In Response to Plagiarism

Given the option of writing a book response or responding to an article an about Plagiarism, I chose the second option. The article about plagiarism was posted by the New York Times and discussed the way students are copying and pasting works from the web and claiming them as their own.

Plagiarism is defined as "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own". Basically its copying other people's work. Copying has been the best friend of students since schooling was invented. If I were to ask a student if they would prefer to do an assignment and get full credit or just get full credit, the student would choose the adder of the options.

The post in The New York Times is concerned that it is too easy to commit plagiarism and that students are considering not considering copying from the web as serious cheating. Just look at this statistic;                  

 

 "the number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes “serious cheating” is declining — to 29 percent on average in recent surveys from 34 percent earlier in the decade." (The New York Times)     

 

I understand that plagiarism is a problem but, eventually there will be a time when the specific though you have is already published. That day may not be for many years but with that being said, I think that there needs to be a statute of limitations on plagiarism. In example, if the sentence I want to convey was published 15 years ago, I can use it without it being considered plagiarism.