Does it make you laugh or cringe when people pass off copyrighted material as their reply to questions?

Question

cut and paste
cut and paste
cut and paste

ha ha ha

Why not simply provide a source link?

my bad! "copyright material"

copy and paste
copy and paste
copy and paste

Ha ha

Answer 1

Well, there's a few issues. Obviously, in terms of copyright material, there's a violation of someone else's work going on. So I don't much like that, if it's not sourced.

On the other hand, there are no really "new ideas." Information nowadays is plentiful enough that it's more a matter of being able to find something rather than generate the information on one's own. People who can quickly find reliable information are valuable in their own right.

(Again, it might be a little lazy... but sometimes I'm wondering why people just don't Wiki their own answers rather than taking the time to post the question?)

To be honest, source links without any sort of quote or summary discourage me from reading them. If I'm bothering to ask a question, I want to have answers that I can depend on. When someone summarizes the information, I know that at least ONE person has parsed it and decided it was good or at least logical enough to be able to condense.

So I actually appreciate a short quote or (far better) a summary so that I can tell the person understood the material and could condense it logically for me.

I was laughing yesterday -- I spent about 20 minutes writing up a long answer to one question, and I got Best Answer as well as the comment "nice cut and paste."

I guess it's more prominent than we even joke about here, since the asker assumed any lengthy answer must have been cribbed from another source rather than being an original composition.

(Um, btw, I wrote this answer myself. Just so you know. :) )

Answer 2

My name is Diane, and as a website designer, I've come into contact with the issue of plagiarism, and along with some of you, fallen victim many times. Recently, I have been experiencing problems with people stealing the text from my business website, placing it on their own site, and claiming it as their own! It was blaringly obvious that these people blatantly cut and pasted my words to their site! "What is going on?" I thought to myself. "Don't these people realize how hard I worked on my website? Don't they realize I worked for hours and hours until the text was just right? Don't they realize that they are stealing from me? That it's wrong?" After many futile confrontations and several frustrating months of this, I realized that maybe no, they didn't realize that what they were doing is wrong, and that it is called PLAGIARISM.

After all, it's very easy to take your mouse, highlight some text on a website, copy it, and then paste it right into your own site, maybe changing a word or two, and claim it as your own. Maybe some of us have even done that without realizing any harm. Well, that's why this page came to be. To educate others that it's NOT ok to copy text from another site. And whether we realize it or not, it's stealing. And, it's illegal.

The written word on your website is called your intellectual property. It came from you; it is yours. Someone who steals your written word and claims it as their own (by pasting it on their website) is committing copyright infringement. The same copyright rules and laws that apply to other written material, apply on the internet as well. It might be easier to steal written word on the internet, but it is still wrong. It is theft, it is illegal, and violators can be prosecuted according to the law.

Answer 3

Well I cut and paste but I also provide a source link and use quotations. I cut and paste so they have the info there if they don't want to use the link.

Answer 4

Not really, I just think they're really lazy. As long as they cite their source, its no biggie. Most of the time its Wikipedia.

What makes me laugh is when people actually choose them as the best answer. That proves that the asker is the lazy one :P

Answer 5

It makes me feel plagiarism should be a specific reason to report as abuse.