PLAGIARISM - An internet disease?
By zandi458
@zandi458 (28102)
Malaysia
February 11, 2010 10:15pm CST
How many times have you been told that it doesn't pay to copy others works? But you don't heed the advice of the wise owl. People stop giving advices as the ignorant won't heed it and the wise don't need it. And no one can escape being caught with their pants down as the internet has a checker to catch dishonest people who copy others work to claim their own.
I woke up this morning to find that I have 31 responses to my discussion but upon checking through the discussion I was surprised that there were only 28 on record. I guess that the 3 missing responses were axed before I could read them. Very unfortunate but the admin have no mercy on people who plagiarize and removed them before it become an epidemic disease that plaque this lot if nothing is done to kill it in its infancy.
Some few mylotters are endowed with a special art of writing skills which many of us are still crawling to reach to their standard. But bear in mind we are not here to compete and show off our journalistic skills. As long as we can string words together and be understood is all that matters. Copying word for word from others is an 'unforgivable sin' in mylot which might only be a waste of time as at the end of the day they will be thrown out to mylot bins. Be on the alert, we should be more alert now as Alice has been sending us more alerts these days, that mylot is well guarded not only by admin but by many telescopic eyes who are on the look out for offenders, in keeping this place a clean and a world class site for all.
5 people like this
25 responses
@Aaleexix (2290)
• India
12 Feb 10
Actually they are wasting there time in copying word by word from other
. We are not here in any script writing completion. And every one has the ability to write some lines with own power. With reflected light no one enlighten long time. Try to acquire the skill of writing some line .... This is my suggestion for them who want to want to attend party with other people's suit. No people can become rich with borrowed money. And not only the admin but all of us the user has the noble duty to report about the Copying word for word from others as a discussion or as response. We no needs of colorful writings with borrowed lines from other. As your ability put some lines we are satisfied
with you simple lines. ---- It to the people
who are habituate to borrow lines from other.
. We are not here in any script writing completion. And every one has the ability to write some lines with own power. With reflected light no one enlighten long time. Try to acquire the skill of writing some line .... This is my suggestion for them who want to want to attend party with other people's suit. No people can become rich with borrowed money. And not only the admin but all of us the user has the noble duty to report about the Copying word for word from others as a discussion or as response. We no needs of colorful writings with borrowed lines from other. As your ability put some lines we are satisfiedwith you simple lines. ---- It to the people who are habituate to borrow lines from other. @Aaleexix (2290)
• India
12 Feb 10
No this is just because of people's thinking that other can't penetrate their trick. But all are not fool. And in making other fool them makes themselves fool. And those activities are not beneficial for anyone. They are burring their probability and annoying other.
2 people like this
@keinah2 (301)
• Philippines
12 Feb 10
When I first saw the title of you discussion (which is PLAGIARISM), songs that are copied is the first thing that came into my mind XD. But anyway, i'm glad myLot is doing every effort to keep this site nice. To tell you honestly, i'm a victim of online plagiarism. I'm a member of a social networking site about animes and i'm not as active as I am in that website unlike in myLot. It just so happened that the 'member' who plagiarized me was an admin. That admin copied my journal entry. Since she's an admin (a very active one at that) and I am not, I couldn't tell that fact to anyone because I know, everybody will be on her side...that's why myLotting is more worth it. Because nobody in here is welcomed when you plagiarize something.
2 people like this
@Qaeyious (2357)
• United States
12 Feb 10
Here is the discussion I started about a year ago about the subject, and the responses:
http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/1933881.aspx
I suspect as long as money is being offered there will always be the lazy ones who try to cheat and steal from more honest people cashing in on others' research.
2 people like this
@paula27661 (15811)
• Australia
12 Feb 10
I abhor plagiarism! To me it is theft and extremely dishonest! I was shocked when I first learnt that there were MyLotters stealing other people’s posts. I cannot understand why...As you said, we don’t have to be great writers to be here, we just need to be able to speak from our hearts and give our opinions. What gets me is how on earth do they think they are going to get away with it? It is a fact that if you plagiarise YOU WILL BE CAUGHT! Thanks for bringing this to everyone’s attention zandi!
