Plagiarism

I read an article in the New York Times titled "Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in Digital Age" by Trip Gabriel.  The article focused on reasons why students plagiarize.  Many researchers believe that students plagiarize, because they are used to taking information from the internet that does not belong to them.  For instance they download music illegally, watch streamed video of popular tv shows and movies online, and therefore they believe it is acceptable to take another author's words as well.  Other researcers believe that it is ignorance that causes students to plagiarize, because they are not given the information they need in high school in order to be successful in college.  I believe that ignorance is the reason as well for most students.  High schools do not teach students how to avoid plagiarism and they do not punish students enough for plagiarizing.  Students are forced to learn on their own unless the college they attend has a workshop that teaches them the rules of plagiarism.  The article also discusses how people are not as unique as they were before.  For example, rap artists often use music from another artists song in order to create a new song.  Some students are aware of what is considered plagiarism and take the risk, because they do not believe they will get caught.  This is the worst form of plagiarism, because it involves complete stupidity.  If a student knows how to avoid plagiarism they should make sure they avoid it even if it means more work for them.  However, if they do not know what plagiarism is then the responsibility falls on high school and middle school teachers.  Students should have already been taught about plagiarism long before they were accepted to college. 

Eminem's song Sing for the moment was sampled from Aerosmith's song Dream On.