Minggu, 26 April 2009

Plagiarism is a Crime | Plagiarisme adalah Kejahatan

Note: Indonesian version of this post is available at the end of this post
--

What if ...

What if the result of a research you've conducted for so long was claimed as the work of one of the professor in your department?

What if every little details you've come up with and resulted as a beautiful novel got hijacked by another writer?

What if your original and -perhaps one and only- brilliant idea was presented to your superior as coming from your colleague?

What if the money you've collected from saving for a whole year was used to hold your brother's birthday party without even thanking you?

I bet it hurts to know that someone else is using something belonged to you without even telling you about it. It could hurt even more if that someone was a complete stranger. We might reconsider if it was our brother, our friend, or our colleague, but I don't think that's the case with a total stranger.

That is what plagiarism is all about. Yes, plagiarism is stealing. Claiming another person's work as your own work is no different from stealing. You'd have to be desperate enough -or naive enough- to say the opposite.

The Internet, with Google Search as the main entrance, opens a wide opportunity to plagiarism. I don't blame Google on this one. They provide an excellent search result. It's us -the Internet users- that should be blamed for plagiarism. No matter how hard someone tried to protect his work, plagiarists would always find a way to counter those protections.

Us as Internet users should learn how to appreciate the work of others even in the slightest way. If we read something good, copied something brilliant, downloaded something useful, then the least we can do is put up a link pointing to our source instead of claiming it as your own.

Read this post in Bahasa Indonesia ...

4 komentar:

  1. Kalau yang gw lihat langsung sih tulisan gw diambil orang apa adanya tapi tidak mencantumkan referensi ke URL tulisan asli. Kasus ini udah lama gw temukan dan itu pun secara tidak sengaja.

    Tulisan di atas sebenarnya gak cuma berdasarkan kasus itu, tapi memang secara umum banyak pengguna Internet yang buta terhadap apresiasi dengan seenaknya sendiri mengakui karya orang lain sebagai karya sendiri.

    BalasHapus
  2. Yup, plagiarisme adalah tindakan yg tidak terpuji.

    Mencuri karya orang lain 100%, sbnrnya yang harus dicuri itu idenya, bukan karyanya..

    BalasHapus
  3. Saya pribadi lebih nyaman bila kata "curi" itu tidak digunakan. Pada dasarnya plagiarisme adalah penjiplakan tanpa menyebutkan sumber. Seandainya ada ide, perkataan, tulisan, atau apapun milik orang lain sebaiknya jangan diklaim sebagai milik sendiri.

    Terima kasih atas komentarnya.

    BalasHapus