# data[].attributes.body
1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people

2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work

3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's files

4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal

5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness

6. Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid

7. Thou shalt not use other people's computer resources without authorization

8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output

9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write

10. Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect

# data[].attributes.headline
Here is a quick video on the 10 Commandments!

# data[].attributes.subject
Here is a quick video on the 10 Commandments!

# data[].attributes.body
1. Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid and

2. Thou shalt not appropriate other people's intellectual output

# data[].attributes.body
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant - Mitchell Kapor

The vast amount of information available is partly to blame - students need to be able to discern whether or not the information they are using is accurate and factual.

# data[].attributes.headline
Pirated Software, Movies, Music and More

# data[].attributes.subject
Pirated Software, Movies, Music and More

# data[].attributes.body
Why do people convince themselves that this OK digital behavior, let alone everyday behavior? The digital media we all consume is the result of someone else's intellect and it is important to respect talent and give credit to those rights. Obtaining illegal copies of copyrighted software, movies and music is unethical behavior and one that students tend to forget in this age of instant access and unlimited resources at a digital disposal. Coinciding with this violation is the fact that too many students and Internet users, appropriate other people's work, images, and more without proper attribution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There's a need to find a way to maximise the truly amazing potential of the internet, while properly rewarding creators.

Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. His most recent book is The Life You Can Save.

Internet activists, together with Google, Facebook and other major online players, have carried the day, persuading the US Congress to shelve its anti-piracy legislation [GALLO/GETTY]

Princeton, NJ - Last year, I told a colleague that I would include internet ethics in a course that I was teaching. She suggested that I read a recently published anthology on computer ethics - and attached the entire volume to the email.

Should I have refused to read a pirated book? Was I receiving stolen goods, as advocates of stricter laws against internet piracy claim?

If I steal someone's book the old-fashioned way, I have the book, and the original owner no longer does. I am better off, but they are worse off. When people use pirated books, the publisher and the author often are worse off - they lose earnings from selling the book.

But, if my colleague had not sent me the book, I would have borrowed the copy in my university's library. I saved myself the time needed to do that, and it seems that no one was worse off. (Curiously, given the book's subject matter, it is not for sale in digital form). In fact, others benefitted from my choice as well: the book remained on the library shelf, available to other users.

On the other hand, if the book had not been on the shelf and those other users had asked library staff to recall or reserve it, the library might have noted the demand for the book and ordered a second copy. But there is only a small probability that my use of the book would have persuaded the library to buy another copy. And, in any case, we are now a long way from the standard cases of stealing.

I asked the 300 students in my ethics class which of them had not downloaded something from the internet, knowing or suspecting that they were violating copyright. Only five or six hands went up. Many of the rest thought that what they had done was wrong, but said that "everyone does it". Others said that they would not have bought the music or book anyway, so they were not harming anyone. It did not seem that any of them were prepared to stop.

The case for enforcing copyright laws was strengthened by the details that emerged following the arrest in New Zealand last month of Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz), founder of the website Megaupload (now closed down by the FBI). Megaupload allowed its 180 million registered users to upload and download movies, television shows and music, and some of the money earned by Dotcom (from advertising and subscriptions) was on display at his mansion near Auckland, where he kept his Rolls-Royce and other exotic cars.

Dotcom's lawyer claims that Megaupload was merely providing storage for its subscribers' files, and had no control over what they were storing. But Megaupload offered cash rewards to users who uploaded files that proved popular with other users.

Last month, the United States considered legislation that aimed at stopping internet piracy. The bills had been written at the urging of Hollywood studios and of the publishing and recording industries, which claim that violations of copyright on the internet cost 100,000 jobs in the US alone. Opponents said the proposed law would reach far beyond sites such as Megaupload, making Google and YouTube liable for copyright infringement - and allowing the government to block (without court authorisation) access to websites that it deemed to be facilitating copyright infringement.

For the moment, internet activists, together with Google, Facebook and other major online players, have carried the day, persuading the US Congress to shelve its anti-piracy legislation. But the fight will continue: last month, the European Union and 22 member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which establishes international standards, and a new organisation to enforce intellectual-property rights. The agreement has already been signed by Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US. Now it must be ratified by, among others, the European Parliament.

