Why Students
Do Copy-paste
According to Wikipedia,
‘copy-paste’ or plagiarism is the act of taking another person's writing,
conversation, song, or even idea and passing it off as your own. This includes
information from web pages, books, songs, television shows, email messages,
interviews, articles, artworks or any other medium. The reasons why students do
copy-paste will be explained as follows.
First, students do not know much if
the act of ‘copy-paste’ is a kind of plagiarism. They often hear about
plagiarism, know it is bad, but still, they keep on doing ‘copy-paste’ because what
they know is it’s legal. The dictionary defines plagiarism as stealing of the
ideas, words, work, or production of other people. Students copying the works
of other people do not believe the original creators would catch them. They do
not know that they will face some problems if they are indicated as a
plagiators.
Second, students who rush to do
things on the last minute are meant to do the last thing that would make their
tasks easier. They think, “if there is an easy way to reach their goals,
then why we have to choose a difficult way?”, morover for those who are very
busy and do their works in a deadline. This happens to almost all students who
are busy with their activities and do not have sufficient time. ‘Copy-paste’ is
the only way when they are in a thin ice. They do not think about the risk of
doing that, the only thing that they know is their works is well done, then
everything is alright.
Third, students find the internet a
good medium for searching and copying related topics. They think that the
internet itself has provide what they want. So, if the internet itself has already
provided the information that they want, they think it is such a legal thing to
do. They do not realize that they are actually fooling theirselves when they
are doing ‘copy-paste’. It is fooling theirselves because they do not think creative
and critical to the way how on produce a work or an idea. It is also habituate them to be lazy students.
They will hang on internet to every work they will face, and if there is no
internet, they think that they can not do anything more.
Fourth, students are lack of
knowledge about proper citations. Plagiarism could be avoided if all people
who writes articles and research papers know when and how to cite the ideas and
text that they had taken from other authors. The fact, there are so few people
who understand the right way to cite the information that they have taken to
their own works, so if the citation is not acceptable, it can also be indicated
as plagiarism.
In a nutshell, ‘copy-paste’ or
plagiarism is dangerous, and the consequences are unimaginable because the law
protects and respects intellectual property rights. The legal system is very
keen in bringing justice to stolen intellectual property. However, although
some works are difficult to track, publications will always be found and
discovered in the internet. So, it depends on the students themselves, whether
they realize or not that the act of ‘copy-paste’ is a bad thing and must be
avoided.
