Recently in Copyright/Plagiarism Category
As I have been reminding people recently I both maintain a plagiarism Web site and teach the occasional linguistics course. This is one of those times I'm glad to see an issue like plagiarism from multiple points of view.
Interestingly after teaching a few times, I have decided that the real solution isn't last-minute comparisons, but frequent interaction. So my tips, such as they are, include
Frequent assignments - It is true that the more you see a student's work, the more likely you will spot an anomoly. In fact, blogging is one of the better tools because students really write in their own voices, and instructors see them, but may not have to grade the content in too much detail.
I know this assumes a reasonably low student:faculty ratio which does not always happen here. Even so, I have been in a class of 50+ where plagiarism was detected - Overworked TAs can smell a rat even in a large data set.
The early scare - Like John Harwood and others, I include a statement in the syllabus discuss the issue in the first day of class. The ultimate weapon of course is "I maintain the plagiarism site."
Laying out collaboration rules - The great thing about collaboration is that students can learn from each other, but the bad thing is that they can get lazy also. My own personal rule has been "use your own words" (so that each student has to process some information). If nothing else, I learn who is studying together up front...in case anything weird happens later.
I think the ultimate lesson for me though is that plagiarism really may not pay for the student, even in the short term.
For instance, I questioned a student about copying a transcription from second student, but even if I hadn't caught it, that person would have scored worse...because the two dialects did not mesh. The original transcription was correct for the original speaker's dialect, but wrong for the other person. I knew that the student with the suspicious case totally missed the concept.
Another interesting case was a paper in which significant portions were cut and pasted from another source; I scored it as "missing quotations" since the reference was in the bibliography. Even if I had missed that one though - the paper would have scored low because the source materials were not meshed in well and was ultimately not very comprehensible.
I suspect I have been hosed a few times (for instance, there will be no more bathroom breaks for in-class exams), but overall I feel that I can worry less, because the results of plagiarism are amazingly shoddy in many cases.
The original discovery of this little gem goes to one of my Harrisburg colleagues who learned about it from an instructor. The site in question is Course Hero or "An Open Online Study Community", but note how the home page features quizzes, exam solutions and homework answers along with some actual lecture notes. Yes, I am a little paranoid especially since I have seen many suspicious study aids over the years.
But, since this was a new model, I thought I should investigate. First, I was interested to see that you can use your Facebook account to log in - I knew there was a reason to sign up. Once you log in, you can create a study profile identifying course number and instructor (presumably to find other online study mates). You can also enter in textbook information by ISBN-13 number (always get a textbook for class).
The interesting part happens when you click the Search button. At that point you find out that you have to "upgrade to a standard account" to view search results, and it offers several ways to do so. The first way is to upload your "study aid documents first" (5 for 1 month's access, 50 for unlimited access); the second is to invite your Facebook or AIM buddies (50 friends for one month or 200 friends for one year); or thirdly you could pay a monthly fee. And this is where I feel that "pyramid scheme" applies, because to avoid paying a fee you have to contribute resources (content or people), but if your friends want to avoid paying, they have to find more friends or content...or else. The only thing missing is your cut of the profits (although presumably you will have access to an ever-growing set of resources, possibly forever.
This model is interesting, and it probably works, but I would be leery of joining any service before I had gotten a chance to really look at the search results first. For one thing, I was seriously considering uploading 5 junk documents just to get an in-depth view of my hypothetical search results, and I may not be the only person with this idea. Even worse, I could have "joined" only to find that my search results were empty AFTER I uploaded/paid/sucked in friends. Seems like a real rip-off to me.
The other questionable aspect, of course, is the posting of exam and homework solutions. Hmmm. Sample tests can be helpful study tools...if the instructor chooses to post them, but since the sources on the homepage are set to "anonymous", I'm not sure the instructor is posting anything. Which is where another colleague mentioned copyright issues.
