How’s this for irony? As I am writing (typing?) this reading response on internet plagiarism, I am watching a bootleg copy of the documentary Jesus Camp on a streaming website. It is totally free and totally illegal. In theory, internet plagiarism is wrong and shouldn’t happen. In reality, it is going to. With every innovation there is a downfall, and the internet’s downfall is the fact that with all of that information, it is easy to grab at somebody else’s thoughts. The same goes for online streaming: we shouldn’t be “stealing” these artists’ songs or movies, but I know the majority of the people reading this have software like Limewire or Napster. My personal poison is fanpop.com where you can search by your interests for hundreds of videos.

Slightly switching gears, Howard also mentions turnitin.com; a site that has caused me nothing but pain and agony. In high school many of my teachers relied on turnitin.com as a way to weed out plagarism. Instead she got 80% of the papers back with a plagarism rate of 35% or more. The thing I loathe about plagarism sites is that they compare your paper with other papers in their database (which you become a part of when you “turn in” your paper). These papers aren’t published nor are they a part of pay-for-your paper sites. I guess those folks at turnitin don’t realize that many high school students share similar views and ideas on certain subjects.

Great minds think alike, supposedly, yet nowadays if you think alike you are penalized for it. Yes, one should be concerned if something is identical to another published paper without citing it, but if one paper shares common ideas or views with another article or paper that they probably would’ve never come across, don’t automatically wave the plagiarism flag.