Everyone does it—look at Napster!

A: The Napster case is not about plagiarism but copyrighted intellectual property (as James Walden pointed out to me in e-mail in November 2005). But these broader issues matter.  Do look at what happened to Napster—a court order to shut down access to stolen songs and lots of money spent on attorneys.

Let's look at the big picture here. There are distinguished critics of the notion of intellectual property (and we could extend that to the abstract notions of acknowledging ideas). But they generally don't break the law (or academic conventions) for their own comfort and convenience. The ones in the software world put their money where their mouth is by writing software that doesn't have the same restrictions as other commercial programs. The Free Software Foundation and proponents of the Open Source Initiative provide material you can use. They don't encroach on Microsoft's claims to intellectual property.

Moreover, there are plenty of Internet authors who are as furious about plagiarism as authors of material in regular print. For two examples, see Yen Shinkasen's explanation of one case of plagiarism from her website and Debbie Ridpath Ohi's journal entry on copyright.

(My appreciation to James Dickinson, professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, for pointing this issue out to me and to James Walden for pointing out the differences in the concepts here.  I take responsibility for the use of the different concepts to point out that each of them have serious consequences in Real Life.)

References

The University of Texas system's Crash Course on Copyright includes a description of universities' liabilities stemming from Napster.

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