This week's reading is about copyright, plagiarism, and fair use of others' writing. This is something that should be second nature by now. We all know what plagiarism is and that it is wrong and comes with serious consequences. Even with this in mind, it can still be very tempting at times to copy the work of others and call it our own; however, in my opinion, most times it happens on accident. Forgeting to cite something or doing it improperly are common ways plagiarism occurs. The article talks about how documents, formulas, and other unique things such as slogans and logos are protected. Due to the fact that this is something that we should already know by now, I didn't find it very interesting. Despite this, I did learn something. I hadn't heard about work-for-hire or boilerplate. I found it interesting that even though an employee is expected to come up with a document or something of a similar nature on their own, it is considered to be the property of the company. I am curious about one thing though: If an employee creates a form, report, etc. and moves to a new company, are they allowed to use that document and call it their own?
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Wed, 04/09/2008 - 11:55
the question you raise is an interesting one. we have been told that plagiarizing is when you take someone else's work and call it YOUR OWN, but if you write a document for a company, then move to another company and want to use it there, what would be wrong with that? it was after all, YOUR OWN writing from the beginning, not the old company you worked for. i think it's wrong for a company to say that your writing for them is now theirs, because it's not...YOU wrote it. it almost seems like they're trying to plagiarize by saying that...they want to make the writing you did at their company belong to them.