I know the post on plagiarism was due like last week and I apologize for the late entry but I do have a little bit of insight I would like to get off my chest.
After reading the two articles, “Understanding ‘Internet Plagiarism’” and “Why Napster Matters to Writing”, I came up with a few things. First off, I definitely agree that the internet has made plagiarism extremely easy. With the abundance of websites out there, if you site something incorrectly on purpose, it is almost impossible for the professor to find out. As a writer, I would never plagiarize. I think it is a really bad, really addictive habit that can’t lead to anything good. I took a journalism class in high school and we watched the movie, Shattered Glass. It was about a reporter that just made things up for the newspaper, stuff that did not pertain to anything true. While I realize that it was not technically plagiarism, I believe it is along the same vein. Plagiarism is untruthful. One has to lie in order to plagiarize and I am a big advocate for the truth. I bet a lot of people wouldn’t believe me but if you knew me better, you would see that I am extremely naive and all I want is for people to be honest and get along.
In terms of Napster, I didn’t read the entire article. It was very long and I just couldn’t concentrate for that long on something that I found to be dry. But, I believe that stealing music is like plagiarizing. I never really thought of it, though, until I read this article. I mean , on iTunes, you can buy books on tape but I’m sure there are illegal book downloading sites. Though it hasn’t really caught on, I believe it could. I mean, especially in terms of really expensive text books, I know that if I could get them for free I would do it. I don’t know, the internet makes stealing and plagiarizing really easy and it doesn’t even feel like you’re doing anything wrong. This just goes to show that i really need to pay attention to what I am doing when I’m on the internet.
This is not a fun topic. I don’t like thinking about how the world is. It’s just kind of depressing.
-Emm Sofia
