In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.
Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD), Natural History
Plagiarism has long been the bane of publishers, authors and educators. There are no geographical or political boundaries, nor containment to any particular level of academia. And, as Pliny the Elder witnesses, its been going on for an awfully long time. Just like the weather, everyone talks about it - but no one seems to be able to prevent it.
Within the last two decades, the phenomenal growth of digitised and digital material has proliferated to the extent that our eyes now glaze over hearing the statistics repeated ad nauseum. Never before have so many had access to so much, at so little cost.
The Internet has allowed almost instant publication by anyone with sufficient technical ability to operate a computer. Internationally acclaimed authors are now publishing e-books specifically for this ‘new’ medium. Institutions produce networkable CD-ROMs of reference works. The mass media readily displays selected content from their print publications on the world wide web and offers its digitised archives with a choice of online access, or as removable media.
Regardless of the delivery method, computer-based information provides an increased opportunity for plagiarism, compared to the paper-based print counterpart. With "cut and paste" being platform independent, and easily achieved with the most basic of skills and programs, students and professionals alike are able to snip unlimited amounts of wordage, and create reasonably coherent essays.
However, intellectual property theft now goes beyond the copying of word, ideas, artwork or music. Although students have always had a penchant for what may most kindly described as ‘unacknowledged quotation’, there would appear to be a burgeoning industry in professional, organised plagiarism. Entire web sites have been downloaded and stored offline, generally without the authors’ consent. In fact, not only has specialised software been created for ‘web wacking’, modern browsers also have this capability incorporated into their programs.
A search using Google (www.google.com) with the phrase ‘term papers’ reveals over 230,000 sites that offer what are described as ‘sample papers’. An amazing phenomenon, considering almost all academic institutions threaten a range of consequences for plagiarism. The punishments are well known, varying from being given a failing grade on a paper, to expulsion from the institution.
Consequences beyond academia can be dire, as Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware, discovered. According to L.J. Sabato of the Washington Post, Biden was driven from the nomination battle of 1988 after delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. In the literary world, Arthur Haily paid a sizable out of court settlement when The African author, Harold Courlander, detailed the identical passages that appeared in Roots. The Internet is littered with further examples of the consequences of plagiarism beyond the schoolyard.
Should the existence of school-paper cheat sites worry professional, commercial publishing organizations? Consider the possibility that the existence of such facilities be incubating a new generation, where intellectual property theft is no more than a calculated risk to the student or scholar, and a challenge for the original author. A plagiarised history assignment today may lead to unauthorised replication of an e-book tomorrow.
In the print environment, monographs routinely show a copyright warning on at least one of the book’s pages. Audiovisual material similarly has a statement as to rights and restrictions, embedded in its front and end matter. In both of these cases, it is widely acknowledged that most readers or viewers flick past this information. At the installation stage, computer programs display the User Agreement, by-passed by a simple mouse click. After installation, software hides this information in the Help Files, where it must be actively accessed. It would appear that strategies involving the posting of warnings has not prevented plagiarism in the past, nor are they unlikely to do so in the future.
The implications for publishers of e-books are enormous. Although an initial charge can be made for the download of the text, there is little that can be done to prevent an endless replication of the content by the unscrupulous, with the most basic of equipment. Whilst it is ludicrous to consider anyone photocopying an entire (paper) book, the low costs and ease of operation of CD and DVD burners make this a profitable – although illegal - pursuit in the digital realm.
The Business Software Alliance advises that in 1998 alone, software plagiarism cost electronic publishers over $11 billion globally, with an estimated 25% of digital material in the US being an unauthorised copy. Under the 1997 No Electronic Theft Act, there are penalties of up to $250,000 or a five year jail term.
Litigation is not unknown in the (print) publication industry, but the costs and time involved are legendary. The Microsoft Corporation is the world’s single most successful publishing plaintiff, in terms of punitive damages received for unauthorised copying of its product. In addition to having specific legislation protecting its work, Microsoft also enjoys the cooperation of not only the US Customs Department, but also the FBI. While it may sound churlish of those in the traditional print environment to comment on this disparity, it does provide food for thought.
In contemporary publishing, the line between the digital and traditional is rapidly blurring. As computer programs become increasingly more powerful and complex, a companion volume of instructions is becoming de rigeur, and spin-offs such as “Idiot’s Guides” fill entire sections of retail book stores. Although the majority of book publishers have not made a major commitment to e-publishing, it is an unwize producer of information or literature that does not have a significant web presence.
Herein lies the rub. Publishers’ official web sites display book covers, reviews and author information. To have these copied and displayed elsewhere amounts to free publicity and thus would hopefully lead to increased sales. But what of the intellectual property rights of the artist responsible for the cover or of the reviewer whose work is displayed? Does a publisher wish to have their web site content copied and circulated? Could this be the start of an ‘acceptable level’ of plagiarism?
Consider the use of a corporate logo or trademark on a publisher’s website. Its use as a link from another website may very well lead to an increase in virtual visitors, but would this be tolerated outside the digital environment? These are executive decisions that should be made prior to the launch of a web site. In the event that policy resolves in favour of protecting copyright, what can be done to prevent its unauthorised use? Anecdotal evidence suggests very little.
Further, how would the originating web site even know that their content had been copied and displayed elsewhere? Given the estimated 200 billion websites (and that’s only those that can be indexed by the current generation of search engines), would it be cost-effective to search for unauthorised use? Netsizer.com provides a real-time graphical representation of the expansion of the Internet – a humbling experience for those with their own website.
It is manifestly obvious that intellectual property theft has existed since the mechanics of the ‘written word’ became public domain. Whilst human expression was restricted to hard copy, plagiarism could be considered an ethical and professional issue, but with the introduction of electronic communication these issues now includes financial considerations beyond those traditionally associated with non-digital publication.
The copyright warnings and penalties that are currently in place seem to have had little impact with regard to established technology, and the indications are that they are equally ineffective for emerging mechanisms. Despite Microsoft’s spectacular success in the courts, the potential for profit appears to outweigh the penalties, as is the common motivation for many crimes.
One strategy for addressing these issues may be to raise awareness of the common-or-garden Internet user, by at least making plagiarism a little more difficult. For those who dabble in web site construction in a non-professional capacity (the ubiquitous ‘home page’), these scripts and HTML codes may assist in preventing plagiarism of your own intellectual property.
...or maybe they won't.