I am an author, as well as a reader. One marvel of the internet is that some of my older works, long out of print, are now far more widely available than they ever were before - in pirated versions. Of course, I am more fortunate than many authors or creative artists, because my academic salary means that I am not forced to rely on royalties to feed my family. Nevertheless, it isn't hard to find better purposes for my royalty earnings than Kim Dotcom's environmentally damaging lifestyle. We need to find a way to maximise the truly amazing potential of the internet, while properly rewarding creators.

Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and many European countries now have a public lending right, designed to compensate authors and publishers for the loss of sales caused by the presence of their books in public libraries. We need something similar for the internet. A user fee could pay for it, and, if the fee were low enough, the incentive to use pirated copies would diminish. Couple that with law enforcement against the mega-abusing websites, and the problem might be soluble. Otherwise, most creative people will need to earn a living doing something else, and we will all be the losers.
Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include A version of this article was first published on Project Syndicate.

Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. His most recent book is The Life You Can Save.

Practical Ethics,One World, and most recently, The Life You Can Save.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There's a need to find a way to maximise the truly amazing potential of the internet, while properly rewarding creators. Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. His most recent book is The Life You Can Save.

# data[].attributes.body
The following article hits the nail on the head regarding the attitude/values/behaviors that those who pirate media or consume media exhibit, including the willingness to pay - which I believe is the biggest reason why this occurs. Media, especially that found on the Internet is too often seen as "free." Since it is on the Web and there is some access to it, then one feels that they should have full access to it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
(PDF) Why buy when we can pirate? The role of intentions and willingness to pay in predicting piracy behavior

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Purpose ‐ Digital piracy is one of the most popular forms of intellectual property theft and is currently recognized as a crime in several countries. This begs the question, if persons are fully informed that digital file sharing is a crime and, if caught, can be legally prosecuted, why do individuals opt to engage in such criminal behaviour?

# data[].attributes.headline
Thinking of downloading that movie for free?

# data[].attributes.subject
Thinking of downloading that movie for free?

# data[].attributes.body
Think again...

# data[].attributes.body
Give credit where it is due and if it is your opinion, say so!

# data[].attributes.body
How do prevent our student's from making these critical and crucial computing mistakes?

When searching for images for a project of any kind, it is better to search for creative commons images that you can use freely

Remember that "sharing" any digital or is almost always wrong - offering passwords to share different accounts is the same!

Remember that a copy doesn’t have to be a physical copy to be pirated.

Learn to check the terms of use/end user agreement on anything you buy or rent, for permission to make copies for yourself,  or others.

The podcast linked below provides great tips to combating plagiarism amongst students and how to teach them to detect and identify poor resources and non-proper citations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to this post as a podcast (sponsored by Listenwise):
Plagiarism can be a real pain. Most teachers have had to deal with it in some form or another, and a whole lot of us still haven't figured out the best way to combat it. Many of us issue stern warnings and threaten serious, soul-crushing consequences. Others also use plagiarism checkers to catch students in the act.

While these methods can deter students from plagiarizing and catch them if they do, they operate on the assumption that all plagiarism is devious, that all students who plagiarize know exactly what they're doing, and our mission is to catch and punish. Now because I don't believe that assumption is true, I think we could be handling the problem with a lot more finesse.

How Well Do Students Understand Plagiarism?

In my own experience as a teacher and a parent, I have seen acts of plagiarism that I truly believe were rooted in ignorance.

Take my 5th-grade daughter, for instance. A few months ago, she and her best friend were collaborating on a Google Slides presentation about a Native American tribe. Reading over it as she worked, I found sentence after sentence written in language she never could have come up with. When I asked her where she got the information, she told me point blank that she copied and pasted it from a website. It took me forever to explain why that was wrong and what she needed to do instead. She seriously had no idea. She wasn't trying to cheat. Eventually, I convinced her that she really, really needed to revise, and even though she did, I could tell she was mostly humoring me.

Okay, that's 5th grade, you say. Surely it gets better as students get older?

Marginally. Let's take a look at college undergrads. In two separate studies, undergraduates were asked to identify incidences of plagiarism. In both, students' ability to correctly label plagiarism could best be described as limited (Dawson & Overfield, 2006; Marshall & Garry, 2005). In other words, a significant number of students have an incomplete understanding of what plagiarism actually is. And if they don't always know when they're doing it, it's going to be pretty hard to get them to stop.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that all students who plagiarize are innocent. I've had students whose attempts at passing off someone else's work as their own were so blatant, I took it as a personal insult. But I do believe we can cut way back on less deliberate instances of plagiarism by teaching students the skills to avoid it.

