New plagiarism

Nowadays we see a lot of cases of plagiarising other people’s works around us every day which can also be read about on the theplagiarism.com. Such cases are increasing in alarming numbers day by day. Cases like these are becoming so commonplace nowadays that it is not even funny. In older times when such cases were far and few, this is not the scenario today. Today plagiarising has become very common and there are so many instances and incidents of it that one cannot even keep count. The reason for such an increase in this dishonest practice is being blamed on technology mostly. If one were to get even more specific, then most people agree that it is happening only because of one culprit, the internet. The internet otherwise is a wonderful thing invented by man for his convenience. It is a great tool for staying in touch with loved ones, to meet new people, to advertise products, to discuss with other and to share information of all sorts with others. Sadly it is being grossly misused in this case today. The reason why the internet is becoming such a big source of plagiarism is because of its features mainly. The internet is very easy to access. Accessing the internet today is very simple and easy and can be done by almost anyone of any age. Apart from that, getting an internet connection these days is very cheap and almost anyone can afford it very easily. The next reason is because the internet is so fast. Gone are the days of slow internet, the internet today has become very fast because of which accessing and getting data hardly takes any time at all. But the main reason for all this plagiarising on the internet is because of the vast quantities of information and data that are so widely and freely available on it.

Earlier plagiarism was done only from books. If one had to do any such thing then one had to refer to journals and books present in the libraries. Today however because of the internet one can refer and plagiarise from any number of sources, all of which are available on the internet. These can vary from journals to research papers to articles, almost everything. Not only that, internet today is available in all parts of the world and in all countries. There is a lot of unsecured data having very restricted access however there is a lot of unsecure data also. Plagiarising is not just about copy pasting from another person’s work but copying from someone and modifying their work also counts as plagiarism. There are so many sites today on the internet today that is just mind boggling. These large number of sites offer information on such a wide variety of topics right from science to commerce to finance to management to art and what not. In addition to this the information available on all these topics is also a lot which further contributes to the problem. Added to this is the convenience and easy access to the internet that is another problem. The problem however lies a great deal with the students. These students are the ones who generally indulge in plagiarism and sadly, they do not understand the consequences of their acts and neither do they realise the gravity of the situation. They have to be told that honesty is very important and originality matters the most.

The worst consequence of copying and plagiarising is that it leads to the new generation becoming stupid. Not in the literal sense of course, but it implies that people indulging in this tend to become unoriginal thinkers. The only way to combat plagiarism is to have websites with pay to access facility, anti plagiarising software and also strict laws to be enforced to combat this problem.