A cut-and-paste kleptocracy

We have created technology that is encouraging a culture of intellectual kleptocracy and all anyone wants to talk about is rights. The cut-and-paste functionality of our computers allows anyone to steal anything from anyone on the World Wide Web and claim it as their own. And all idealistic commentators like the Guardian's Victor Keegan or the FT's Cody Willard wants to do is remind us of that free downloads are worth their weight in gold or that DRM goes against the democratic tenets of the Internet.

This rather bleak thought occured to me while reading the transcripts of the All Things Digital conference in this morning's Wall Street Journal (premium archive only). Missing from all the debates was any qualitative discussion of the broader cultural benefits of the Web 2.0 revolution. This was particularly salient in the debate between Richard Sarnoff, President of New Media at Random House, and Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, over Google's plans to turn the Web into a cornucopian library of digital texts.

No prizes for guessing who is in favor and who is against this new library of Alexandria. Sarnoff understandably wants to protect his books and his authors and, of course, his bottom line from Google's brave new informational world. The messianic Lessig, of course, wants to foster the digital book, with its fuzzy promise of a golden age of intellectual communism. But neither Sarnoff nor Lessig discussed the impact that these digital books, free or not, will have on young people's sense of intellectual ownership.

Fortunately, some educators are addressing this critical issue. Today's Guardian Unlimited reports on a conference about plagiarism being held today in the English town of Gateshead. We are told that Professor Sally Brown, the pro-vice-chancellor for assessment, learning and teaching at Leeds Metropolitan University will tell the conference:

"That many students do not necessarily see anything wrong with copying other people's work. Students, according to Prof Brown, say things such as, "If they are stupid enough to give us three assignments with the same deadline, what can they expect?" and "I just couldn't say it better myself."

She confirms what many academic friends of mine in the US have told me. University students are stealing more and more information from the World Wide Web. Google is a plagariast's dream. It is creating a generation of intellectual kleptomaniacs who regard the cut-and-paste technology of the World Wide Web as a license to plunder other people's work and call it their own.

Sally Brown calls these students:

"Postmodern, eclectic, Google-generationists, Wikipediasts, who don't necessarily recognise the concepts of authorships/ownerships".

Larry Lessig and his band of merry pranksters on the Creative Commons would no doubt embrace these Google-generationists as conforming to a radical new culture of sharing. But for the rest of us, living in the real world of Lockean property rights, this incipient intellectual kleptocracy is of deep concern. If students steal their words and ideas from others, then what are they really learning? If plagariasm is being legitimized by the Google-generation, then how will this impact on their broader ethical sense about the ownership of things and ideas?

Comments

[danny Motion]

http://weblog.ipcentral.info/archives/2006/06/plagiarism_and.html

[cut-and-paste]

Patrick Ross shares a tale from the home front:

A few months ago my 11-year-old daughter was researching a paper on Jesse Owens for social studies. She didn't go to the library, pull down reference books and fill up 3x5 index cards. She went onto Google. She found plenty of materials. But when I asked to read her completed paper, it was nothing but a cut-and-paste job from various web sites on Owens; she even included, quite randomly, part of a press release about some recent celebration in his honor.

My daughter's work ethic may not always be what I'd like it to be, but she's bright and can write more than sufficiently for a 5th grade social studies class. Yet she seemed flat-out baffled when I explained to her that the paper wasn't acceptable. "Is the information wrong?" she asked. "Did I leave something out?" No to both. But she hadn't written her own paper, and more importantly, she hadn't learned anything, as was clear when I began to quiz her about the content in her own "paper." Hard to transfer knowledge in the two seconds it takes to select and move.

Click click. Cut and paste.

"The ultimate search engine," says Larry Page, "would understand everything in the world." Just like Patrick Ross's daughter understands Jesse Owens.

