plagiarism and Copyright infringement

In an age of unlimited information (information overload) it is easy to forget that all of this intellectual property is owned by someone. Just because it is freely available doesn't mean it is free to claim or use as your own. In my travels I have heard from people who want to write a book about this or that but when I ask them what new material they have to contribute to the given topic, the most common response is "well I will just put the existing information together and see what happens" or words to that effect.

I personally don't like the idea of riding on someone elses coattails, or even expanding on other authors works. I feel it denotes a stunning lack of creativity on the part of the borrowing writer, and smacks of dishonesty. It is, quite literally, cheating. If you have some new information to add, then by all means, please enlighten us... but give due credit to the original sources that have provided the foundation of your book (that is assuming you asked permission in the first place).

I did make a slight mistake in my Introduction posting for my English 101 class. I quoted Popeye the Sailor Man "I am what I am and that's all what I am!" and while I did credit the character for the quote, I had no real idea who the creator of this character was (E.C. (Elzie Crisler) Segar is the person in question). In that moment I realized that ignorance is no excuse for not performing due diligence in research.

I also noted something while visiting popeye.com . There is actually a way to prevent one from using the copy/paste function on a website. As Tina Ray explains it, it has something to do with "Java Scripting"... whatever that is. I like the idea of disabling the copy function as it makes it more difficult to cheat.
© Daniel Bigham