Plagiarism

Alright, I thought the Harvard thread was big enough to warrant its own post. If you can't tell, I don't tolerate plagiarism of any sort. I guess you can say, I was influenced by UCI's policy on plagiarism. Plagiarism, according to UCI Academic Senate Policies on Academic Honesty:

Plagiarism is intellectual theft. It means use of the intellectual creations of another without proper attribution. Plagiarism may take two main forms, which are clearly related:

1. To steal or pass off as one's own the ideas or words, images, or other creative works of another.
2. To use a creative production without crediting the source, even if only minimal information is available to identify it for citation.

Credit must be given for every direct quotation, for paraphrasing or summarizing a work (in whole, or in part, in one's own words), and for information which is not common knowledge.

It's a stringent policy that leaves no room for any amount of plagiarism, even if it's one sentence.

Kaavya Viswanathan clearly plagiarized a few passages within an entire book and I find that reprehensible. However, some people took offense that Kumar called Miss Viswanathan a fucking idiot and questioned her Harvard acceptance because of a few mere counts of plagiarism. Now I don't know what Kumar was thinking, but I definitely know where he's coming from. Plagiarism is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, taboos in academia. And it takes a lot of guts and idiocy to plagiarize a few mundane passages and hide it in your book because you can't take 10 minutes to think up your own mundane passages.

Now I'm definitely sure that Kumar was using hyperbole when he questioned Miss Viswanathan's intelligence. I don't doubt she's a bright woman with a successful future ahead of her. Yes, she wrote most of that book from her own head and that's quite an achievement. But again, with all that talent and Harvard education, she still took the time to copy a few boring passages almost word for word. As Ron said, "she's a smart person that fucked up big time."

Sure, it was only a few passages and I can see why some people will forgive her. Some people don't take plagiarism as seriously as others do. For a lot of people, it depends on the extent and to what degree. She didn't take it straight word for word, nor did she steal the plot of the book. So it's not that bad, they would argue. But from what I was taught during my undergraduate years at UCI, any degree or extent of plagiarism is not tolerated. I still believe that and it's something I will instill in my students in the future.

I think it also stems from the fact that I don't like cheaters. I worked damn hard on my papers and projects. I used a lot of other people's ideas as basis for my own ideas and arguments, but I cited all of that to other authors. I respect other people's work. I respect it enough to footnote every idea not my own. And it would piss me off if I knew some classmate didn't do his/her own work and passed in a paper that was plagiarized--even if it was only a few sentences. Nor would I like it if people stole my work and not credit me.

As for the idea of influence in art, I understand that completely. I'm a musician myself and I love studying 20th century classical and the progression of influence from one composer to another. However, influence and plagiarism are different. On some occasions, there is a undefined line between the two. But like the Supreme Court's definition of pornography, I know it when I see it. Or in the case of music, I know plagiarism when I hear it. Of course, if the composer or writer of the piece got permission and/or cited the work as not his/her own, it's not plagiarism.

However, in other realms of art, using other works is quite acceptable and even encouraged. It seems that people in that artform generally accept the practice. I don't know much about Tony's example of electronic music, but I do know it's a common practice in jazz. That is, there's a catalog of songs and themes that everybody knows and uses as groundwork for solos and variations. Still, there is an extent where copyrights are in effect and most of today's jazz composers still take intellectual theft seriously.

Also, artists and composers don't have to copyright their work. Some choose to make their work public domain (or "open source," if you will). If that's the case, then good for them. It's their work and they can do whatever they want with it. But I don't think the original author in the Harvard case authorized her work to be taken at free will.

Bottomline is plagiarism is intellectual theft. It's difficult to comprehend or define intellectual property sometimes. But copying words and sentence structure isn't too abstract. Yes, Miss Viswanathan didn't copy a lot compared to the rest of her book, but she could have saved herself from a lot of trouble if she only put in 10 extra minutes of work.