the future of plagiarism

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Jun 26 08:32:10 PDT 2002


At 02:28 PM 6/26/2002 +0000, justin wrote:


>So, J, you think that I should not have been bothered by the freshman who
>presented me, when I was teaching, with John Rawls' Two Concepts of Rules,
>offered as his own term paper? (I flunked him for class.) jks

A more creative approach would be to make sure that he plagiarized it well - i.e. check how well he absorbed the concepts and its implications. After all, "borrowing" good ideas from other people is the main engine of civilisational progress - the peoples who do not plagiarise stay stagnant - the claims of intellectual commodity producers notwithstanding.

After all, the concept of "originality" and "intellectual property" is but a demand for monopoly rights by intellectual commodity producers. Claiming "ownership" of thoughts and ideas is absurd.

wojtek



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