I probably shouldn't have said "nothing to do," because they can
overlap. But they are quite different concerns, and entirely
separable.
> Russ, why are you saying that
> > Copyright has _nothing to do_ with plagiarism. Nothing. They are
> > separate issues?
A student writing a paper is not publishing it, and it's a
private matter: it can't violate copyright unless it harms the
owner of the copyright by depriving her of potential revenue,
and in order to do that it has to be public. Further, an idea
can't be copyrighted; only the _expression_ of the idea can be
copyrighted, so that if I paraphrase I don't violate copyright
(though I might still be plagiarising). A copyright violation is
irrelevant to whether it's plagiarism or not: if I copy your
article and publish it as signed by you, I've still violated
your copyright. In fact, that's usually the case: copyright
originated to keep someone else from printing your work and
selling it without paying anything to you. Who _signed_ it was
irrelevant, and if your name were one to conjure with, the
pirate would want to publish it with your name on it.
Part of the reason I feel strongly about this is that people
like turnitin.com want to confuse the two, making student
plagiarism seem a much bigger deal than it is, making it seem
even a criminal matter. I didn't realize this till at a
conference a couple of years ago a presenter from the Columbia
law school (I think) walked us through their Web page,
explaining how many falsehoods and weasle-implications were on
it. Since then they've taken that stuff down.
Plagiarism is a matter of honesty (when it's dishonest and not
simply mistaken, which, IMHO, is most of the time), but not a
criminal or legal matter. Even Jayson Blair could only be fired,
not prosecuted.
> And re posting one's published articles on the Internet: I
> stopped doing that because copyright transfer forms often
> have a clause that prevents one from doing that. Since I have
> transferred copyright to the publisher, won't I be violating
> the copyright agreement if I post the paper?
Yes.
It's one of my few remaining vices from the days when I embraced
civil disobedience. I figure if Heinemann wants to sue me for
$325, they're welcome to. The amounts of money involved in this
stuff are too trivial to bother with: copyright is about Disney,
and mp3 files, and maybe textbooks. My article was written and
published so that my colleagues could read it, not so that
someone who happened to control a printing press could profit
from restraining its circulation.
-- Russ
St. Thomas University
http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
