Intellectual Property Rights and Student Plagiarism free essay sample

Google search of the words â€Å"write my essay for me† provides the searcher with over sixty-eight million results. Sixty-eight million options for a student to not have to write their paper. Sixty-eight millions options for a student to essentially pay their way through an essay. If those numbers aren’t scary enough, many people do not realize the extent of copyright laws and so those students or individuals who are just â€Å"borrowing† sentences and expressed ideas from other authors are inherently plagiarizing. The world has changed a lot in the last 20 years, to the extent where we now have a global interface that can tell us stories, facts, show us movies, television shows, music, and introduce us to ideas and thoughts in literally the blink of an eye. The internet has been one of the most important and influential ideas, inventions, revolutions, whatever someone choose to call it etc, of human kind’s history. We will write a custom essay sample on Intellectual Property Rights and Student Plagiarism or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It can also be one of the most dangerous and destructive inventions of recent years, especially in how parents raise their children. In today’s world, where everything the Internet rules over everything, especially in the lives of the younger generations, what are the new implications of intellectual property rights, of plagiarism, and how do we protect authors’ works and prevent plagiarism from happening? We must first go into the root of the problem: the tricky definitions of the ideas of the 21st century. One of the most important ideas, whether it be philosophy, economical or simply ethics, is the idea of intellectual property rights, which in the encompassing term for copyright, patent, trademark laws, and trade secrets. Essentially, intellectual properties are the intangible rights that every human can possible create, such as music, art, film, ideas, written and spoken, inventions and discoveries to name a few. It is actually a relatively new idea, only coming into existence in the late 18th century and only being named â€Å"intellectual property rights† in the 19th century. Even then, the idea did not become mainstream until the mid 20th Century. It is also part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and as author Ayn Rand has stated about the importance of these rights, she simply states that the human mind is a giant source of wealth and ideas and to ignore intellectual property rights is just as problematic as ignoring other property rights. And thus, the argument over whether intellectual property is the same as physical property still rages on. In the pre-internet world, plagiarism was actually fairly simple. If an individual, specifically a student, were to write an essay and take a few passages out of a book they were reading and use those passages in their essay, without citing the source, that is plagiarism, plain and simple. Unfortunately, in today’s internet world, plagiarism is not as simple as it used to be. Of course, there is still the one side of plagiarism, where someone takes parts of another author’s work and presents it as their own, however, how do you distinguish what is a truly original written piece on the internet to begin with? This is the age of blogs, where people can simply write their opinions and maybe some facts in a post and then â€Å"publish† that on their blog. Does that count fully as a written work that is completely protected by the United States’ copyright laws? Does the incredibly popular â€Å"memebase† site have copyright over the commentating pictures users create? Does a Facebook status or a tweet count as a written work? The difficulty of trying to rationalize protection of every single post of the internet as original work under the United States’ copyright laws, is that it is impossible. The internet is too huge to try to protect everything; and before people start claiming this as â€Å"too cynical†, why not just try to protect the most important written aspects of the internet? Protect the online books and journals, the scientific and literary articles, written by professionals, scientists, and newspaper reporters. However, that brings up an entirely new question: how do we determine what has actual literary, scientific, artistic and ideal value? It turns into a giant subjective maze of peoples’ opinions and â€Å"facts†, that may or may not even be protected under normal copyright law. Gone are the obvious choices in the real world to protect, where the blog world has made it so that we cannot truly determine what has value and what does not. Take the Huffington Post, for example. What started as a simple blog turned into one of the most influential political sites online. No one eight years ago would have predicted its influence nor could they. That is the next important piece of the puzzle: the internet is an incredible new technology, and like all technology, it changes rapidly. Furthermore, new technologies are also usually not completely understood and therefore, we cannot fathom how much more advanced it will become or how much of a tool it will be used as. Which brings me to my next point, the internet as a tool. The internet can be a wonderful technology in the classroom. Students can look up random information very quickly, teachers can show their students an important video that relates to the class and students can use articles online to copy into their paper. Unfortunately, students have became lazier in recent years, and a new trend, that coincides with the advent of myspace and facebook, shows that students’ writing skills are getting poorer and poorer. And NPR has stated recent trends show that the internet has returned humans to a â€Å"natural state of distractedness†. And, with classroom and school expectations getting higher and higher, the motive for plagiarizing becomes more and more concrete. However, teachers can help their students keep away from plagiarizing and hopefully, help those students to become better writers. First of all, teachers can try to have as much in-class writing sessions as possible and when writing outside essays, keep the topics more specific to what is going on in the classroom. Teachers give essays with very broad topics because they want to students to have more freedom with their essays. With a little compromise, teachers can achieve freedom for their students but also cut down on the plagiarizing. Teachers can also use the internet as a tool against plagiarizing, as well. There are sites that teachers can use to determine if the text from a certain essay has been copied. Most important of all, is the fact that we also need to simply educate students more and more about what plagiarism is and help out those students who tend to fall to it. Cyberspace has become a tool to make cheating easier and easier but it can also be a tool to stop it. It falls upon all of our shoulders to prevent plagiarism. And hopefully, with a little help and education, we can reduce, if not even eliminate the epidemic.

