ARTICLE REVIEW
Article Title: The Little Book Of Plagiarism
PART 1
- Main idea
Richard Posner argues that plagiarism is gaining prevalence and the appropriate actions should be taken to curb it although it should not be treated as a tort. The study tries to define plagiarism and explain the various forms of plagiarism.
- Structure
- Argument
The argument is a Cause and Effect. The audiences of the text are jurists. It is meant to be used in judicial verdicts. Judges can wisely rule cases regarding property infringement by following the argument (pg. 36).
PART 2
- Center of argument
“Should plagiarism be a crime or a tort?” (pg. 38). Plagiarism is an intricate issue that has of late instigated lots of debate. Its effects are adverse. It should be defined whether plagiarized should be treated as criminals or not.
- Reaction to the text
The text is more of a judicial reasoning where the issue at hand is thoroughly looked at from different perspectives to ascertain the best deduction that will enable the making of proper decisions. I find the various definitions given in the text being very complicated and hard to comprehend. Throughout his argument, the author seems to so strongly defend plagiarists and actually authenticate plagiarism. I find it unreasonable to confer with him due to the fact that plagiarism hinders innovation and climaxes unfair competition. The argument that he gives is not convincing enough and should provide more solid reasons as to why he does not find it important to consider plagiarism as a social misconduct.
- Question
What is the essence of not categorizing plagiarism as a tort yet it strongly detriments the original producers of a piece of work?
PART 3:
Summary
Viswanathan and little brown signed a contract to produce a book. After the book was published, it was established that most of the content had been plagiarized from Megan McCafferty’s novel (pg. 2). The Harvard crimson listed several paragraphs that Viswanathan’s novel had borrowed from Megan’s novel. However, Viswanathan denies responsibility for the plagiarism and later claimed that the coping was done unconsciously (pg. 4).
Plagiarism is currently common in colleges and universities with Harvard being on the top of the list (pg. 7). It is gaining more prevalence and continuously attracting attention from various people (pg. 9). However, the reason as to why plagiarism is attracting such an immense attention is yet to be uncovered. Plagiarism still remains an ambiguous complex concept.
Plagiarism can simply be defined as a literal theft (pg. 11). Plagiarism and copyright infringement do overlap. Not all plagiarism is copyright infringement and not all copyright infringement is plagiarism. Plagiarism also occurs when a copyrightable work is copied without the consent of the owner or without acknowledging them (pg. 14). The law offers no excuse for copyright infringement. However, the stigma of plagiarism rarely fades. Readers should learn to differentiate allusion from plagiarized work and should be concerned about the authorial identity so that it makes it easy to disclose plagiarized work.
Plagiarism should not be treated as a crime since the effects it causes are too slight to warrant the use of costly and clumsy criminal law machinery (pg. 38). Only private informal sanctions should be placed against plagiarists. The punishment for plagiarists typically affects students (pg. 39).
Work cited
Posner, Richard A. The Little Book of Plagiarism. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007. Print.
