As the offline question section followed the online section ones we were pretty sure that there would be no confusion – certainly it didn’t come up in the piloting stages.

Your questions raises the primary issue of relying on self-report methods … we were surprised by the apparent lack of honesty to an anonymous survey, but of course there are other methods that could/should also be used to triangulate these findings. What the best method is to research (dis)honesty is a tough call!

If you happen to come back by, I was curious about one issue, which I brought up in the write-up. Did you explicitly distinguish “offline” as such? For example, one of the sample items provided (on p.467) is “copied a few sentences from a book or article into an essay/assignment without citing them.” When I read the word “article,” my conceptualization includes articles found online – research databases, BBC.com articles, etc. Did you define “article” for participants any more than this sentence implies? I am just wondering the extent to which your sample might have thought the same.

Interestingly (or not), this was part of a larger study on a number of different forms of internet ‘deviance’. A fuller paper was published on these students’ use of the internet to engage in other forms of (mis)behavior – obtaining music/films, accessing pornography, assuming another’s identity. If I remember correctly (and it was nearly 3 years ago), then most people’s online (mis)behavior mirrored their offline behavior – except for the case of accessing pornography (where the internet was noticeably more prevalent). Again, we did not draw any speculative conclusions – but the patterns were interesting nevertheless.

If you can access it, then the other paper is …

Selwyn, N. (2008) ‘A safe haven for mis-behaving? An investigation of online mis-behaviour amongst university students’ Social Science Computer Review 26, 4, pp.446-465

One day the site operator ran a contest that involved submitting a screenshot publicly. 1 in 3 players made zero effort to hide the fact that they have modified their game client “to make something easier”, regardless of it being cosmetic modification or premeditated cheating, I didn’t care. Then looking for cases of screenshots that had not been taken correctly (due to modifications) brought this up to around 2/3rds of the players who had submitted a screenshot. Now, not 100% of the players would try to win a contest this way, but the fact that a substantial portion of the submissions were outright bannable offenses according to the terms of service, yet the comment above holds true “I feel that the chances of being caught or the consequences of my actions are almost insignificant.” It didn’t help that the service provider doesn’t enforce their terms of service.

If the powers that be, held a much more severe penalty for cheating, maybe things would change. However the prevailing attitude among 12-20 year olds in that game above is that “nobody cares about cheating”, and I fear that this is the same attitude they walk into high school, college and the workplace with.

And having had past experiences confronting employees who are cheating their metrics, the same attitude comes up, the management doesn’t care as long as their numbers are good to their bosses.

I’m deeply concerned (see China) that we are heading into a future where college and university degrees are not worth the paper they are printed on and neither is the research. The rush to outsource and make things cheaper (Tainted Milk and pet food,) is encouraging everyone that cheating is the only way to get ahead. How many people and animals must die before cheating is punished? Cheating should be seen as incompetency, and those found cheating should be kicked out of the school classes, or transferred out of the department or even fired from jobs.

Maybe as early as elementary school, there should be classes that focus on copyrights, stealing, cheating, and the harm it causes. There are still people I meet who think nothing of stealing digital assets (music, television, movies, books, 3d models, stock photos) as they equate the internet with the public domain.

I doubt it. One of the prime fair-use criteria in U.S. copyright law is the “amount or substantiality” of what was copied. A few sentences copied from a 15-40 page article is only a fraction. Furthermore, fair use is easier to argue in scholarly/academic/research contexts, rather than retail or commercial contexts. The only good argument for such a scenario is something called “heart of the work”, which basically says, yes, you only copied a small amount, but that part was the most important part.

But this is why IP law is so different from plagiarism… in any academic discipline if it were shown you copied 2-3 sentences without attribution (even if they were mundane sentences), you’d probably be more severely punished (as an academic) than if you were actually liable for infringement.

Oddly enough, even if the student is plagiarizing, it’s probably more likely that the professor is the one who has committed copyright infringement by photocopying an article or book chapter for their class. Such is the state of IP law in our times!