But I suspect that Course Hero is structured like YouTube in that they let users post anything they want and wait for any take-down notices to arrive at their doorstep (I'm sure it's all stated in the user agreement somewhere). In the meantime, all the solutions are available to you under a "Creative Commons" license...assuming that you ever get access to them.
The plagiarism news wire came up with a new twist on plagiarism I had not considered before - the use of reference works in historical fiction. Any novel writer who wants to be taken seriously by historians must of course do a certain amount of historical research...because you know it's a bad Civil War novel if the battle of Gettysburg takes place in 1885. On the other hand, you don't really foot notes in your historical novel. Imagine the following piece of fiction with citations.
As Jim Bob swatted away another mosquito on the morning of July 1, 18631 while marching with General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia2 towards Gettysburg through the scenic Adams County3 orchards of Pennsylvania...he knew it was going another hot day...
In other words - full citation is not really a key concern of novelists. The serious historical novels may have a bibliography at the end, but few "romance" novels will have any such resource. In some sense, novels must have a built in "fair use" clause to include whatever research a novelist chooses to use - without or without citation
But what happens when a novel lifts entire passages from a reference book as one romance novelist has been accused of doing. That is, how far can you go in using academic research?
In this case, it's not a clear case of "cut-and-paste" plagiarism (which would definitely be wrong), but would rather would be a case of "inappropriate paraphrase" - that is rewording the material so little that the "essense" of the original remains. Is this OK?
Actually it may be more OK than you would think. Dan Brown (author of the Da Vinci Code) won a lawsuit against Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of Holy Blood which originally proposed the thesis that Jesus and Mary Magdeline may have conceived a child and still had modern descendants. All Dan Brown did was take an interesting premise and add a modern day thriller twist.
And it's a good thing he did win or else we would never be able to enjoy a bad UFO's in Roswell novel ever again. Truly, I doubt there could be an economic crime here - few people mistake novels for historical research. Even if Brown did not directly acknowledge his sources, I do honestly think that Holy Blodd could easily have leveraged the novel to increase their own sales. I think ANY book about Mary Magedeline could have seen an increase in sales.
But I can't let our novel authors off scott-free either. It's never a good sign that a reviewer or reader can determine your original source material. It either means you didn't do enough research or you're not a good enough writer to translate scholarly prose to compelling prose. I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling the gritty splendor of indigenous native American culture in the following passage
He [Shadow Bear?] nodded toward the closed entrance flap. "Outside, you will notice that further recognition is given the sun by the erection of the Lakota village with every tepee door facing the east."
The crime may not be plagiarism, but it sure is bad writing.
Electronic Reserves - a University Libraries Service in which instructors request library content for their courses to be digitized and made available online to students. A few of these documents may be streamed music or online images, but truthfully most are PDF files.
Around 2003, I worked with the Libraries and the Penn State ANGEL Programmers to conceptualize and implement a nifty ANGEL utility - an ANGEL Reserves tool which lets students jump straight from their ANGEL course to the correct course Reserves without a second login and course search.
This tool may not sound as exciting up front as some other technology options, but I am proud to say that this is one service that has stood that the test of time. Despite minimal marketing (at least from ITS), the tool is still being used in over 600 360+ courses in Spring 2008 (or 700+ courses/year) across 19 campuses. Electronic Reserves is also one of the tools I can guarantee that I will use in just about every course I teach.
Connecting Electronic Reserves to ANGEL solves a lot of problems for instructors. Not only can students go to just one location, but copies will be legal 99% of the time (for instance, I may be able to link to a pre-existing image from the CAMIO image database which Penn State has purchased access to). On the other hand, because ANGEL is password protected, there is potential for TEACH Act leeway for at least a semester. And Electronic Reserves saves file space on the ANGEL because files are really hosted at the Libraries. It's almost a .... mashup?
So although the ANGEL Electronic Reserves is a fairly small scale utility, it's one of the projects I am very proud to have been associated with. It looks like just another way to link to a PDF file, but really it introduced me to the world of the mashup, service integration and the single signon portal.
