Internet use makes plagiarism easier,
major on college campuses

By Hilary McElroy
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

For Norwich freshman Christopher Abshire, stealing is "incredibly easy, especially now with the Internet, you don't really think of it as a crime."

He is not referring to anything tangible, but rather words, someone else's words.

"They think of rape and other extreme things as a crime, but people don't consider this a serious crime," Abshire said, referring to the rise in plagiarism on college campuses.

According to recent statistics from the University of California, Berkley, the number one problem in high schools and colleges today is plagiarism, which, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Current English, is "using other people's thoughts, writings, words, etc., as your own."

"It's easy to get away with, so no one considers it bad," said Abshire, 18, a freshman biology major from Bloomsberg, Penn. "Most people think it's not wrong if you don't get caught."

Dr. John Barrie, founder and CEO of www.plagiarism.org and www.turnitin.com, said at a recent conference on Cyber Ethics that "in 1996, 48 of 6000 students were caught flat-out cheating at UCLA, and in 2000, 238 of 740 students were caught flat-out cheating."

According to Barrie, this increase in plagiarism is due to "websites that condone cheating" and allow people to download research papers for free.

This "toleration teaches students bad habits," Barrie said.

Stanley, a student who requested anonymity, said: "I don't think plagiarism is what it used to be; it's so much easier, now. Plagiarism has become more of a problem since the Internet became so popular."

But Abshire said one major reason people plagiarize is because it is easy to do. "It's incredibly easy; it's very hard to prove that you did it."

The Internet has made it so much easier to cheat. With this new technology and the stroke of a key, any paper on the web becomes accessible to the public.

"It is very easy to plagiarize. People can just take a source and rewrite it thoroughly, and there is no way a person can catch it unless they are looking for it," Stanley said.

Students plagiarize for various reasons, and Barrie said "the majority of students who plagiarize do it because they have gotten away with it in the past."

"People plagiarize because it's an easy way out," Stanley said. "They don't want to do the work, or they completely forgot about it, and their back is against the wall, and they're desperate."

"When I'm pressured to do something; when there's not much time; when I didn't use my time wisely and I needed to get something done; and I had to get it fast, I often considered going online," Abshire said, adding that he is tempted to "cut and paste and doing it that way, just to get it out of the way."

According to Barrie, it is very easy for students to get away with this form of cheating, because "professors simply don't have the time to worry about every paper turned in."

Stanley added that there are some teachers who "go through each paper with a fine-tooth comb to catch cheaters" and "the students know which teachers they can get away with it."

Most students, according to Barrie, don't cheat, but they do know who does. He added that students at some point in their career have been tempted to cheat and know how to get away with it.

"Yes, I've considered doing it," Abshire said. "Absolutely, all the time, the thought has entered my head. I thought to myself, 'my work is this good anyway. I can take the time and get the right grade, save some time.'"

"Students, good students, who get behind and run out of time turn to the Web," said Barrie. "But they can always justify it."

Abshire said he "knew someone who was considered a friend at the time, who plagiarized quite often. He rationalized it by saying 'I don't have time'."

It is very hard to regulate what is put on the Web, because, according to Barrie, there are so many sites that post other people's research papers and allow them to be copied.

"People use the Web, where there are places you can get the information for free, you can look for it, or you can look for certain pages and they will just give it to you," Abshire said, "You can change whatever it is you need to, to make it look like it is yours, and there you go. Problem solved."

Because the Internet has made plagiarism easier than in years past, it is more difficult to find a solution to the problem.

"The only way you can prevent plagiarism lies in the professors themselves," Stanley said, "If they know that papers exist, that people cheat, they have to find them, get a copy, and watch out for them."

In 1998 www.plagiarism.org was launched by Barrie to help teachers deal with the on-going issue of plagiarism.

"After a school signs up for this site, a teacher can analyze as many papers as they want," Barrie said, "After inserting a paper into this site, within a matter of seconds, you will know how much, if any, of the paper was plagiarized. It will also tell you from where the information came."

According to Barrie, once a paper is submitted, a "digital fingerprint" of the document is made using a series of algorithms specially developed for the Internet.

"The document's fingerprint is cross-referenced against local databases containing over 100,000 papers," Barrie said. "At the same time we release automated web crawlers to scour the internet for possible matches, and finally, we create a custom, color-coded originality report, complete with source links, for each paper."

This technology can be frightening to students. "It is scary that one of my papers can be inserted onto that site, and my teacher can instantly know how much of it was plagiarized," Stanley said.

"Since I began using www.plagiarism.org in my classes, incidences of plagiarism have dropped to almost zero," said Dr. David Presti, Professor of Neurobiology at UCLA.

Barrie said that his site is used at many prestigious colleges and universities such as Duke University, UCLA, Stanford University, and Brown University. Norwich does not currently use a program such as this one, but some students believe that it would be a good idea.

"I think it would be a great thing for this school to do, not just because it's great at catching people, but just to intimidate them to not cheat," Abshire said.

"It's like increasing security," Abshire explained. "If people see security trucks all over, anywhere, crime is definitely going to go down, because they're going to think twice about it."

"Ideally it would be great if we (Norwich) didn't have to use a site like www.plagiarism.org, but realistically, no honor code is going to prevent students from cheating, anywhere," Stanley said. "I would personally really like to have my teachers trust me, but it's not realistic."

Barrie said that "plagiarism is inevitable, but slowly there is progress being made to prevent it.

"In order to get a gain, you have to work. This isn't the lottery," Abshire said, "School isn't meant to be easy. If you go the easy way, the wrong way, it's just wrong. Taking someone else's work is just like lying."

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