Plagiarism is Never Ok
“Plagiarism is never ok. It is never ok to take someone else’s work and write their
exact words down on your paper.
That is stealing.”
During the first week of school I found myself saying repeating those sentences over and over again as I conducted computer orientation to each class of 3-5th grade students and went over the county’s rules and regulations for computer use. Orientation is required for every class and a prerequisite before students get their logins and passwords to use the school computers and certainly before they begin to word process, use interactive games to practice skills, and conducting research using online resources.
The irony of the situation was that while I was telling my students that it was never ok to copy what they read in World Book, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or any of the other online resources we use, my own work on my blog was being stolen and reposted on another blog.
The offending blog scraped my content through my feed, ran it through some sort of automated find and replace script, and reposted in the exact format it appeared on my site. The majority of my original writing was intact as was the paragraph structure of my posts along with screenshots I had received permission to use and personal photos that included photos of my children. The copyright of my original works had been violated.
When I first found out that all of my blog’s content for the month of August had been taken, I felt sick. A knot formed in my stomach when I saw every single one of my posts in their archive including one where I ranted about them stealing my work. I spent days feeling like I was going to throw up. I was afraid to post new content. I wondered how could someone do this to me when I spend my time teaching kids that plagiarism is bad and to summarize what they read or cite original works.
I filed multiple complaints and wondered how long it would take until all of my posts were removed. I spent days worrying about whether or not I was going to be able to win the war against the site that was stealing from me. I didn’t know who was behind this except for a URL. The About Me section was a dead link. Sure, I could glean an IP address but that would tell me where the person was but what if they were in another country? I worried that the fight to protect my work and uphold my rights to my original work thanks to copyright protection would be impossible and expensive.
While I tell my students that there are dire consequences for plagiarism in schools, unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there is much recourse or any real life consequences equivalent to what my students know will happen to them. Your internet service provider won’t immediate suspend your access. You won’t be expelled from the internet. The fight to combat copyright violation could be impossible due to the expense alone.
I don’t tell my students this though. During the orientation, I never crack a smile while going over the regulations or telling them that my work was stolen and sharing my feelings. I list every single one of the school system’s consequences for plagiarism and copyright violation which range from a parent phone call to suspension, expulsion, or criminal prosecution. At the end of the orientation, they are as serious as I am.
I can only hope that the lesson that I teach at the start of every school year is one that sticks with them throughout their lives and that they won’t be the ones plagiarizing, scraping, or stealing someone else’s copyrighted works in the future.
Original DC Metro Moms post
Leticia is using this experience as a teachable moment and shares how she learned her content was being stolen on Tech Savvy Mama in hopes that she can help other bloggers.