[Doug Lay]

Things can be owned. Ideas cannot. That's what I think, absolutely without apology, and I'm a 40-year old with a masters' degree who's written dozens of pretty good papers without plagiarizing. Frankly, Andrew, I see you as little more than a smear artist and a hack. Who are you to put words into the mouths of Larry Lessig and other "commonists?" Why not do some work and find out what they think. Lessig has probably graded a paper or two in his time.

[Danny Motion]

Dougie -- how would you feel if I wrote this and claimed it as my own original commentary:

"Things can be owned. Ideas cannot. That's what I think, absolutely without apology, and I'm a 40-year old with a masters' degree who's written dozens of pretty good papers without plagiarizing. Frankly, Andrew, I see you as little more than a smear artist and a hack. Who are you to put words into the mouths of Larry Lessig and other "commonists?" Why not do some work and find out what they think. Lessig has probably graded a paper or two in his time."

[andrew keen]

Doug -- fair point on Lessig. I am curious myself as to the degree of plagiarism at Stanford Law School. My guess is that there isn't much since these are the types of students already motivated to work hard and achieve. The problem is at the other end of things, at the community colleges and less illustrious private schools, especially at the undergraduate level where many of the kids have no intellectual discipline or interest.

[Doug Lay]

Danny:

If you want to spread that comment around without attribution - be my guest. It's already served its purpose since it got Andrew to back off his blowhard reactionary stance a bit.

[danny motion]

hey Doug -- so are you really saying that "writing" can never be "owned"?

[Steven Chabot]

"The problem is at the other end of things, at the community colleges and less illustrious private schools, especially at the undergraduate level where many of the kids have no intellectual discipline or interest."

Andrew - why is this suddenly a new thing? To go with the aristocratic argument for a bit, these people would be giving short shrift to their work irregardless of Google and Wikipedia. As I noted in my posted reply, I remember a number of times I copied by hand a textbook. It is not like suddenly there is was created a whole new class of student.

[danny motion]

Steven -- before cut-and-paste technology it was much more difficult to cheat. Plus, at least you had to go to the library to hunt down the book.

btw: what's "aristocratic" about this argument. The traditional artistocracy are generally profoundly lazy when it comes to intellectual work. Traditional aristocrats would have a wonderful time with Google.

[Doug Lay]

No I am not stating that writing can never be owned, I am stating that ideas cannot be owned. It's my understanding that copyright law protects the embodiment of ideas in specific words, not the underlying ideas. (See the recent Da Vinci Code case for an example of this.) It's my understanding that patent law protects the embodiment of ideas in physical inventions, not the underlying ideas themselves. (Software and business process patents blur this distinction and this is a good reason they are very controversial.)

Two things really bug me about Andrew's blog. First is the posing of an inevitable dichotomy between books and the Internet. This is a false and lame dichotomy whether made by a techno-utopian or a techno-reactionary. We need both books and the Internet, period.

Second is the kneejerk equation of products of the mind with physical property. Yes, creators deserve compensation and there is a long history in our legal system of guaranteeing such compensation. But intellectual products are NOT reducible to simple property. The metaphor is flawed, and I believe its strongest advocates diminish creativity just as much, if not more, than the "cut-and-paste generation" that Andrew rails against.

[larry B]

The problem with the Internet is that it doesn't wrap property very well. copy-and-paste technology allows anyone to very easily take content and make it their own. I therefore don't blame the publishing industry for being really wary about having their intellectual property displayed on the Internet since this decreases its value in the eyes of readers.

[charlie]

something else interesting in that issue of the wsj, the interview of movie producer barry sonnenfeld, where he's a contrarion compared to the pro-tech interviews of iger and gates he's sandwiched btwn. he has some practical and candid examples to describe the isolating aspect of the internet and it's threat to traditional community, peoples' need to come together thru events (i.e. movie theatres), and that most media execs are embracing web 2.0 out of fear and uncertainty.

[Clif]

does anyone know where I can access that Sonnenfeld interview?

[mikey]

http://enterprisearchitect.typepad.com/ea/2006/06/the_cut_paste_g.html