I just wonder what Electronic Reserves will be connecting to in another five years.
I lucky enough to attend Lawrence Lessig's Keynote address at the Penn State 2008 Symposium last week. If nothing else, it was worth it to see the mashup of George Bush and Tony Blair singing Endless Love to each other (I can verify that Fox News watchers also thought this was hilarious).
On a more serious note, it was a keynote that inspired me think - sometimes on a Lessig track, and sometimes on my own track.
So Many Orphaned Works
I was amazed to find out that 75% of the volumes scanned by Google are "orphaned works", that is under copyright, but out of print. That IS a lot of content under lock and key. You can read more about this line of thought at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/session/lessig-so-many-orphaned-works
Copyright Restrictions Can Both Inhibit and Liberate Creativity
Lessig made an excellent case on the need of allowing artists to incorporate past works - especially in terms of social criticism (see video above).
On the other hand...I know that NOT being able to use these works can ispire creators to greater heights of creativity. For instance, I wanted to demo a certain type of embroidery stitch, but couldn't get permission to copy an embroidery design (or even buy it off of Amazon). So I ended up creating a design on my own to highlight the stitch - which I might not have done otherwise.
Copyright is one reason we have so many duplicate photos of the same object or technical drawings of the same concept. It's often easier to make another version of your own then try to license it from someone else.
There are limits though. When Florence King (author of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady) wanted to quote old song lyrics telling tales of "fallen women", her publisher informed that they could not guarantee licenses because some songs may have been recently re-recorded and under new restrictions. Her solution at the time was to create her own lyrics within that genre, but from a research point of view...this was not ideal.
Professionals and Amateurs - An Old Dichotomy
Whenever I hear references to technology and history - I'm usually both intrigued and worried. I'm glad to know someone is looking to the past, but is it always the right metaphor? For instance...
Lessig discussed the "new" tension between professional creators (those who can get paid to create) and amateur creators (those who do it without getting paid). He quoted Sousa as warning that phonographs would "professionalize" music (read-only culture) while today we are seeing a "return" of amateur musicians (read/write culture).
To me though it's not such a new dichotomy. It's said that even the Celts required years of training for their bards (professional musicians), so the distinction of popular vs professional has been around a long time (at least since ancient Egypt had slinky flute girls in the palace). Similarly, the rise of the record and the camera gave rise to the garage band and the hobby photographer. The read/write mix persists even through the 20th century. You could argue that having access to professional caliber examples is good for the art community (unless it suppresses the traditional arts).
What is changing is that the amateurs are now getting the same distribution channels as the professionals (see next section).It's The Distribution System That Changed
I think the Internet revolution is really about distribution (I'm sure this is not an original thought, but the Internet is not facilitating a good citation search today). Because posting a file is so cheap - both amateurs and professionals can put their content on the Web in the same "channels".
Before the Internet, professionals and amateurs had different ways of distributing their opera magna (that would be the plural of opus magnum). In modern era, only professionals were "published" on a large scale and only by companies who could afford the duplication equipment. Further back in time, the only way to access a high-level professional artist was probably to visit the capital (and maybe you had to know a rich patron or someone in the palace).
Amateurs or popular works were usually distributed on a more local level. Maybe you attended a local concert or saw a hex sign painted by a local artisan. A non-elite would see these the most, but only those styles and genres for their particular region.
But today - something on the Internet could be either "amateur" or "professional" and this is something that has its pluses and minuses. Lessig noted the pluses for amateurs (and saavy professionals), but studios who are used to making profits by publishing are NOT seeing the benefits right now (hence the copyright crackdown).
Interestingly this merger of the channels has led to another common academic complaint - the need for students to develop the information literacy skills to distinguish the good stuff from the schlock. Sometimes it all connects in ways we never expected...
Although we associate calculus with the hard sciences, in fact it's an important tool for economic and business analysis.
