Expelled for plagiarizing your own work?

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: luvly
Teachers exert more authority, since the mental faculties and intellects of the kids are not considered to be mature. Of course it's the property of the school 'cuz students supposedly depend highly upon what is taught to them and ideas from the teachers, together with books. So legally, it seems the school has an upperhand. The only possible exception I can think of is if the author of the work is a kid confirmed to have extremely high IQ and came up with an idea that could not possibly have been derived from the teachings or help of the teacher (of course if the student chooses to fight it through court). You don't even have to go far: think of child stars . . . their parents legally have control over the earnings of the kids and even what work they accept, in spite of little protection they might have legally.

By that theory, everything any of us writes or does is the property of whatever common ancestor first figured out how to do it. According to your logic, your entire post is plagarized from your kindergarten teacher who tought you the alphabet. Or the papers I write are actually Microsoft's property since they are facilitated by Word.

No-one anywhere comes up with an idea absent of concepts and no-one anywhere comes up with those concepts completely independantly of other people. Every thought that you (or I) have is based in one way or another on experiences or information gleaned from teachers, parents, friends, and strangers.

ZV

 

[zod]

Originally posted by: minendo
I should have been expelled years ago then. I turned in the same papers multiple times.

 

"All of your examples involve the writer signing an agreement to relinquish their copyright. This student has done nothing of the sort. Again, you argue assuming that all law is written in stone. Poor position. There are compelling legal arguments here and it is to be incredibly simple to assume that if taken to court the ruling is predetermined. You will be an incredibly ineffective lawyer if you assume every time that the court's previous opinion cannot be changed."

Wow! Thanks for telling me my ability as a lawyer. I'll go ahead and drop all of my ambitions, since I'm a prewritten failure.

But back to discussion: I am not claiming to be an intellectual property lawyer or expert. I was speaking from a layman's point of view, looking through the eyes of the school. If you noted, I made an exception: My example was a kid who was proven to be of high IQ and every major idea in his work could not have been with any significant help from the teacher. I could see it going in favour of the kid.

"Speaking of legal guardians... your mention of child stars and their parents is a poor example because teachers are not the legal guardians of their students. And when you do research under someone, as part of a team for example, you probably sign a form waving your rights to anything you discover/find/come up with, etc., and agreeing that that IP belongs to whomever you are working for. That's why they have you sign those things because, by default, you own your original ideas. You must specificly surrender those rights in order to lose them."

You could be right at the end, Lethal. However, the point of my analogy was missed here. The point I was making there was that similarly as legal guardians have authority over kids, schools have a measure of authority too. Yes, kids do not sign contracts with the school, but the legal guardians do. The legal guardians may have signed somewhere there something about intellectual property. Normally, organisations tend to have the subject of intellectual property covered in their contracts. And normally, legal guardians/adults don't take their time to read contracts.

Of course there's always room for and in fact there have been sufficient cases where contracts have been voided by the court, in spite of the tiny prints.

 

[Turin39789]

meh it certainly isnt plagiarism, and its not exactly a wrong practice anyway. Second editions/revised copies of novels and poems are released all the time. If the assignment is to write an essay on transcendentalism's effect on the american psyche, who gives a shat if you wrote it 10 minutes before the class or 3 months before. If it is something you write, that satisfy's the requirements it should be good to go. If you have written a similar paper previously, it is very possible that your thoughts on the subject are still the same or are similar to your previous position.

 

"By that theory, everything any of us writes or does is the property of whatever common ancestor first figured out how to do it. According to your logic, your entire post is plagarized from your kindergarten teacher who tought you the alphabet. Or the papers I write are actually Microsoft's property since they are facilitated by Word.

No-one anywhere comes up with an idea absent of concepts and no-one anywhere comes up with those concepts completely independantly of other people. Every thought that you (or I) have is based in one way or another on experiences or information gleaned from teachers, parents, friends, and strangers."

Zenmervolt, please read carefully before making weak comparisons or accidentally stating unapplicable cases. First off, your application of this to Microsoft is as weak as can be. Microsoft facilitates it does not have any relevance to your ability to create an idea. Microsoft Word has negligible or no contribution to your ideas typed. Secondly, Microsoft has a EULA that basically either exerts its authority or chooses to give away that authority to the contents and the software.

