Thursday, April 10, 2008

Plagiarism

"Well, if you want to get technical, all writing is plagiarism because you're using words that already exist!"

Sandi / Daria

Originality is overrated!
Posted by @
Labels: ,

10 comments:

Hani Obaid said...

Provided you don't go and claim the words are your own. It's not plagiarism.

The question is if you accidentally derive a concept that someone else has already derived, is that plagiarism ? No, but you still can't take credit for it !

10/4/08 10:00 PM
Anonymous said...

it is is anything you use which is not a unique expression of your own but you claim as your own ...

10/4/08 11:14 PM
Devil's Mind said...

The question is, why is it important who created which idea?! Isn't it the idea that is important, not the person who made it?!

All science is made by using previous works. Every generation build on the success of the previous generations. Thats how humanity got to this point.

Thats why concepts like plagiarism and intellectual property are corrupt and counter productive concepts. They are in my opinion the plague of our current generation, and they work against freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

11/4/08 3:20 AM
Hani Obaid said...

I agree, but enhancing someone else's idea or building on it isn't part of the definition. What does Alexander Graham Bell have to do with the modern mobile phone? Very little, but very few people know who invented mobiles (Bell Labs) whereas Alexander Graham Bell is renowned.

While I violate intellectual property too often in practice, from a moral and economic point of view, I think it is necessary to protect the original inventor/actor/singer/artist. Put yourself in their place, where you did all that hard work and someone else not only used it without rewarding you partially for your efforts, but worse claimed it as their own.

How does any of it prevent you from free speech/thought ?

11/4/08 9:07 AM
Devil's Mind said...

"from a moral and economic point of view, I think it is necessary to protect the original inventor/actor/singer/artist." - Economic, maybe, but moral?!

There is nothing moral about suing the hell of people for work that has been stolen from humanity. No one can claim to be truly original. In the example of the mobile, a mobile needs the science of electronics for the chips. It needs the science of electromagnetics, for the transmission of signals wirelessly. It needs mathematics. It needs geometry. Thats all apart from the idea that sound waves can be encoded as frequencies in electrical signals, and many other ideas...

So if someone is going to take the high "morals" and sue us for using their ideas, maybe we should sue them for using the ideas that belong to humanity...

The consequences are obvious regarding our freedoms. Again, to the mobile example. It is an idea, and ideas make up thought. So if someone owns and controls an idea, then he can limit our freedom of thought. As simple as that!!

"Put yourself in their place, where you did all that hard work and someone else not only used it without rewarding you partially for your efforts, but worse claimed it as their own." - The problem is that you are still thinking in terms of ownership. You are still making up fights on who created what. The idea does not belong to anyone, it belongs to humanity, and to anyone who can comprehend it...

11/4/08 1:12 PM
Hani Obaid said...

If all ideas/inventions/art belongs to humanity and no financial, career, or status reward is to be taken, why will people bother developing it ? just for the good of humanity ?

This would be nice, but too idealistic to apply across the board. Most people just don't consider helping humanity a valid motivation.

11/4/08 2:23 PM
Devil's Mind said...

Everyone is selfish. Thats true. We are humans, so when we help humanity we help ourselves.

Imagine if everyone on earth who ever made a discovery kept it to himself and never told anyone about it, or allowed anyone to use it.

If that hypothetical scenario happened, then we still would be in the prehistoric era.

One person makes an idea, another person makes another idea, and a third person makes an idea by combining the previous two ideas. So sharing our ideas would actually benefit us - in a very selfish (and moral) way.

So saying that someone wouldn't want to help humanity, is to say that someone doesn't want his own good, because he is part of humanity. So any selfish person would have the motivation to help humanity.

11/4/08 2:33 PM
Anonymous said...

imagine if the idea of god is being in question here...then the jews would sue the christians for stealing their idea and the christians would sue the muslims...and so on :p
just a thought!

12/4/08 5:59 AM
Devil's Mind said...

True, plagiarism exists in all aspects of life, and religions do plagiarize other religions.

Islam does rip off most of its legislation from Judaism, and this is a well-known fact. But Judaism itself contains many plagiarism from earlier systems. And yes, it would be a very interesting turn of events that the Jews sue the Muslims for stealing their "intellectual property"!!

Christianity has even more interesting (and even more shameful) plagiarisms. A quick google search demonstrates that the figure of Christ was simply a rip off of earlier mythologies. I mean, WTF, Christians decide to create a mythology, and do not even work to make a unique mythical story!! One site I found demonstrates many of the plagiarisms exhibited in the Christian mythology, being a rip off of Mithraism an ancient mythology.

15/4/08 7:28 PM
Anonymous said...

lol.....nice one

15/8/09 8:00 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)