[edi581] Plagiarism and Copyright

From: "diana romeo" <dromeo@xxxxxxxxx>
To: edi581@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 12:13:10 -0500
Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
                by Carl Romeo (Who always has an opinion.)
   
    The assignments submitted so far have discussed violations by 
students. I will take a different approach, and discuss two examples 
of violations by teachers (even though teachers never do that).

    The first, I witnessed second hand through Middle-L listserve. 
A teacher had written saying his students are not allowed to bring 
their novels home, and he was asking how he could have absent students 
make up their reading, since the books were not allowed out of school.
   
    Another teacher answered, advising him that she copies chapters 
from her novels, and keeps them in class, and lets the students 
bring the copies home, since she has no budget for new books.

    She could probably get away with copying a single chapter from 
a book (although she seems to have the entire books copied) except for two 
things:
 1. The copying cannot be done to circumvent the purchase of the 
copyrighted material, which it obviously is in this case.
 2. The "single use" provision is being violated, since at least 
by implication, she is using the same copies over and over again for more than 
one year.

   As for getting around the situation legally, this one is a real 
problem for teachers everywhere, but here are a few suggestions:
  1. She could have chapter summaries for the students to read, 
and this would have to do for students who are not there. Not a 
great solution, but better than nothing.
  2.  Maybe better! They must have Study Halls and/or Resource periods 
in her school. We have the students sign the books out to read in 
Study Hall. A note to the Study Hall teacher insures they do their 
reading, and that they hand the books in to the Study Hall teacher 
at the end of the period. Our Study Hall teachers never object, 
since other teachers are doing similar things for them.(It's called 
teamwork, a very corny, old fashioned idea, but it really works!)

   The second situation is one I witnessed personally. A Tenth Grade 
class was doing the play "The Crucible", by Arthur Miller. The teacher 
had a copy of the entire play on audio tape. She actually told the 
students "the copyright does not apply, because it is on tape and 
not in book form", and she let the students copy it wholesale to 
listen to at home, sell to other students, or do with it as they pleased.

   Obviously, this was just an ignorant person. We all know that 
copyrights DO NOT apply only to books, and this does not even require further 
discusion.

   In this case, since there was no restriction on the students 
bringing the book home, she could have just advised them to do that. 
In lieu of that, she probably could have got away with copying one 
or two copies herself to let students borrow for make up only.

    Stopping students from plagiarizing is another matter. Jerry 
correctly did not ask us for ways to "eliminate" it, but only to 
mitigate the problem, since this is the best that can be done If 
your school has some good anti-plagiariam softwear, this is a help. 
Beyond this, it is my opinion (and not a widely held one in some 
Districts in which I have taught) that there should be severe penalties for 
plagiarism. 

   I personally know of a recent example, where a student downloaded 
an entire term paper from the internet, submitted it as his own, 
and as a punishment, he had to do the whole thing over again with 
a 10 point deduction to start. This is ludicrous in my minority 
opinion. He should have been given a "0" for the paper, and probably 
further consequences for dishonesty. If we make it easy for them, there is no 
incentive to stop.

   I would like to thank Jerry for this assignment, because it has 
given me a venue to vent a few of my unpopular opinions.

Carl




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[edi581] Plagiarism and Copyright

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