Under plagiarism we understand, as defined in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work”.
It could be described as a theft or stealing; although it has not been set as a criminal matter in the courts and people plagiarizing cannot be sued and condemned for it.
Plagiarism can be found in various sanctions, such as academia, journalism or, nowadays, Internet.
But this type of plagiarism, the online plagiarism, is very recent, while the others have been around for many years. The computerization of text and their online availability has greatly facilitated the act of copying others work.
However, it should be borne in mind that plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement.
Looking further in online plagiarism, it could be described as the act of copying and pasting material from Internet websites.
It is becoming increasingly common to find plagiarized documents, since it is very easy and people think it is not controlled.
However, there are many free online tools available that help identifying plagiarism, which are very efficient. The only problem is, that most of these tools for identifying plagiarism, only detect word for word copies, and many people already go a step further and know how to avoid being identified.
Other techniques trying to limit the online plagiarism are locking right clicking or setting warning banners looking for copyrights on web pages. [3]
There are even many websites, which have been provided and set up with a system, which automatically sends a notice to the owner/creator or ISP of the website warning about a possible plagiarism attempt. [4]
So, as can be noticed, misdeeds as plagiarism have evolved and are easier to perform, but the solutions against such actions are not very far from reaching them and by their same height.
References:
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.encarta.es/
Oxford Advanced Dictionary
Enciclopedia Larousse
Created: 18/12/2009
Created by: Ramon Aristegui
Uploading ....