Four Reasons to be Happy about Internet Plagiarism

Just got around to this year-old article, Four Reasons to be Happy about Internet Plagiarism. They are:

1. The institutional rhetorical writing environment (the "research paper," the "literary essay," the "term paper") is challenged by this, and that's a good thing.
2. The institutional structures around grades and certification are challenged by this, and that's a good thing.
3. The model of knowledge held by almost all students, and by many faculty -- the tacit assumption that knowledge is stored information and that skills are isolated, asocial faculties -- is challenged by this, and that's a good thing.
4. But there's a reason to welcome this challenge that's far more important than any of these -- more important, even, than the way the revolutionary volatility of text mediated by photocopying and electronic files have assaulted traditional assumptions of intellectual property and copyright by distributing the power to copy beyond those who have the right to copy. It's this: by facing this challenge we will be forced to help our students learn what I believe to be the most important thing they can learn at university: just how the intellectual enterprise of scholarship and research really works.

Posted by Chris Hodge at August 2, 2004 01:16 PM | Links to this post
Categories: Information Studies