Plagiarism and Intellectual Property

Plagiarism seems to be a growing topic of concern that will never really disappear. Since being in university, I have heard about this topic over and over again in all of my classes and know about all of the consequences that come with it, but then ask myself: Why do so many students still do it? The truth is that most of us do it without even realizing it. Plagiarism doesn't just involve your academic work; when participating in social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you are constantly plagiarizing when posting links and images on your wall and on your friends' walls. Rarely do you see someone giving the credit to the original publisher. Being such a common occurrence, in the end does it really matter if someone uses the same photo that hundreds of thousands of other people across the globe are using as well? A photo that becomes that popular on the web is usually seen as public property. So is it wrong?

On Twitter, my friends and I are constantly sending each other funny pictures that we come across on our newsfeeds-memes, cute animal photos, and romantic quotes. None of these photos were labeled with copyright stamps or the creators' names. In this case, how would it even be possible to cite the original person who posted it? Is it even necessary? It's not like I'm claiming any of the ideas to be my own. On these social networking sites, it generally isn't anyone's motive to try and pretend something is yours. It's usually quite clear that a photo is from a site like Pinterest or The Chive pages, with the intention of putting entertaining photos and videos out for the world to access.

I think the main reason people plagiarize is mostly because of just plain laziness. I know I have had friends in high school who would leave assignments until the day before they were due, and then would just try to scramble to put something together and end up just taking information straight from the internet. I think the main reason for them doing this is that in high school the teachers are not as strict about plagiarism as they are in university, and you are also not as likely to get caught. I believe they need to start being more strict in high school and have more serious consequences to scare kids out of being lazy and to do the work on their own, because most of the time they are capable of doing it and could do well, but choose the easier, lazier option instead.

The main reasons why I think people should cite work that is not their own is because you should be giving credit to where the credit is due. With our world we are becoming more and more technologically advanced, meaning the need for people to understand how to avoid plagiarism is becoming more important. To help decrease the number of plagiarism cases I think it would be smart to start teaching children at a younger age about the importance of citing and how serious plagiarism is taken. I believe we should be teaching kids how to cite sources right when they first start writing papers, and by doing this it really will get drilled into their heads.