Copyright, Plagiarism, and Discipline

For a while now, I've harbored this theory that today's students don't foresee some of the problems they're having with plagiarism because they seem to operate on a copyright paradigm instead of an academic honesty paradigm. For example, I've had scores of students tell me that they don't see anything wrong with copying something from someone if the person who originally wrote it gives them permission to use it. Well . . . okay. While I think it's awfully polite of them to get permission from their accomplice before cheating, this only resolves a copyright problem, not a plagiarism problem.

I've now come to a different conclusion. Some of them clearly don't even care about copyright violations. My trip down the seedy back-alley of law student disrespect for another's work product starting a couple of weeks ago when another law professor let me know (in a more public forum than was probably appropriate, but that's another issue for another day) that someone had posted the answers to many of the exercises from the Interactive Citation Workbook & Workstation. The answers had been posted on a web site called docstoc.com. In trying to figure out how to get my copyrighted material off their web site, I discovered docstoc is a web site for uploading "professional documents" for general access. There's a section specifically for law school documents, and it contains the usual assortment of outlines, class notes, student memo assignments, etc. The site was started by a recent law grad and is partly owned by a current law student. Most of the documents come from a handful of law schools, but I'm guessing that word of the site will spread relatively quickly. Although I wasn't happy to see material from my and my co-author's teacher's manual on the site, I can't complain about the site owner's responsiveness when I requested that he take the material down. Within 24 hours, it was down, and he's offered to work with me to block similar content from appearing down the road. So that's good.

I spent a good two days stewing over the unmitigated nerve of students to post copyrighted material. Then I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about a web site that hosts uploads of FIVE-THOUSAND COPYRIGHTED TEXTBOOKS. Are you kidding me? I mean, really, are you kidding me? The owner calls the textbook an act of "civil disobedience" to protest the exorbitant prices of textbooks.

The site’s founder, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of legal action
against him, talked to The Chronicle over an Internet phone call last night and
defended his creation, though he described it as operating in a “legal gray
area.” He said he is an undergraduate at a college outside of the United States,
though he would not name the institution or country, and that he operates the
Web site from there.

Wow . . . that's some movement you're running there out of the witness protection program, pal. What's also interesting to me is that he takes down the offending material as soon as someone asks him to. Is that really how civil disobedience works? We protest unless you politely tell us to stop, and then we stop? I think that's actually called "easier to ask forgiveness than permission." Not exactly the hallmark of the moral high ground.

So why do they do it? Why are these concepts so hard for some Millennials to get their minds around? I'm not exactly sure except that I have a huge hunch that it has to do with their core value of collaboration. They're tight with one another and are more than happy to help each other out. You don't see Xers doing this stuff because they're too cynical and cutthroat. If an Xer gets the answers, he's not sharing them with the world. He's keeping them to himself and using them to get the edge over everyone else. Or if he does share, he's doing it for a fee.

I think the answer is more education about why "old people" value honesty over access. Another part of the answer is accountability. When you spend your whole life with someone counting to three before you get a time out that extends the same number of minutes as your current age, it's hard to believe that you're actually going to get prosecuted, expelled, whatever. And because they're so doe-eyed when they say, "I though I was going to have to sit in my carrel for 22 minutes and then apologize," it does make it harder, I think, for some folks to lower the actual boom. After all, they do seem so remorseful after the 22 minutes in time-out is over. Maybe they've learned their lesson.

But don't bet on it.