to the Rolling Stones.

This whole controversy represents a disgusting chapter in copyright history. Allen Klein, fueled by greed, created a false claim and cost The Verve all the money they would have made from a worldwide hit. What makes it even worse is that these are the types of instances that copyright laws are supposed to prevent, but it is arguable that they have created this problem.

http://www.thevervelive.com/2005/05/bitter-sweet-symphony-controversy-and.html

Television and copyright Laws

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Over winter break I interned at Lou Reda productions (located in Easton) they’re the mind behind cable documentaries focusing on Vietnam and WWII. The part of the job that pertains to this class was their film archive, they have an archive of thousands of hours of footage most of which is copyrighted. A large portion of their business comes from selling the rights to fair use footage they own. what I gained from this job was what could and could not be sold to other production companies for them to use. Anything shot by the US government was fair game to be sold, this meant any footage shot of USO shows, combat footage and propaganda films could be sold off to other companies. the majority of my job was going through their large archive fulfilling film requests so I  quickly learned how to tell what was shot by the Government and what had already been edited by someone else (say the History channel) and therefore couldn’t be sold.

what struck me in particular was that they seemed to have a large amount of footage that couldn’t be used due to copyright laws. When I asked one of my coworkers about this he explained that they saved the footage for when the copyrights ran out it would then be usable and therefore worth it to hold on to.

So I just thought I would share with you my hands on experience with copyright laws and hopefully it will help someone with their paper.

Who Needs An Autopen When You Could Have Margaret?

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First to give this scene context (or at least what I can recall as the context): President Bartlett had been shot and was undergoing an emergency operation. He had not signed a document releasing himself from power. At the time, there was a large international crisis occurring so officials were unsure who was Commander-in-Chief.

Admittedly, I was searching Youtube for a different scene from the West Wing that highlighted speech writing, but stumbled upon this rather topical scene en route. Here, the power and meaning of a signature are highlighted. What is the difference between an autopen and a perfected (perhaps a better adjective would be forged) signature of a person? Is it the intent of the owner of the idea? President Bartlett did not authorize Margaret to sign on his behalf whereas he might authorize the use of an autopen to sign legislation. Also, Leo questions why Margaret is even practicing President Bartlett’s signature. How should a person’s signature be valued and should it be protected, if possible?