Slashdot Mirror
Online Plagiarist Sues University
raistphrk writes "The Reg reports that an English student at the University of Kent has sued the university after the university caught him ripping his papers off the Internet and kicked him out of the English program. I guess the stakes are now being raised for universities that use services to check for plagiarized papers."
Burgulars will start suing homeowners for unsafe conditions. Oh wait ... nevermind
Got hosting
this reminds me of that woman that sued mcdonalds for "making her fat"...how could this guy not realize that copying papers and turning them in as his own is wrong?
should have stopped him?! The world is going downhill when people begin to reject common sense in favor of outrageous accusations such as this one.
He admitted he's plagiarized... There should be no problem.
I saw this a couple of days ago (at a site with more details).
...
How any person can get to university without realising that plaigarism is wrong is beyond me. How an *English* student can try to argue that he didn't know what the word meant (as per the student handbook that explained this)
This person is so stupid that he doesn't deserve a degree. I think how he got his A Levels (pre-university exams in England) is also rather doubtful as well.
Where I went to college, the Art department chair was caught many years after that fact for plaigarizing his dissertation for his Ph.D. He lost his doctorate and his job, and probably faced legal actions as well.
Better to get nailed for plaigarism before you have your degree like this guy at the University of Kent did than to build a career around a falsehood like the department chair.
A love beyond compare...
So? Its not illegal for the university to do that. Education is a business. You cant claim to be downloading pirated material on Comcast's network, then claim they should have stopped me when you get busted.
Its just another typical example of people today trying to put the blame on others for their mistakes.
OTOH, nice troll.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
All I know, is that whenever I hand in a single piece of coursework, however minor, we are always given a sheet to read and sign, stating that the work is entirely our own.
And I'm a student in England.
I hope he doesn't win, if he does, I'm going to feel really silly for the hundreds of hours I've put in on work over the years, when I could have done this.
/Me Rolls Eyes.
Because he had never submitted the original for grading?
I'm not sure if this is the case (I'm not the above AC), but I don't really see a problem with submitting work done outside of class for later class credit. It's a bit on the edge to submit the same assignment for multiple classes, but fairly unlikely to happen in a University setting (and usually out-ruled anyway).
Sometimes the sentence you wrote 6 months ago is just the best way to say what you want to say. That being said, I've never done anything like this. But it's an interesting case.
I did not see anything in article suggesting that university knew he was plagiarizing earlier. It's what the student is assuming which may not be true. It might very well be the case that university just found out he was doing this. That's enough I guess.
Plagiarizing: To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own.
To appropriate for use as one's own passages or ideas from (another).
Now a university is supposed to be a institution to pass on knowledge but when they can't even get simple English right, its a slight problem. If you wrote it you have the right to use it where ever you would like to, well unless you gave away the rights and such.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
The analogy to that would be seeing a burglar in your house, and sitting there as he took almost everything (and he knows that you're there watching and not saying anything about it). When he goes to take the last valuable item in your house, THEN you pull out your gun and shoot him in the face.
I think a closer analogy would be a bank robber, caught after a long string of robberies. "They knew I was doing it before, but they purposely waited until now to bust me, so they could give me a harsher sentence!" (and offering no proof that they did know he was doing it before)
The 1st time or the 20th time...it's still wrong.
- infringes on music copyrights... applaud
- infringes on non-GPL licensing stipulations
... applaud
- infringes on GPL licensing stipulations
... flame
- infringes on website owner copyrights by reposting text that requires free registration
... flame
- infringes on website owner copyrights by putting up an (unauthorized) mirror of the same material
... cheer
- cheats in class by using a graphing calculator's memory functions
.. cheer
hmm.. it's not here.writes in additional line
- plagarizes in class by plagarizing from the web
... flame
glad we got that sorted.He admits he plagiarised. From the article:
"But they have taken all my money for three years and pulled me up the day before I finished. If they had pulled me up with my first essay at the beginning and warned me of the problems and consequences, it would be fair enough."
He's complaining that he spent 3 years and lots of money submitting stolen papers and that the University should have made him understand EARLIER that submitting stolen papers would REALLY get him kicked out of the program.
His case is that no one at the university REALLY explained to him that stealing papers was not acceptable and what the ACTUAL consequences would be. Or at least that they didn't do it early enough to satisfy him.
Whether he wins or loses that case, you have to ask yourself, would you want to HIRE him to work for you?
How any person can get to university without realizing that plagiarism is wrong is beyond me.
You get it wrong. He's suing them for not catching him earlier . He admits that he's been cheating all along and that he knew it was cheating. His complaint is that, if they had caught (and kicked him out) earlier, he wouldn't have stayed in school for so long (and paid his tuition).
