Response to audio and article on Plagiarism

                            Plagiarism is defined as the practice of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. Plagiarizing is a grave act can lead to a plethora of problems and arguments. The audio program “Digital Music Sampling” and the article, “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in a Digital Age” discuss this serious and growing problem. In the audio program the DJ’s discuss whether or not sampling is illegal, if the consumer should give credit to the producer, and if so how much credit. Some of the DJ’s though it was necessary to go as far as paying the original creators while others thought sampling without citation was perfectly legal because they made something completely different out of the borrowed snippet of music. I believe that it is necessary and proper to give credit to the producers of the original piece because time, effort was put forth to create something original. I do not think it is necessary to pay the original artist though because the snippet that was borrowed from them was transformed into a completely different piece of art. I think that the happy medium is crediting the original artist, but not going as far as paying that artist. In the article author Trip Gabriel discusses how the internet is blurring student’s concept of intellectual property. Information is just a button away, and often all of this information seems to be without an author. According to Ms. Wilensky, one of the individuals quoted in this article, “The main reason it [plagiarism] occurs, is because students leave high school unprepared for the intellectual rigors of college writing.” So between the fact that the information is so easily available seemingly without authors, and students are unprepared to analyze articles, they have become prone to plagiarism. I do agree with the fact that plagiarism is becoming more rampant and think that students need to learn how to properly credit and use sources of information. I believe it is perfectly fine to use other peoples work in your own as long as you make it your own, don’t plagiarize, and as long as the original source is given proper credit.