Reading Rife's Fair Use Doctrine has me both laughing uncontrollably and horrified. I've never felt so stressed and embarrassed over fair use, it's never been stressed as I feel it is in the article. People at my institutions have copied (on a copier and in presentations) and used without thinking twice. I'm getting from Rife's piece that fair use used to be stressed a lot heavier than it typically is these days, so my question is, what changed?
As for reading the Price piece, I'm curious as to what extent people feel they have a moral / ethical obligation to pursue cases of plagiarism to the highest level possible. Is there a certain set of conditions, say intention or other student conduct that would motivate you to pursue or not pursue a case of plagiarism in an official capacity (beyond your classroom / syllabus)?
Hola Dustin,
ReplyDeleteSo, both of these texts were pretty heavy in the role they took in regards to fair right and to plagiarism. I pretty much had the same reaction as you with the Rife piece. It was so serious and he made me fear the ways that I've been living my academic life thus far. I feel like the only thing that has changed (that I can think of) that would make this issue so serious is the amount being published online. When things are published online it makes it a lot easier for people to find it. And so if someone uses someone else's work and publishes it as their own and doesn't state whether it's for academic purposes (or follow those four rules), I'm guessing it's easier to get caught that way.
With the Price piece, he made plagiarism sound very contextual, which it is as we are starting to see with all this talk of fair use and "remix." But I feel like it went a bit far with having to jot down every little thing that someone says for the sake of not stealing their ideas. In regards to whether or not to pursue a case of plagiarism, I really do think there are multiple things that factor into it. Was it intentional? How much of the work was plagiarized? Was it published? Etc., etc.