Thanks for the clarification, Russ.
Naatsha
Russ Hunt wrote:
>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
>
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