Re: FW: fostering plagiarism

[Brenda Ruetschi <Bruetschi -at- ALPHA88 -dot- COM>]

I learned HTML by going to various websites, looking at the code to see "how
they did that" and copying to a machine where I could play with it and see
the results. Most of the people I know who learned HTML  when your HTML
editor options were notepad, emacs, and SimpleText did the same thing. I
agree with Tracy - copying the code may be lazy, but I doubt it is illegal.

The code isn't all that creative, the layout might be. However, as far as I
know, there's nothing to keep me from copying your layout directly to my
page and throwing my own text between the tags.


Brenda Ruetschi
Technical Communications
Alpha Technologies, Inc.
Ext. 746

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tracy Boyington [SMTP:tracy_boyington -at- OKVOTECH -dot- ORG]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 1998 9:46 AM
> To:
> Subject:      Re: FW: fostering plagiarism
>
> > Creating HTML code is a creative effort, exactly the thing that
> copyright
> > laws and the ethical prohibition of plagiarism are meant to protect.
> Copying
> > the results of such an effort and claiming them as your own is
> plagiarism.
>
> Designing a printed publication is also a creative effort, but if
> someone were to take my design and use it for their own publication
> (using their own text, of course) I would not consider it plagiarism.
> Laziness or lack of imagination, perhaps, but not plagiarism. Of course,
> this is just my opinion, and my web site is so boring no one would steal
> it anyway. ;-)
>
> Tracy
> --
> ===========================================================
> Tracy Boyington         mailto:tracy_boyington -at- okvotech -dot- org
> Oklahoma Dept. of Vocational & Technical Education
> Curriculum & Instructional Materials Center
> Stillwater, Oklahoma    http://www.okvotech.org/cimc/
> ===========================================================
>
> ~
>