Blog #3: Message and Copyright Information

Copyright © by Yours Truly

So begins, or ends, almost everything written except, perhaps billets-doux between sailors and their wives.  And so it is, that more academic time is being shunted away from the subject matter to deal with something else that is pressing--in this case, plagiarism and copyright violation.

I confess frustration here.  Not with the concept of copyright, but with the practice as it is evolving. No, I am not advocating that people--students included (perhaps students especially)--go willynilly out and start cutting and pasting.  Not at all.  When I was in school, I couldn't cut and paste--primarily, because the abacus was not conducive to cutting and pasting!  We had to hand-write everything, except in typing class, where I learned to double-space after a sentence-ending period or question mark or exclamation mark.  (And APA notwithstanding, I shall evermore continue to do just that.)

What frustrated me is the reality that lawyers have hijacked common-sense language.  I just got in trouble there.  Someone posted a reply to a Facebook posting several years back, and I could not--not even if I were to be water-boarded--ever remember who that person was, nor even the exact context of the posting; but the phrase has stuck with me, because of its veracity.  And that is what I am talking about.  Example:  A clear (not really--I had to Google "mirroring on the internet") explanation of copyright laws written by an unknown author who does not, apparently, live in the United States, can be found at whatiscopyright.org.  However, I cannot even explain, according to his terms of use, what it is about, because of the wording of those terms.  I cannot use even one of the words in this person's website, at all in this discourse; I can, however, if you will give me your mailing address, copy the whole thing on to paper using ink, provided I tell you where it came from by writing his URL on every page.

I remember the big debates over Darwinism and Creationism back when I was a mere slip of a boy. And one of the arguments posited was that, yes, given enough time, an army of monkeys could indeed type out Hamlet.  Well.  I am still not too sure about that, but I do know this:  There are seven billion or more people on this little blue planet.  And sooner or later, two of them will coincidentally type four or five words exactly identical, down to the font style and size, and post them at exactly the same time.  This will, hopefully, make all the lawyers' heads explode all at once. The world will immediately become a much better, and more peaceful place in which to live.

The above thought comes about because of this topic:  Plagiarism.  A big word, the meaning of which can be found at this website, operated by Noah Webster's own intellectual progeny.  This site, designed primarily for authors (of whatever), provides vital information on how to detect if one's work is being plagiarized;  well and good, but what about the high school student who is trying to be proactive?  There is a level of frustration here.  Sooner or later, those monkeys and two of those seven billion people will mesh.

I myself have run into this.  In one class, I put in quotation marks, the phrase, "perception is reality." This phrase is a truism.  It has bee around for decades, if not longer, and is a dictum to follow in advertising and in politics, as well as in law.  Yet, just as my late brother used to say, "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you," can not be attributed to him, neither can the former phrase.  Yet!  There I was, having to search high and low to find someone to whom I could attribute it.  Finally, I found that the late Lee Atwater, Republican strategist and political consultant, was fond of quoting it.  If I remember right, I found it in an archived news article.  That sufficed.  And this exemplifies the extreme paranoia which we have arrived at, in our fear of being brought before the bar by someone who decides to lay claim to what we actually wrote ourselves.

So that brings us to the present.  What to do with students who, thanks to the world wide web, are able to create, from the whole cloth of the digital information age, a research paper of which any doctoral candidate would be proud?  Sadly, be proactive, and take even more academic time away from the subject matter, and discuss ethics (can I--dare I--say "morals"?), the Bomb, and copyright/plagiarism issues with them.

Resources

1. Definitions of various terms used in the copyrighting community:  http://www.whatiscopyright.org/
2. The Webster Dictionary website:  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarize
3. Luigi Canali de Rossi's website curation of all things pertaining to protecting your intellectual property:  http://www.masternewmedia.org/online-plagiarism-how-to-detect-fight-and-report-the-unlicensed-republication-of-your-content/Luigi