Capital Punishment Essays (1806 words) - Penology, Prison, Death Row

Capital Punishment Essays (1806 words) - Penology, Prison, Death Row Capital Punishment Crime and Punishment From the beginning of time, crime has been evident in human existence, and from the first crime there has always been a punishment. And it came to pass, when they were in a field, that Cain rose up against his brother, Able, and slew him (Genesis 4:8). This for many people was seen as the first crime. This crime did not go unpunished. Cain was then ostracized from his colony and sent to wonder as a vagabond and a fugitive for his crime (Genesis 4:14). He was also branded with the mark of a murderer. Therefore, the presence of crime in human life is inevitable. Defined in Websters Dictionary, crime is, an act of violation against society and its laws. Punishment is the consequence of the crime. Crimes like fraud, burglary, assault, etc., are usually punished by prison terms. Murder, manslaughter, and homicide maybe punished by prison terms or death. Ways to be executed Electrocution-the three legged oak chair was constructed in 1923 by inmates and is still used today. (ironic isnt it?) The electrocution cycle is two minutes or shorter in duration. Voltage and amperage levels peak on three occasions. Maximum current is 2000 volts and 14 amps. The executioner is an anonymous, private citizen who is paid $150 per execution. The position of executioner was advertised in several Florida newspapers in 1978. Lethal Injection-execution by lethal injection involves the continuous intravenous injection of a lethal quantity of a short-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent. A number of doctors have pointed out that drugs may not work effectively on diabetics or former drug users, whose veins may be hard to reach. In some cases minor surgery may be required to cut in to a deeper vein, according to medical testimony. More states use this form of execution than all US states. Gas Chamber-prisoner is restrained in a hermetically sealed steel chamber below which is a pan. Upon a signal, the executioner opens a valve, flowing hydrochloric acid into the pan. On a second signal, about 8 ounces of potassium cyanide crystals or tablets are dropped mechanically into the acid, producing hydrocyanic gas, which destroys the ability of blood hemoglobin to perform. Unconsciousness occurs within a few seconds if the prisoner takes a deep breath, and longer if he or she holds their breath. After pronouncement of death, the chamber is evacuated through carbon and neutralizing filters. Gas-masked crews decontaminate the body with a bleach solution and outgassed prior to release. An unwary undertaker could be killed if this is not done. States using this method: Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi and North Carolina. Hanging-prisoner is weighing prior to execution. The drop is based on the prisoner's weight, to deliver 1260 foot-pounds of force to the neck. Essentially, the prisoner's weight in pounds is divided into 1260 to arrive at a drop in feet. This is to assure almost instant death, a minimum of bruising, and neither strangulation nor beheading. Properly done, death is by dislocation of the third or fourth cervical vertebrae. The familiar noose coil is placed behind the prisoners left ear, so as to snap the neck upon dropping. States using this method: Delaware, Montana and Washington. Firing Squad-there is reportedly no protocol for the procedure which according to information involves a five man team, one of who will use a blank bullet so that none of them knows who was the real executioner. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty two prisoners have been executed by this method. Gary Gilmore in 1977 and John Taylor in 1996. There are only two states who use this method. They include Utah and Idaho. Whos in Federal Prison? statistics found in 1991 5% of prisoners were women 65% of prisoners belonged to racial or ethnic minorities 68% of prisoners were under age 35 96% of prison inmates were US citizens 59% of prison inmates has high school diplomas or its equivalent less than half of the inmates were sentenced for a violent crime (assault, murder, rape), a fourth were sentenced for a property crime (burglary, vandalism), about a fifth were sentenced for a drug crime (self explanatory) Whos in State Prison? statistics found in 1996 10% of prisoners were women (statistics show that prisoners were sexually or physically abused before

The Application for the Use of Computer, the Processor as a Brain of Research Paper

The Application for the Use of Computer, the Processor as a Brain of Computer - Research Paper Example   The traditional disc drive has been experiencing a transition to the solid-state drive (SSD) system, as they have become more dense and lower cost. The application and use that the computer will be used for will determine the physical layout of the motherboard as well as the technical requirements. Desktop computers are usually configured with a motherboard that accepts plug-in cards for ease of expansion and reconfiguration. This makes it possible to install more video memory, higher quality sound cards, or take advantage of newer and more current standards, as they are made available. For example, wireless network cards can be installed that allows the user to communicate with a wireless network or hub. Motherboards that are designed for laptops usually have less capability for expansion due to the limitation of space considerations. A motherboard in a laptop will have all the associated circuitry required integrated into the design of the board. Whether the board is to be used in a desktop or a laptop, certain features and circuitry will reside on the motherboard. Each board is designed to accommodate a particular microprocessor and the board will have a socket and the necessary driver circuitry for it. The board will have the appropriate crystals and clock circuits that are needed to drive the processor at the required speed. Random access memory and the electronics it takes to move data between the processor and memory will also reside on the motherboard. The mass storage device in a computer has traditionally been a disc drive, but recent innovations have seen a move towards SSDs.