More on plagiarism at Mary B's blog:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/02/are-you-at-risk-of-plagiarism.html#more
My comment:
Fascinating thread!
Brian Lewis writes: "I came into this world with nothing and all I know has been learnt from others and from books."
Surely not! Socrates (out of copywrong) spent his best years showing that all we know is actually inside us from the start. So we're like scratchy cats with our mewticks.
Scratching away, I notice nobody's yet mentioned ideas and culture as "gifts of nature", like air, sunlight, or the oceans. Otherwise known as "public goods".
However, fresh water has been made into a marketable commodity, and territorial waters are encroaching on the oceans.
Economics discusses various kinds of "natural monopolies" where a single provider is the most efficient solution, eg gas and water utilities.
The interesting thing for us is how market forces are encroaching on human infrastructure, like flesh and blood and internal organs. And how ideas and culture are being trapped and flayed and sold as furred robes to the rich and privileged.
Inadequate provision of necessities often results - causing "market failure". These days education is a blatant example.
So in view of all this the very idea of plagiarism is a mind-forged manacle (out of copywrong) with sharp spikes facing inwards.
Am I stealing by breathing?? Or strolling in the sun? I certainly am if I wander the city streets, or use roads or public spaces. Plagiarism and the sanctions tied in with it is just a new but equally vicious form of Enclosure and the Vagrancy Laws (see for instance http://homepage.ntlworld.com/janusg/landls.htm )
No comments:
Post a Comment