2 people like this
@May2k8 (18391)
• Indonesia
12 Feb 10
they just want to get much money without working hard, for me it's not nice if they do plagiarism. What benefit of being a theft, they will lost a lot of fun. If they don't understand to responding then they should go to the next discussion which they can contribute very well with their own words not from other source.
@dorannmwin (36392)
• United States
12 Feb 10
I don't think that there is any reason at all to copy the work of someone else. The nature of this site makes it not necessary at all because we are all entitled to our own opinions and that is what we are doing here in the most part is giving our opinion. There are no two people that are going to have the exact same opinion on anything and there are no two people that are ever going to think to say it in the same way. It doesn't matter on mylot if we are eloquent writers or not, so why waste your time copying someone else??
2 people like this
@littleowl (7157)
•
12 Feb 10
Hi zandi,
Brilliantly said zandi..although I don't make many discussions and respond more than that, I really do agree with you about copying others discussions it is bad and thankfully now we have Alice, she is great and hopefully will be able with the rest of myLot be able to stop this.
LoLo
1 person likes this
@littleowl (7157)
•
12 Feb 10
Alice is great! It is lovely to know we have someone now we can actually talk to from the Admin team and listens to what we have to say..
LoLo
LoLo1 person likes this
@ANTIQUELADY (36440)
• United States
12 Feb 10
I'm glad mylot does keep a close eye on this. I really don't understand why people do this. After all we are all here to have a good time or we all should be to start with. Anytime u cheat on anything it will cut come back to bite u sooner or later. Have a good one, Zandi.
@ANTIQUELADY (36440)
• United States
13 Feb 10
iT'S A SHAME THAT PEOPLE CAN NOT STAND AUTHORITY & CAN'T FOLLOW THE RULES. hOPE U HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND,
1 person likes this
@sanjana_aslam (4187)
• Malaysia
13 Feb 10
hi
i dont want to sday much as almost all as been said ..but just want to ask why do we need to copy ... ?? dont we have our out thoughts over issues discussed.
1 person likes this
@allyoftherain (7208)
• United States
15 Feb 10
You mean people have been copying the responses of others before them and pasting that as their response? What? Why would someone do that? That's super-lazy, do they really expect to get away with it? I thought you were just going to talk about plagiarism in general, I didn't expect mylot to come up. That would explain why I've never been able to paste anything into my comment box.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
18 Feb 10
Yes, Ally. It happens quite often. Some people are, indeed, super-lazy scumbags (or should that be scambugs?)
Since you now have a UR of over 500, you should now be able to copy and paste what you want (and I'm sure that you would respect that privilege!)
2 people like this
@allyoftherain (7208)
• United States
18 Feb 10
Scambags works quite well. And don't worry, I won't go around copying other people's responses and pasting them as my own. I'm quite capable of thinking up and typing out my own respsonse. :D
1 person likes this
@Sandra1952 (6047)
• Spain
12 Feb 10
Hello, Zandi - great topic. I earn a modest living from my writing, and anyone who plagiarises it is a thief, because they are stealing my intellectual property. I reported someone for copying a discussion of mine recently. It couldn't have been a coincidence, as the topic hadn't been covered for 3 years, yet within 2 days of my discussion going up, another, almost identical one appeared. What was worse was that some of the information in it was wrong. It's bad enough copying, but copying and getting it wrong is even worse.
Plagiarism is rife on the internet - not just here. I am editing an archive of articles for a new article directory, and one I worked on yesterday, about the prophet Mohammed, was plagiarism dressed up as comentary. The author lifted a passage from a famous author's book, and gave the author's name, but not the title of the work it came from. At the end of the extract, he wrote a couple of paragraphs commenting on the extract, and passed it off as an article of his own. I contacted my boss, who refused to publish it, as he doesn't want his site to get a bad name.
