Hi Professor and Class,
While reading about plagiarism, I think that the main reason we need to cite our sources while writing is to give credit to the author. If we were not giving credit to the author then we are basically saying that we thought and wrote this idea ourselves which is not true. Even when writing and re-wording something you still need to give credit to the author's work because in the end the idea still came from the author. If somebody was to use my work without giving me credit, I would feel really disappointed. I would feel like somebody just didn't feel like doing their work entirely so they decided that my work sounded really good and tried to use it for their selves. I would be very upset and probably have to say something about it. That's just how I am. The only real-world plagiarism that I can think of that includes professionals is in the music industry. I see all of the time artists that will take an old-song and re-do it to make it sound better but take full credit for it just because they changed the words. It is not their song just because they changed a few words or the melody of the song. They need to give credit to the original artist, before even performing the song is what I think is only right. Also, yes I think that the Internet blurs the lines of “legally owned". On such sites as wikipedia, that site is the worst site to try to get true information from. That site is designed so that anybody in the world can give their opinion. Therefore, they are not facts, and the sites are not legit. I think the only sites that should be used when trying to find correct information would be a credited site, that way you have no questions if the site is legit or not.
