http://www.cybervictims.org
Recently I met some young fresh college students who were
preparing for their assignments. When they showed me the topics, I could not
hold back my surprise and also appreciation. The topic was about new findings
on astro-physics and they had to contribute from their own understandings. When
I asked them what do they think about it, almost all of them answered that
‘internet will think for us’. Apparently they were planning to spend some days
in the net- searching and then put the results of the same in the assignments.
But the question is how far these contributions would be original? A faculty in
a local college told me ‘no wonder, none of them write from their own’. It is
no surprise to me too. Last year, I got to see one of my own write-ups on cyber
crime against women, neatly cut and pasted in a scholarly article which came
for submission to a noted journal. The editor somehow sensed something wrong
and alerted me.
But I am not alone in this “stolen and victimised” group.
There are many noted as well as upcoming scholars whose works are being used
without proper citation or acknowledgements by others. Either such people do
not know about copy right violations, or they care a hang about these. But what
no one understands is, more than violation of certain legal terms, it
victimises the original creator. A simple
blog full of genuine creativeness may take minimum two days time to
materialise; whereas a full length scholarly paper may take minimum three
months to maximum five months time to be written to the expectations of a
standard journal. Indeed, the cost of
heavy weight books may not be afforded by many, and these open access
informative write ups not only help people (especially students) to fill up the
vacuum, but also they help them to finish off their works in record times. Just
“search” and you would get the answers even at the odd hours of midnight. But it
no way means that one can use these sources as mugging up knowledge to pour
over in the assignments or projects. It is unfortunate that in India among the high
school and undergraduate students, awareness regarding copy right violation in
relation to such ‘references’ is hopelessly low. A striking reason for this
could be that the law meant for copyright protection in India, has given much
weightage to literary, dramatic, musical
works, architecture, computer programmes, films, photographs etc. Scholarly works, which include short write-ups
also, fall much in the kitty of the publisher/s who choose to publish them. Authors of such
works therefore in many cases become secondary copyright holder, or may not
have the copyright at all, but confers the right to their publisher/s. However,
the same may not be the case when the write up is published in the world wide
net. While independent bloggers using Google services, or independent writers
using other web-pages hosted in the US, are hugely protected by the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act or DMCA irrespective of their nationality, in India, the law is
little tricky in this regard. Section 3 of the Copyright Act, 1957 makes it
clear that ‘publication’ means “making a work available to the public by issue
of copies or communicating the work to the public”. This very definition
apparently gives an indication that once a write-up is “floated” for public
viewing, it is published. But the very next section, i.e, section 4 warns
people that when such ‘publication’ is made without the author’s proper ‘license
of the owner of the copyright’, it would be considered not published in the
eyes of law. The conjugated inner meaning of these two sections lies in the
fact that even if the work is ‘published’, no individual is allowed to use the
same as his/her own work unless the original owner properly authorises the
other person to use it. In practise, this authorisation can be implied when one
uses a write-up from an open access source after properly citing the author’s
name, the title of the write-up, the place where it is published and the date
when it was published. However, when the write-up is published with the note from
the author that it can be reused only with the written permission from the
author, the way of obtaining permission extends by personally approaching the
author for his/her permission.
In India hardly any undergraduate student
is actually aware or is told about this. I observed that this awareness of
respecting other’s hard work slowly arises in some students by regular reading
of other available reading materials; some learn this when their works are
rejected by editors on the ground of plagiarism. But unfortunately the number
of these awakened individuals is very less. Largely, the education system is
liable for this. In our schools we ask the students to produce exactly what is
written in the text books; hardly any parent or teacher can spend time to make
their wards understand what those scriptures actually mean. Many parents are
never happy when they learn that their children are not taking up professional
courses but prefer to be “thinkers”, or ‘researchers’; even when some land up
in their dream courses, they are pressurised to produce some contributions towards
the subject without being told how to do it on their own without ‘stealing’
other’s ideas. This gives rise to the vicious circle of infringement of
copyrights and victimising the original authors.
Solution? Unless the ‘predecessors’/teachers/guides/parents
show the way to be ‘innovative’, cut-copy-paste culture would happily exist in
the land of unique thinkers and writers. Young students .......don’t victimise
authors; respect their work, learn from them and show the world who inspired
your work.
Please Note: Do not
violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided
in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite
it as “Halder D. (2012), “Cut-copy –paste....who cares?
”, 29th July,2012, published in http://cybervictims.blogspot.com/”
