A104 Biology
Problem 13: Copy and Paste
6
thPresentation
The problem
Three cases were presented in the problem statement.
Case 1: A T-shirt with Man-U logo printed was sold online
Case 2: A video clip made from a popular singer’s song was posted on YouTube to earn advertising fee.
Case 3: A student copied a full article from internet and submitted it as his own work.
What do you recognize?
• In case 1, Man-U is a famous soccer team and its
logo can be only exclusively used by them unless
permission is given.
• In case 2, music is piece of work which is
copyrighted and should not be distributed freely
without permission.
The approach
• Understanding what copyright is and why is it
important.
• Able to identify what are the things that can be
copyrighted.
• Identifying what constitute the act of infringing
copyright.
• Understanding what is meant by plagiarism.
Copyright
• It is the exclusive legal right granted to the
originator of the piece of work done by
him/her.
• A copyrighted material cannot be
reproduced of distributed unless
Why is there a need for copyright?
• The originator has spent effort to produce the work (eg, articles, movie). If the work can be easily copied and redistributed, the effort of the originator will not be rewarded.
• People who had copied the work can easily benefit from copying without putting in real effort. This is equivalent to “stealing”.
Copyright material
Listed below are things that can be copyrighted:
• Video & music
• Images
• Invention
• Design (Example, Man-U logo)
Copyright material
Example for discussion:
• The printing of the Man-U logo in T-shirt is violation of copyright. The logo is a design and it is the trademark to the company or the team.
• The re-mixing of a piece of music, video or images face the possibility of copyright infringement should the
originator decides to take legal action against you.
Material that cannot be copyrighted
Listed below are things that cannot be copyrighted:
• A generic idea
Material that cannot be copyrighted
Example for discussion:
• Though the design of solar panel to harness solar power can be patented (copyrighted), the idea to harness solar power as a form of power sources cannot be
copyrighted. Anyone can use this idea to think of way to design tool to capture the solar power.
Plagiarism
• Plagiarism is an act of copying someone else’s work and pass it off as own work.
Some of the very common plagiarism are:
1) copying an article word by word without paraphrasing 2) to use the new idea originated by someone and pass it
off as own word without giving credit
Avoiding Plagiarism
• When we are writing a report, it is very common
for us to “borrow” existing idea from other
sources to support our work.
• To avoid the risk of plagiarism, the best practice
is to cite the sources of the idea so as to give
Citation
• In report writing, the way to cite the sources is to put down the bibliography in the reference.
• In general, bibliography will comprised of the following: 1) Name of author
2) Title of the work
3) Name of publisher (Journal, Website or book) 4) The date of published of the source
Example of a Bibliography
Name of Authors Year of published
Title of work
Name of publisher
Citation
Name of authors
The authors name are cited so that we acknowledge the credit of the sources to them
Title of works
The same author could have produced numerous work. Thus it is important to point the reader to the specific work by the author
Citation
Date of the published article
Some idea could have been outdated. Some idea has been further improved and some idea could be even disproved. Thus it is important to let the reader aware of the published date to gauge how old (or new) the idea is.
Page number of the source
Importance of Citation
Other than the reason to avoid the risk of plagiarism, citing sources have the following advantages:
1) It can guide the reader to refer to the original sources should the reader needs more detailed information 2) Citation can help the reader to distinguish the original
idea from the “borrowed” idea. Thus acknowledging the real work of the author
3) Citation can free you from embarrassment should the idea “borrowed” is flawed.
Learning points
• Identifying material that can be copyrighted.
• Understanding the need for copyright.
• Identifying actions that could infringe copyright.
• Defining what plagiarism is.
• Identifying the action to avoid plagiarism
• Identifying the information that should be included in citation.