Direct Instruction Works

Unfortunately, students are expected to learn how to avoid plagiarism by some kind of osmosis. As they progress from grade to grade, they are expected to already know how to weave research into their writing in original, elegant, and ethical ways, but far too often, they don't have this skill set. Not at all. So rather than going straight to the plagiarism checkers, we need to explicitly teach these skills, and we need to do it more than once if we want good results.

How? First, we need to help them identify plagiarism. When students are shown different examples of plagiarism and taught-even through basic lecture-the many forms it can take, their understanding of what constitutes plagiarism gets much more sophisticated (Landau, Druen, & Arcuri, 2002; Moniz, Fine, & Bliss, 2008).

Then we need to give them practice in correctly citing their sources. When students get hands-on practice with paraphrasing and correctly citing sources, especially if that practice comes with instructor feedback, plagiarism is significantly reduced (Emerson, Rees, & MacKay, 2005).

Below I have outlined five exercises you can do with students in grades 7-12 to give them a much better understanding of what plagiarism is and how to correctly integrate research into their own writing.

5 Exercises for Reducing Student Plagiarism

These exercises come from my own classroom practice and are supported by the above research. (If you'd like these exercises in a classroom-ready format, take a look at my Avoiding Plagiarism Mini-Unit at the end of this post.)

Before we start, two important tips:

First, use simple texts for practice. If you want students to read and cite challenging academic texts, that's fine for later, but to teach them the skills of writing from research and giving proper credit, make the reading material easy so they don't waste energy struggling with that. Once they have the writing and citation skills down, they'll be better equipped to plug in more challenging sources.

Second, do these exercises together in class. These would not be good lessons for flipped or blended learning, where students just work through them on their own. The skills are complex and often require a judgment call to determine if they have been done correctly. For every exercise, students should be getting feedback from you, from their group members, or both. Setting aside class time to do these together will pay off in the long run.

Here are the exercises:

Exercise 1: Recognizing Plagiarism
Required Time: 15-20 minutes
As mentioned earlier, students have an incomplete understanding of what actually constitutes plagiarism. This exercise uses the concept attainment instructional strategy of showing students "yes" and "no" examples to help students refine their definition of a concept.

1. Have students read a short, simple text. This could be anywhere from 500-800 words, on a somewhat familiar topic. Something like this article about bees would do the trick.

2. Show several teacher-created examples of student writing based on that text. In some cases, the writing should demonstrate plagiarism, and in other cases, it should not. For each one, have students decide whether they think it represents plagiarism or not. Have them discuss this in groups if possible. After each example, tell them if they are correct or not, and explain why.

3. Eventually, they should get to the point where they can correctly identify most examples as "plagiarism" or "not plagiarism."

Exercise 2: Summarizing
Required Time: 20-30 minutes
Once students know what plagiarism looks like, have them practice putting the information they learn from texts into their own words. Here we're not talking about a full-length summary; the skill of summarization can be applied in smaller bursts, and it's absolutely necessary for writing about the things you research. Students need to be able to read something, digest it, then explain what they learned in their own language. In the context of plagiarism, that skill is referred to as summarization.

For this exercise and the ones that follow it, use a classic I do, we do, you do format to model the process described below: Start by modeling the process yourself (the "I" step), then repeat it as a whole class with you in the lead or by having students try it in pairs or groups (the "we" step), and finally have students make a fresh attempt on their own (the "you" step).

Here's the process to teach:

1. Choose a 1-2 paragraph section of a text. (If you haven't already gutted the one used for Exercise 1, that will work; otherwise, find a fresh one). Read it several times to make sure you understand it.

2. Turn your paper over (or minimize their screen, if you are reading it digitally), then think for a minute about what the section said.

3. Next, turn to a partner or group and explain what you learned from the paragraph in your own words.

4. Write a few sentences summarizing that information without looking back at the original source. Their summary should sound like YOU, not the source.

5. After you have written your summary, check the original source to make sure your summary is correct and that key terms are spelled correctly.

6. Finally, make sure you give credit to your source for this information. (Show students a few different sentence stems so they have options for building their sentence, e.g., "According to..." "In her article, _____ says...")

