This week’s reading covered ethics. Early on in the reading, ethics were defined by the phrase “doing the right thing”. This covers the basics of ethics but later on in the reading, ethics are broken up into three types: personal, social and conversation. Out of all the types of ethics, it seems as though that social ethics will have the greatest impact on my career. Especially since I hope to be involved the security sector of IT, many of the publications released are considered too controversial because they often put some users at risk. Prior to publishing any material it will be imperative that I verify that I am not releasing anything that might be deemed illegal. I will also need to ensure that publishing certain information will force companies to update their products and ultimately provide the greatest good.
Also discussed in this reading was the issue of copyrights and plagiarism. This topic is very relevant to our white paper project. Especially for those of us who are unfamiliar with our topics, it is often tempting to just copy and paste information we find and claim it as our own. Despite this, we must resist the urge to just copy and paste others work. If we do encounter a situation where we do need to copy someone else’s work, it is imperative that we ask their permission and give the original author proper credit. Despite this seeming like a message that has been burnt into our brains since we began writing, there is obviously a reason that our professors have to repeat the same message every semester. I found it interesting reading about the “fair use clause” of the Copyright Act. It is nice to know that in a world full of Copyright lawsuits, there is a clause that’s goal is to help promote education and criticism.
Plagiarism in college.
I think that your second paragraph discusses a big problem, on the college level especially. As we get older and go through more schooling it seems like we just want to get things done the fastest way possible and sometimes forget the consequences. I feel that people tend to use way more online resources now than ever which mean that plagiarism is a very big deal these days. I thought about that when I started doing research for our white paper because I am not very familiar with this topic and the internet has a lot of information on the subject. I believe that I will be able to handle it though because we have also learned how to cite things properly and I plan on doing so.
Plagiarism
Yea it definitely is a problem here at the college level. While sometimes you have students that are plagiarizing out of pure laziness. I am sure that there are some who also do it unintentionally. At least for me, I will often copy and paste excerpts from articles into Microsoft Word. In most cases, I will summarize what I have read but if I am trying to get my research done quickly, I will just copy and paste excerpts that have key information in them. I would not be surprised if others do this as well. The problem with this is that it could be easy to confuse what you have summarized in your own words with what you copied and pasted. This could then lead to accidental plagiarism.
I understand what you are
I understand what you are saying here about accidental plagiarism. I have noticed in the past that I will actually write something that is extremely similar to something I had previously read. Though I don’t normally copy and paste and then summarize as you have discussed, the simple act of writing about at topic after thorough research could lead to accidental plagiarism just from what you remember. Another point that you made above was that some just plagiarize due to laziness. This is obviously easy for people to accomplish due to the mass of information out on the internet. I suppose for some ethics don’t matter when online.
Thanks
JFlitt
www.JFlitt.com
Doesn't Seem So Bad
I think the college life here at Purdue makes it seem like cheating is the only option. With the amount of work we are expected to do in engineering there is no way to finish it all and actually learn something. It seems like at least every other week there is something that I just don’t have the time to do, which makes cheating very enticing. I also think it is apparent in classes that require too much, like when the exam average is a 42%. The worst part is that they just bump everyone up to make it look like we learned. Compared to what some classes require and expect, it almost makes cheating seem ethical. I have a machine design project due on Tuesday that will probably be only 70 percent complete. There is just no time.
I agree that plagiarism is a
I agree that plagiarism is a huge issue today. Today most people are doing all of their research on the internet instead of actually going to a library, I feel that when doing research on the internet one must be very cautious and pay attention to where they are getting the information, and not taking it as their own. Not plagiarizing in the white paper project is very important, since many of us are not professionals in the topic areas we are writing about it leaves us having to do a lot of research, and citing that information is key.
Plagiarism
I totally agree with you that the increased use of the internet may create an increase in the possibility to plagiarize. This is why I like the idea of writing down my research in a notebook. This will help to prevent me from doing the simple copy and paste. I’m sure many people are totally against the writing down stuff in notebooks. After all, isn’t that why we buy these nice computers? I’m sure there are even more who don’t like notebook research in this group online since these people chose to take an online course. As long as you site your sources and give credit where its due you can easily avoid my notebook methods.
-Chris
Accidental(?)
I think, for the most part, that intentional plagiarism is quite obvious compared to this accidental version and is usually caught; ie: googling strings of text to find a match. I'm not really sure if accidental plagiarism is even possible. The chance of you writing something word-for-word as it appears in another document is next to zero and if you end up paraphrasing something or summarizing it-so what? It should be in the references anyway and [I would assume] that would take care of that.
As for the notebooking...I don't really see a difference between using a physical notebook versus an electronic word document-in terms of content anyway. Electronic documents are much faster and [arguably] more neatly printed. It is fine if you copy-paste info from the internet into this document since it isn't your actual public document; you're not claiming that the contents of this electronic notebook are yours. All you have to do is fill up the notbook-however you can-and add the source. When you write the actual document just take what you need and cite what needs to be cited.
plagiarism?
The term “fair clause” used in the book is another word, besides copyrights, that boils my blood. In recent terms that word came up in my senior design class. Our senior design group had set out a server listing email to everyone in our department. We actually had another group copy and paste our email (which had taken time to prepare) and they used everything we had that was applicable to them and sent out the exact same email on the server listing. The other group thought it was “fair game” since it was used by a public domain and anyone could have said it. We argue it was plagiarism, but just its show it’s another gray area in the copyright family. What’s “fair clause” in comparison to plagiarism?
Working in the security field
Ben, I enjoyed reading your thoughts about working in the security field and the ethical implications it can have. This field is one that is surrounded in ethical situations that you must be aware. The pure nature of the job requires utmost ethical attention. Many times administrators will know of different security flaws that could seriously compromise a system. If this information got leaked, or really any key bit of security intel, havoc could be wrecked. It is interesting though if releasing this information does more harm than benefits sometimes. Attention to ethics in all situations of this job must always be taken and in all areas.