I’ve met too many people who’d rather take the quick and easy road instead of producing something out of their own efforts. From grade school to high school to college. If you’re studious you’re either a nerd or a weirdo unless of course you’re from a family that is expected to excel. We’re going through the motions of getting educated and then relying on the smarter people to copy from or take care of our problems.

Its damned hard to get people to think for themselves.

Happy birthday MM…

Happy birthday Nadia…

You’re right, plagiarism is more an academic (or, shall we say, moral / ethical) matter, copyright infringement is a legal one. It’s easy to confuse the two. What is confronting Mr. Sotto is a plagiarism issue more than a copyright infringement one, which is why the doctrine of Fair Use does not apply. At any rate, presumably we as his (unfortunate) constituents should fundamentally be more concerned over the ethical rather than the legal breach our good Senator and his staff have unabashedly committed–and vigorously defended.

According to Wiki:

“Section 185 of the Intellectual Property Code provides for fair use of copyrighted material. The criteria for fair use is almost identical to the fair use doctrine in United States copyright law, with the exception that even unpublished works qualify as fair use under Philippine copyright law.”

There is this news in US just recently – “Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article Is Fair Use”

Snippet:

“It’s not often that republishing an entire work without permission is deemed fair use. Fair use is an infringement defense when the defendant reproduced a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, commentary, teaching and research. The defense is analyzed on a case-by-case basis.”

According to https://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html re: Fair Use Doctrine :

“Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes:

– The nature of the copyrighted work
– The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
– The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work”

All the cases of plagiarisms that I’ve read were actually violations of copyright infringement law.

I would like to quote this one –

“Schools enforce plagiarism.
The courts enforce copyright infringement.”

This brings to mind the Larry Henares plagiarism issue years ago. I don’t remember the topic anymore but Larry’s defense was that he has such a photographic memory that he remembered every word he read and wrote it. At least he’s clever.