This process, if done carefully, will show students how important is is to disconnect from the original text when composing. After the "you do" part of the exercise, let students study the paragraphs of their peers and evaluate each other for plagiarism. Looking at how other people summarized the same idea will help them see the range of possibilities.

Exercise 3: Paraphrasing
Required Time: 20-30 minutes
There's a fine line between summarizing and paraphrasing, which is . Each one needs to be treated a little differently. When you summarize, you are pulling together lots of information and making it your own. When you paraphrase, you are taking a more specific, unique idea from one author and using similar- explained here by the OWL at Purdue but not exactly the same -language.

For this lesson, use the same I do, we do, you do format to practice this process:

1. Read a section of a text (like the bee article mentioned above).

2. Point to a specific idea and show them how to paraphrase it and give credit to the author. Show students a few different sentence stems so they have options for building their sentence ("According to..." "In her article, _____ says...")

3. Have students practice the same skill with a different passage, checking their response with each other, then reviewing it with the class.

Exercise 4: Using Direct Quotes
Required Time: 20-30 minutes
The next level up from paraphrasing is using some of the exact words from the source. This will help students understand that the only time it's okay to copy someone else's exact words into your work is when you put those words in quotes and give them credit for them.

For this exercise, use the same I do, we do, you do pattern as in exercises 2 and 3 to show students how to quote a sentence or phrase from the original text, using some of the same sentence stems from exercise 3.

Exercise 5: Using a Formal Citation Style

Required time: 30-40 minutes

At the university level, students are expected to use a formal citation style (such as MLA or APA) when writing papers, and the Common Core requires students to start applying a formal citation style as early as grade 7. So choose the style your district uses most frequently and teach students the basics.

Give students 2 to 3 sample items to use as practice sources. I recommend sticking with simple, predictable items that resemble the kinds of things students will access in their own research. For middle and secondary students, this most likely means online articles and (maybe) books.

Start with the references list at the end of the paper (or Works Cited, if you're doing MLA). I recommend beginning this way because many students will already be somewhat familiar with the concept of a bibliography, so this is a logical jump. Also, when you do in-text citations later, those citations will actually refer to something, since the references will already be listed at the end.

After you've built the references list, show students how to modify the author mentions they already made in exercises 3 and 4 so they match the in-text citation format of your chosen style.

Do all of this slowwwwly, with plenty of time for students to check their work with you and with each other.

When you think they have the basics down, throw two new resources at them-a book and an online article-and see if they can repeat the process: First have them build a reference list, then then paraphrase something from each one and do an in-text citation for each.

If it fits with your curriculum, the next step after this exercise would be to have students actually do a bit of research and write their own essay or extended response with a reference list and in-text citation

By the way, citation generators like EasyBib and BibMe or the citation feature in Google Docs can be wonderful time savers, but because they are not fail-safe, students will get the most use out of them after they learn to do their own citations manually.

Get these exercises in a classroom-ready mini-unit

If you like the exercises described in this post and want them ready to teach tomorrow, get a copy of Avoiding Plagiarism, my classroom-ready mini unit for grades 7-12. It contains all five exercises in PowerPoint slideshows, plus printable handouts for student use.
References
Dawson, M. M. & Overfield, J. A. (2006). Plagiarism: Do students know what it is? Bioscience education, 8(1), 1-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3108/beej.8.1

Emerson, L., Rees, M. T., & MacKay, B. (2005). Scaffolding academic integrity: Creating a learning context for teaching referencing skills. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 2(3), 3. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1059488.pdf

Landau, J. D., Druen, P. B., & Arcuri, J. A. (2002). Methods for helping students avoid plagiarism. Teaching of Psychology, 29(2), 112-115. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15328023TOP2902_06

Marshall, S. & Garry, M. (2005). How well do students really understand plagiarism? Proceedings from ASCILITE 2005: Balance, Fidelity, Mobility: Maintaining the Momentum? Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/52_Marshall.pdf

Moniz, R., Fine, J., & Bliss, L. (2008). The effectiveness of direct-instruction and student-centered teaching methods on students' functional understanding of plagiarism. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 15(3), 255-279. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10691310802258174

Learn something new every week.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll also get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Listen to this post as a podcast (sponsored by Listenwise): Plagiarism can be a real pain. Most teachers have had to deal with it in some form or another, and a whole lot of us still haven't figured out the best way to combat it.