Thirdly, the stipulated definition of plagiarism eliminates common knowledge. What is considered the intellectual property of the school aren't the abcs. If we should accept your argument, then there is almost no such thing as plagiarism in high school, junior high, etc. except if the student copies word for word or writes what is considered a rare idea. However, what children generally learn are already uncovered materials and common knowledge when sampling the entire population of a literate country. So your argument seems to have a hole in it there, since it would seem to me that the assumed population in consideration of secondary school work would be minors and what constitutes common knowledge amongst minors.

Fourthly, my statement was about work submitted by the students to the school, not work independently done and never having any bearing on school hours and submissions. A student can do anything off school hours at his home and never submit it to school. What is your benefit with amphiboly here?

Edit: And remember: There's a reason school is mandatory for minors. Their mental faculties are perceived as having not matured; otherwise they would have a choice to go or not to (i.e., invoking equal protection as adults). The teachers are significant guardians in leading them to exercise their mental faculties. Suppressing such relevant point escapes me.

 

EyeMwing, my guess would be that you have the right to the material, but the teacher can choose to reject your work. That would be my guess. . . .

Here's an answer to the subject, particularly applicable to your situation of copyrighted material: Writing and Intellectual Property. I honestly don't know the qualification of the author. Nevermind! It says he's an attorney. I guess he has a PhD too. However, an important observation: he does not make clear if this applies to all level of students, including minors. Note he states it is presumed, he qualifies copyrightable materials (therefore not clear if applicable to noncopyrightable materials, which seems not the case) and also mentions a possibility of students having signed away their authorities.

Here's another material on a similar subject: Teachers' Outrageous Claim Of Intellectual Property.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: luvly
"All of your examples involve the writer signing an agreement to relinquish their copyright. This student has done nothing of the sort. Again, you argue assuming that all law is written in stone. Poor position. There are compelling legal arguments here and it is to be incredibly simple to assume that if taken to court the ruling is predetermined. You will be an incredibly ineffective lawyer if you assume every time that the court's previous opinion cannot be changed."

Wow! Thanks for telling me my ability as a lawyer. I'll go ahead and drop all of my ambitions, since I'm a prewritten failure.

But back to discussion: I am not claiming to be an intellectual property lawyer or expert. I was speaking from a layman's point of view, looking through the eyes of the school. If you noted, I made an exception: My example was a kid who was proven to be of high IQ and every major idea in his work could not have been with any significant help from the teacher. I could see it going in favour of the kid.

"Speaking of legal guardians... your mention of child stars and their parents is a poor example because teachers are not the legal guardians of their students. And when you do research under someone, as part of a team for example, you probably sign a form waving your rights to anything you discover/find/come up with, etc., and agreeing that that IP belongs to whomever you are working for. That's why they have you sign those things because, by default, you own your original ideas. You must specificly surrender those rights in order to lose them."

You could be right at the end, Lethal. However, the point of my analogy was missed here. The point I was making there was that similarly as legal guardians have authority over kids, schools have a measure of authority too. Yes, kids do not sign contracts with the school, but the legal guardians do. The legal guardians may have signed somewhere there something about intellectual property. Normally, organisations tend to have the subject of intellectual property covered in their contracts. And normally, legal guardians/adults don't take their time to read contracts.

Of course there's always room for and in fact there have been sufficient cases where contracts have been voided by the court, in spite of the tiny prints.

I guess we both misunderstood each other 'cause, basically, you just said the same thing I did. Stop plagiarizing me. 😉

In short, unless the student or parent/legal guardian signed away their rights to IP the school cannot claim IP rights over the student's paper. I know signing away IP rights is SOP when you start working at many places, but I've never encounted that in the education system in regards to the general student population.


Lethal

 

[jjessico]

A big thing that has gone unmentioned and the coverage so far here has failed to mention is the simple fact that this student is being asked to do apparently the same thing multiple times. It is worth noting that this certainly doesn't seem to further any pupils education.

Here's something for thought as well. Most teachers reuse assignments, study guides, tests, and lectures year after year. They are employed to complete the assignment of teaching students, yet they are allowed to use their original material more than once. Why? It completes the assigned task of teaching children. This is the same as a student reusing a paper to complete assignment X.

Jason

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: jjessico
A big thing that has gone unmentioned and the coverage so far here has failed to mention is the simple fact that this student is being asked to do apparently the same thing multiple times. It is worth noting that this certainly doesn't seem to further any pupils education.

