Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Plagiarism
In my own words, plagiarism is taking information from a source that is not your own and using the information as it is yours. It does not matter how big or small the information is. It can be a sentence or a paragraph. If you do not cite the source, you are plagiarizing! There's a difference between copyright violation and plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking information from a source and using it as your own. A copyright violation is taking someone's copyrighted work and using it as your own without receiving permission from that person. That person has exclusive rights to their work. One example of a plagiarism that is not a copyright violation is when M.C. Hammer copied Rick James super freak song but gave credit to him. M.C. Hammer did the right thing to do, even though he still plagiarized. An example of a copyright violation that is not plagiarism is when Beyonce used "inspiration" from a European pop artist to come up with her song "Run the World". Beyonce said she was inspired by the European artist, but did not copy her word for word.
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Your definition of plagiarism is correct, I like that you added the statement, "It does not matter how big or small the information is." That is a part that most students get confused and end up plagiarising. And those examples of plagiarism that is not copyright violation, and copyright violation's that are not plagiarism made sense to me, great post!
ReplyDeleteAwesome post, so easy to understand! Joel pointed out a great statement by you. You know it's funny that you said for Beyonce, how she did not copy the other artists' work word for word. I think Beyonce should of made that song a tribute or cover because she basically did with copyright what people do with plagiarism- taking someone else's work, calling it their own, but putting it in their own words. Putting inspiration in to quotation marks was right....in other words, I agree with you! Nice job!
ReplyDeleteYou're right on the definition of plagiarism. However, you get it backwards in the examples.
ReplyDeleteCopyright violation is just a matter of copying, distributing, or performing someone else's work without permission. You don't have to try to use it as your own (plagiarize) to violate copyright.
The example of MC Hammer sampling Superfreak and giving credit to Rick James is not plagiarism because he gave credit. It could be a copyright violation if he didn't get or pay for permission to use the sample.
The Beyonce example is plagiarism -- using "inspiration" from a source without explicitly citing it is plagiarism. As you learned in the paraphrasing tutorial, you don't have to copy word for word to be guilty of plagiarism!
An example of plagiarism without copyright violation would be if Beyonce had paid for permission to use those dance moves and then performed them as if she had come up with them herself.