For instance, I just found a reference to a paper "Forever Minus a Day?: Some Theory and Empirics of Optimal Copyright" (PDF) which uses some parameters and calculus theory to propose that copyright should only be about 15 years in order to maximize overall creative output.
That is (if I understand this correctly) too little copyright inhibits creativity because artisans could not earn a fair profit, but too much copyright can also inhibit creativity because it cuts off access to preexisting materials which could be recombined in a new work (e.g. Andy Warhol might not have legal access to a famous Marilyn photo to redo). The analysis also factors in production and distribution costs as well as increases in cultural resources from new works.
I think is an interesting take on a complex policy issue. You might not agree with the assumptions (I suspect some producers would rather increase their own profits than add to the cultural stockpile), but it's worthwhile for someone to write down their assumptions on optimal policy, then maybe use a more "objective" way to find answer.
I don't expect copyright terms to be reduced anytime soon, but an analysis like this might be persuasive in keeping them from getting any longer.
After all, even when "Steamboat Willie" (1st Mickey Mouse cartoon) enters the public domain, Disney will have plenty of tricks to keep later versions locked down a little longer (maybe even a lot longer). See the Superboy vs Superman Copyright saga for a sample of what I mean.
Most copyright discussions focus on abstract concepts like abiding by the law or creator rights vs. maintaining creative dynamism in the society, and these are worthy concepts. But this interesting article from the Guardian on copyright and a pop-art exhibit reminds me that you really can't understand copyright litigation unless you understand the primitive need to make a big payola.
Many 20th centtury artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, made their careers out of repurposing iconic images (many of which were copyrighted) and we all appreciate their genius...even Disney and DC Comics.
On the other hand, the article points out that museum (National Portrait Gallery) is loaded with "Do Not Photograph" signs. In case you're wondering if the purpose is to protect the images from damages - it's not. Reporter Cory Doctorow asked.
Many people have pointed out the ironies before (e.g. Disney has recycled plenty of public domain material), but to me copyright is essentially a right about economics (the right of the creator to make a sweet pay-off if possible). As a generalization, consumers all hate copyright restrictions...unless copyright is protecting our current bottom line as a producer.
Oddly, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis can benefit from pop-art use of their images because of increased exposure (I notice the smart artists don't interfere too much with You Tube because they do get increased video play which may lead to music songs). It makes sense for the estate of Marilyn Monroe to leave the estate of Andy Warhol alone.
But there is a point where free exposure will eat into your profits (hence celebrities and studios also license their images carefully). Hence the National Portrait Gallery would rather not have unlicensed photos in cyberspace - they think it would cut down on visits (you could argue not, but that is what's at stake).
Interestingly, another article, "Prince the artist who formerly liked the Internet" has started an anti-file sharing campaign...despite being a pioneer in legal music downloading. Prince has not given a clear reasons for his change in heart, but I bet it has something to do with revenue.
A lot has been written on both sides on copyright issues, but in the end it really is about how much money you will make or lose in the transaction. I have to confess I've been both sides of it myself.
If I'm strapped for cash and looking for a reference photo of a cathedral window for a craft design, I don't want to shell out some fee for a book or photo license. I admit it, I'm cheap. If I can obtain it from somewhere else, I probably will.
But once I create a design based on said cathedral window - I really don't want to give it away if I think I can get some money for it (especially if I bought a photo license). The main reason I would do so would be to generate free publicity...which would lead to future PAID design opportunities (I dream). There are people who are more generous with their work, but seriously, a lot of them have day jobs. Crafters who earn most of their income from their work tend to be much pickier about how they distribute designs.
My point (and it's a long one) is that it is important to remember the real "primitive" need for maximizing wealth. One side wants to earn money from copyright, the other wants to save money in the consumer end. If you happen to be both producer and consumer (e.g. Disney) - it gets even weirder.
Both sides have a point - which is why copyright will always be a strangely manipulated balance with odd paradoxes.