Short of every site having software that prevents copying - which wouldn't be fair to genuine researchers who just want to use the content for reference - I don't know what can be done to stop it. In my opinion, it should be a criminal offence. As you may have guessed, I feel very strongly about this.
1 person likes this
@Sandra1952 (6047)
• Spain
12 Feb 10
Excuse me? Am I reading this right? Of course, all our ideas come from those who have gone before us, but most of us articulate those ideas in our own original way. We do not go and copy somebody else's work word for word and pass it off as our own, which is what plagiarism is. Go and look it up in a dictionary if you don't believe me.
I am mad that people copy my work because they pass it off as their own. People have asked to use my articles, and I am happy for them to do it, free of charge, as long as they give me credit for the article.
To be honest, I don't care what you think of my writing. You obviously don't know anything about me, because although I earn from my writing, I write for the love of it. Ask my friends, who are always telling me I should promote my work more. As to your last sentence, I think I am far more aware of the writer's code than you are.
2 people like this
@Sandra1952 (6047)
• Spain
12 Feb 10
Alice, Zandi, I'm glad to see common sense is prevailing here. For a while there, I was afraid I might have inadvertently strayed into a parallel universe where cheating and copying was seen as something to be proud of. 
2 people like this
@getbiswa2000 (5544)
• India
13 Feb 10
Hi,
I think only people who don't take writing seriously, or don't have anything concrete to say are the ones who plagiarize. They are too strongly motivated in earning money only. If money is the sole thing one cares about myLot is not the place for him. What is the true value of money when you don't EARN it. Plagiarism is the quick fix for any writing venture. You just take the old soup add some trivial stuffs in it, boil it and serve it again. YUK!!! Thats abominable.
Take care
1 person likes this
We should not blame the internet but ourselves for being addicted to surfing the net. 
@timasma (123)
• Poland
12 Feb 10
I did't know people did that! That is insane to copy someone else's responses, is no need for that. The idea is to give your opinion to the questions you come across, not to use someone else's opinion. I can't see the point of doing that, I'm sure they know someone will notice the same responses in the same question.
2 people like this
@Lakota12 (42600)
• United States
12 Feb 10
Its not fun to find that some one has copied wht you have said .
and most times its you that get gone and have to fight back to get back in here When some one puts in a copy of your work they need to see who did it first!.
date most important here,
am so glad we have Alice as looks like she is really on the ball with this thanks alice
1 person likes this
@cher913 (25782)
• Canada
12 Feb 10
i think that the internet has made it much easier to plagerize than it was before the beginning of the net. unfortunately, any writer or any artist for that matter is open for plagerism these days. i have had my writing stolen but i am not sure that there is any solution to this matter.
1 person likes this
@Opal26 (17679)
• United States
12 Feb 10
Hey zandi! You are so right! I can't understand how anyone could
be stupid enough to copy something to being with, but to
copy it word for word and not think that someone was going
to notice it! And what bother's me is that the discussion
topics are also copied! I wonder when that is going to stop
also! I know that there are alot of people in the mylot
community so obviously topics will be repeated, but I know
for a fact that some of the topics are worded a bit too closely,
therefore leading me to believe that they are plagarized
too! I hope that things will begin to improve in alot ways
now that the admin are more aware of the "goings on" here!
1 person likes this
@laura_lmaxi (678)
• United States
12 Feb 10
Well I agree with what mylot administrators are doing, I really I am totally against any form of plagiarism, not only copy word by word, but I think use other's ideas and pass them as your own is very bad. It is good that any form of plagiarism will be totally punished. It is a shame that we are not respecting the ideas and work of others.
1 person likes this
@13tyates (1606)
• United States
12 Feb 10
I believe this is very stupid for anyone to do that! This site is so we can express what we believe IN OUR OWN WORDS!!!! I actually enjoy giving people my input on subjects. That is the point. If people cannot see this then they should not be on this site!
1 person likes this