It looks like he's going to go into court arguing that he's been cheating since day one. I expect the university to use (among other things) the 'clean hands' defence (you can't claim the protection of the court if you're breaking the law). Plagirism is also copyright violation, so he's likely to get laughed out of court just on that basis.
I can just imagine the disclosure request for:
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
"This is like a murderer saying they should have warned me earlier that I will kill a person and go to jail?"
It sounds more to me like a serial murder that killed 4 or 5 people over three years suing the police departments who investigated the case for not catching him after the first one thus stopping him from serving time for and additional 3 or 4 people.
All these comments about turning in your own work twice being plagiarism are beside the point. Some professors don't want students turning in a paper written for another class, since presumably you should have learned something unique in that class that merits a unique assignment. In many situations that could be considered academic dishonesty (although I don't agree with that view), but hardly "plagiarism," which as others pointed out involves taking another person's work and pretending it is your own.
Writing a good term paper actually IS about taking constucted pieces and putting them together.
BUT YOU HAVE TO CITE YOUR SOURCES.
Any moron can take someone elses hard work and put their name on it, it involves no creativity, no intelligence, and no skill.
The only thing this guy has going for him is that he feels the world owes him a living for no work of his own. Frankly if you're too fucking lame to get an english degree, there is no place for you in college. (Before all the English Majors start whining, I should mention that I have an English BA, which I picked up accidentally while working on my CS BS, so I know what the hell I'm talking about.)
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
While I understand what you're saying, you're A) oversimplifying and B) assuming Slashdot thinks as a single hivemind. (Which, while more true than may be optimal for true arguments and discussions, is NOT as true as your little quick-reference sheet makes it seem.)
The first point is a gross oversimplification as, while SOME people here have said specifically 'All copyright is wrong and should be abbolished," MOST people have expressed something more mild. Along the lines of, "The current copyright system is extremely unfair. However, I do understand the possible good uses for copyright as an idea, just not how it is currently implimented. Because of that, I have more sympathy for those who chose to ignore the unreasonable restrictions used for copywritten entertainment (usually music) than those who use the copyright system to impose unreasonable restrictions on media." Which, in your mind, gets boiled down to all Slashdotters saying, "Infringing on music copyrights is good." This isn't even true for all Slashdoters, though, as every time music copyrights come up there are well-spoken arguments by artists (or even just those who disagree with downloading music without paying the artist, or programmers who apply the argument about music to software) who explain why they believe the copyright system is valid, and you're an ass if you "pirate" music or software.
The second two points ignore the type of licensing stipulations. You seem to have a missunderstanding you seem to have on how (many) Slashdoters view software licensing. The issue (as I understand it) is that the GPL grants privledges BEYOND what would normally exist for code. As such, violating it makes you look like an ass, because you're already being given allowances you wouldn't have had without the GPL. On the other hand, the software licenses which are "applauded" when broken (usually) impose a restriction that (by Slashdot hivemind, popular concensus, the phase of the moon, or whatever company is currently in or out of favor) have been deemed unreasonable and overly harsh. For the most part, these software licenses impose restrictions vastly beyond what 'normal' copyright law would suggest is standard, and often due so in a questionably legal fashion (click through licenses, EULAs, popup browser downloads that say they are "required," etc.) So violating the GPL makes you look greedy while violating 'standard' software licenses (according ot Slashdot groupthink) can be the "right" thing to do.
I don't even understand your points concerning mirroring and reposting text. Karma whores or ACs will often copy-and-paste text from Salon or the NYT and get modded up for it. Likewise, posting mirrors often gets you modded up. The idea for the first is that many (not all) people feel the registration systems imposed for some news sites are overly harsh and appreciate not having to give up such info to read what - in the newsstand print edition - would require no personaly identifying information. The logic behind mirroring is that many of the sites Slashdot posts about are, by their nature, hobby sites with low bandwidth and the webmasters appreciate not having their site hosed. When an entire word has been devoted to the negative effect of having a website posted on Slashdot, I don't think mirroring is unreasonable. For small sites, it's often considered a polite way of being helpful, rather than copyright violation...
Maybe I missed a story, but how is the graphing calculator even slightly on topic? Because it's a story about school? I admit I don't read every story and don't have them all memorized, but I don't recal seeing a story about some kid getting in trouble for using a graphic calculator. (I wouldn't be copmletely surprised if it happened, but I think you're jumping the gun by posting about it.) That said, as a student... graphing calculators are tools and, if the teacher allows their use, I'm going to damn well use every tool I can to make my life easier. I'm not writing papers by hand because computers make it easier. Lik