Kidnapping (week 3)
After my week long binge of Grey's Anatomy while cooped up on my couch I finally got over my talent of procrastination and decided to talk about kidnapping. You’re probably thinking (if you’re in my Social Media course) our blog prompt this week was supposed to be about plagiarism…and you are exactly right! According to dictionary.com, the word is derived from the Latin plagiarius meaning “kidnapper”… and how this pertains to English language today basically says plagiarism is the theft of words.
I remember as a kid I used to go on our computer using the encyclopedia disk to find information for papers I would need to write. This was when you would still see the little AOL man running across the screen and the dial-up tone repeating over and over until eventually you were able to have a lovely AIM conversation with your friends, I’m pretty sure my screen name was something along the lines of Glitterangel445 (SO ORIGINAL RIGHT??!)
Regardless, finding information is much more easier than putting in a disk in the drive and waiting for everything to load. For instance before I began writing this, I opened my Pinterest APP on my phone, and searched “plagiarism” just so I had some humorous image to add into my blog to keep you more interested. The internet, and well technology has made finding information easier than imagined, but when is it actually considered theft? Plagiarism is not easily understood, I am sure at one point we all benefited from plagiarism…Of course, some people benefit from stealing, and that doesn’t make stealing right. The truth is plagiarism is bad. If it wasn’t something so bad, why would anyone get upset over it?
If you thought of it, or can prove it is your own work, don’t cite it. If its not your own words, and you copied it, make sure credit is given where it is due. Nobody would like to come across something they put their own hard work into, only to see the credit was given to someone else. Personally this has happened to me, and it can be very devastating. I am a photographer, and I work very hard on my images, I once had another photographer use my work on their website claiming it to be theirs, and pulling in business with it. Luckily I was able to prove the wrong doing on their part and call them out and unfortunately use some words along the line of “getting my lawyer involved".
The bottom line, I could be throwing a bunch of statistics at you about plagiarism and how easy it is to copy and paste in the digital age but is that really going to keep someone form doing it? No, I really don’t think it will, but at least I can tell you, if you didn’t come up with the idea, or the words, make sure we know who did.
Sources
Word Origin and History for plagiarism
I remember as a kid I used to go on our computer using the encyclopedia disk to find information for papers I would need to write. This was when you would still see the little AOL man running across the screen and the dial-up tone repeating over and over until eventually you were able to have a lovely AIM conversation with your friends, I’m pretty sure my screen name was something along the lines of Glitterangel445 (SO ORIGINAL RIGHT??!)
Regardless, finding information is much more easier than putting in a disk in the drive and waiting for everything to load. For instance before I began writing this, I opened my Pinterest APP on my phone, and searched “plagiarism” just so I had some humorous image to add into my blog to keep you more interested. The internet, and well technology has made finding information easier than imagined, but when is it actually considered theft? Plagiarism is not easily understood, I am sure at one point we all benefited from plagiarism…Of course, some people benefit from stealing, and that doesn’t make stealing right. The truth is plagiarism is bad. If it wasn’t something so bad, why would anyone get upset over it?
If you thought of it, or can prove it is your own work, don’t cite it. If its not your own words, and you copied it, make sure credit is given where it is due. Nobody would like to come across something they put their own hard work into, only to see the credit was given to someone else. Personally this has happened to me, and it can be very devastating. I am a photographer, and I work very hard on my images, I once had another photographer use my work on their website claiming it to be theirs, and pulling in business with it. Luckily I was able to prove the wrong doing on their part and call them out and unfortunately use some words along the line of “getting my lawyer involved".
The bottom line, I could be throwing a bunch of statistics at you about plagiarism and how easy it is to copy and paste in the digital age but is that really going to keep someone form doing it? No, I really don’t think it will, but at least I can tell you, if you didn’t come up with the idea, or the words, make sure we know who did.
Sources
Word Origin and History for plagiarism
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