RESPONSE: Rise of the Plagiosphere

No one wants to plagiarized. For one, it's illegal. Secondly, no one wants their ideas stolen, or at least not given credit for. But in a world where there is so much information constantly flowing through the internet, information that is constantly changing as well, plagiarism (intentional or not) is becoming harder to avoid. Just think about all documents and free-writing that is uploaded to the internet every second. This blog counts as one of those written items. Yes, my name is attached to this blog, and yes i am expressing my own thoughts and ideas, and yes i am the author but there is no copyright, no trademark, nothing keeping my original ideas from being thrown into the "Plagioshpere," right?

Web databases such as "Turnitin" scan billions of websites to avoid these plagiarism scandals for students and teachers. However, the new technology being developed by MIT engineers to detect non-verbatim plagiarism is taking a bit too far i think. As students we are advised to do research and to base our own ideas upon studies previously done--THOUGHTS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN THOUGHT. We have to paraphrase and in some way reiterate the original idea in our own words. However, we are also advised to site these thoughts and give credit where credit is due. As long as credit is given, is there really a problem?

This brings me to my next point. What about open web writing, such as blogs, Facebook pages, and MySpace profiles? Is credit and authorship being given when no copyright or trademark is involved? If i were to have some insanely insightful, thought provoking ideas about how to choose effective market segments for an advertising campaign that was introduced ten years ago and posted this information on my blog or some other public domain, and some person researching that same campaign stumbled upon my writing, used my thoughts as their own with no credit given would that be plagiarism?