Here's something for thought as well. Most teachers reuse assignments, study guides, tests, and lectures year after year. They are employed to complete the assignment of teaching students, yet they are allowed to use their original material more than once. Why? It completes the assigned task of teaching children. This is the same as a student reusing a paper to complete assignment X.

Jason

Good point. Surely it is a fault of the system if the student is required to do 2 pieces of work which are pretty much the same.
He may not have done extra work to accomplish the second assignment, but then why should he, when he has already done the assignment once. Maybe the school needs to not present students with similar tasks for assignments, hell, in my (UK) school, we were told we could reuse work from one year to the next, and it was work that was officially graded to give us our national exam results.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
A senior in my junior english class (He failed) is currently in the process of being expelled for plagiarism. The thing is - he wrote what he copied. He took his research paper from last year, edited for some mistakes and added content. When the electronic copy (They make us turn everything in in both .doc and hard copy) was run by the academic honesty board's software package - it lit up like a christmas tree. It was 80% similar to an essay turned in last year! Obviously he's fighting the process every step of the way, as are his parents, as is the English teacher, and even the majority of the teachers. The board's reasoning is that once the paper is turned in for a grade, you lose all intellectual property rights. It seems to me that this is wrong - never have we signed to anything saying that all work submitted for a grade becomes property of the school. I've even published (AND OWN PAID COPYRIGHTS) to several items that I wrote outside of school that just happened to fit with an assignment that I then turned in. Thankfully, my website was never indexed by the webcrawler portion of the anti-plagiarism software.

What are these idiots thinking? Are they right?

This sounds exactly like Don Henley (I think) on of the Eagles anyway had this same situation happen....watching VH1 lately?

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

Originally posted by: Spoooon
Well, in some of my classes, we were allowed to use old work, but we had to get permission first.

Using prior work is different if the person doing so isn't upfront about doing so. He should of consulted witht he teacher first. However, I believe expulsion to be too harsh of a punishment.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: luvly
What is considered the intellectual property of the school aren't the abcs. If we should accept your argument, then there is almost no such thing as plagiarism in high school, junior high, etc. except if the student copies word for word or writes what is considered a rare idea. However, what children generally learn are already uncovered materials and common knowledge when sampling the entire population of a literate country. So your argument seems to have a hole in it there, since it would seem to me that the assumed population in consideration of secondary school work would be minors and what constitutes common knowledge amongst minors.

Firstly, the ABC's and the Word examples were intended to be weak. Illustration of your argument's weakness through absurdity.

Secondly, and more importantly, the bloody definition of plagarism is to copy word for word or a rare idea. Your claim, as you have stated it, seems to be that unless an idea is arrived at completely without outside influence that idea is not truly the author's. That's asinine. By that logic every single idea ever had and every single idea that ever will be had is plagarized. "Common knowledge" must become common somehow, and that somehow is through learning. It does not magically become common once one has graduated from high school or has become legally an adult. Just because a minor has only recently uncovered some fact or idea that is common among adults does not make that idea uncommon for the minor as you seem to be claiming. The school does not have any ground to claim ownership of the students' work. All the school has done is show the student where such knowledge may be acquired. The student must acquire that knowlege on his own. The only people who would have a legitimate claim to anything the student writes are people whose verbatim quotes or rare ideas (with proof that those rare ideas could not have also been arrived at independantly) the student used without citation.

ZV

Re: The comment about abilities in law. I never commented on your inherent abilities, or my view on them. I merely specified that if you believed, as your posts seem to indicate, that court decisions are set in stone, then you would not be successful. As long as the premise is not true (I have no way of knowing its veracity), then the conclusion is likewise false. So if I have interpreted the premise incorrectly, which I admit is possible and even likely, then I am certainly not so blind as to continue to insist upon the conclusion.

 

[dullard]

All colleges I've attended (and my own highschool) specifically defined plagiarism as:
1) Copying someone else's work and calling it your own, and
2) Copying your own work from another class and claiming you wrote it for a second class.
I have seen many other cases of people being punished for copying their own work. So I say tough luck to your friend. Even if you don't call it plagiarism, he didn't do the required assignment to write a new original essay - so either way he deserves to fail.

Read this from plagiarism.org (click on Types of Plagiarism and scroll to the middle)

"The Self-Stealer"
The writer "borrows" generously from his or her previous work, violating policies concerning the expectation of originality adopted by most academic institutions.

Go to google.com and do a search for "self-plagiarism" and you will see many other sites agreeing that copying your own paper is considered plagiarism.