Battling Plagiarism In The Internet Age
Plagiarism is one of the most common problems on the internet. You find so many documents related to one subject, and they are similar to each other. |
As per the definition of plagiarism, no two documents must be similar to each other where four words of a document are repeated in the identical document. However, this rule is so handicapped that a person can create another document which is extremely similar to the formal document by changing every fourth word literally.
Also, on the contrary there are so many short phrases that are common and everyone uses common phrases with the same four words in the same fashion. English is a free language and there is no restriction on how an individual should use it. Also, written content is not based on idea nor is it a creative property of anyone. For example, if a person is looking for information about football, the person who has authored the article would write by researching for it on the Internet. However, the author could have copied the information or just reproduced it.
The biggest form of plagiarism occurs from digital to printed format. Several students used plagiarized information for their school projects instead of being original. They just take essays from the Internet and print them out as their work. In fact, the Internet has given impetus to plagiarism. Even Harvard University has studied plagiarism, and they have arrived at some conclusions about plagiarism. There are some sharp indicators like change in the style of notes or language usage, unusual word choices and also unusual font changes in the paper. All these could represent plagiarism.
These days there are several plagiarism checking tools available on the Internet that help to identify it. Battling plagiarism in the Internet age has become easy due to these tools. However, the only thing that can be done is complain to the Internet service provider and to the web hosting company of the person who has resorted to plagiarism. In the US, best the aforementioned steps, you can also pursue a legal case under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or the DMCA
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