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Padua, Veneto, Italy
Hi guys,my name is Anna,I'm Italian and I'm studying foreign languages at the University of Padua. This is supposed to be my last year of studies,or so I hope,and I'm trying my best to finish asap,'coz it's really high time I were under way! I have many loves in my life,my Luv,my cats,books,violets and apples (but this is an old and long story to tell!). I don't want to bother you now,I'm going to tell you more in depht later! I'm waiting for you on my blog,read it,love it,hate it and feel free to leave any comments. This is the place I stay and it can be yours too!

Thursday, April 16

Intellectual Property...Right?



Hi everybody,
how are you? Did you enjoy your Easter holidays? Hope you did! How much relaxing..no classes, nice weather and a lot of crazy friends around. I still have a life, that’s amazing! I thought I had lost it in the chaotic tangles of my academic/working life, but fortunately it didn’t happen..I’m still here! These days I had so much fun I almost forgot to update my blog..sorry, I hope you understand me:-)! It took me quite a lot to realize that holidays had already finished, time always goes on too fast! Well, let’s not think about it, better to go on! It will be hard to remember what exactly happened last week in class, but I’ll try my best to do it!
Last week we talked about
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and plagiarism.
The former is a set of laws created to protect the artistic and commercial inventions from the improper use of people, e.g. copying and modifying the original or using an image or logo to sell fake copies of something. In this way the intellectual property rights are sort of intellectual assurance people do to save their creations and to “repay” the big troubles and sacrifices they faced before making their discoveries.
The most common IPR people make use of are:



Nowadays, that of intellectual property has become a burning issue, especially now that the Internet era gives people much more freedom to find and exploit resources available on the Web. The Web is an amazing source of everything; there you can find articles, essays, music and movies, which can be protected by copyright or not. Usually, when authors decide to put their work on the Web they are well aware that they’re offering it to millions of people who are probably going to read and use it for their own purposes. This is a courtesy authors do us and we should be thankful to them! One way to show our gratitude towards them is to respect their intellectual work, for instance, by quoting the authors or linking to their work. Everybody ,and we students in particular, should keep in mind that using the fruit of someone else’s troubles in an improper way, as pretending it is ours, besides being immoral, is illegal too, though here in Italy this is not considered a crime. In other countries like the US and GB, people who infringe these rights can be sue for plagiarism and, if students, they can be expelled from school. It is really strange that a creative and inventive country like Italy, which in the past held the world record in patents, now seems to care so little about plagiarism..maybe it depends on our way of thinking, on education, but I’m not sure. I need to think more about it, feel this will prove to be an interesting issue!

Anyway, I think that sometimes a little “help” is good for everyone, but it has to be just a little sprinkling, not an entire source of ideas! One good alternative to property rights is to offer the work under a creative common license, as well explained in this webpage. Under a creative common license creators can directly choose which rights they reserve and which they waive, thus allowing people to use their work and share it as a public domain. That's very nice and , most importantly, it is absolutely free! I do love the way the CC changed the motto "all rights reserved" with "some rights reserved"; I believe it helped to develop a higher sense of responsibility and philanthropy.

Well, I think that's all for now

Talk to you soon, just need to gather my thoughts!

Anna

2 comments:

Valentina Tolfo said...

Anna, we just had the same thought about the issue of plagiarism, that is, why doesn't Italy care about it? When Sarah explained us how Americans see and treat this problem, I felt a bit surprised and ashamed, too. It really seems we Italians like cheating! But I don't think it's true, like you said. I need to think more about it, too. This can't be a part of our culture! : (


LINGUISTIC FEEDBACK

Now, linguistic feedback! Well, I have to say that despite the fact your style is completely different from mine, I really like it and I think you're almost perfect in writing! You always do a good job with your posts!
I have just few things to point out. Let's start.

You wrote: "The former is a series of laws..."
I think it's better to use the word "set" instead of "series" 'coz it's more appropriate.

Then you wrote: "...e.g. like copying and modifying..."
I guess you don't need to write "like" after "e.g." 'coz it already means "like", it means "one of the many possible explanations".

You wrote: "...doing their discoveries..."
I guess the right verb to use with "discovery" is "to make".

Then you wrote: "...to find and exploit resources available in the Web."
I guess the right preposition is "on", not "in".

Finally you wrote: "...to millions of people who will probably read and use it for their own purposes."
Remember? We eliminated "will"! Use "going to"!

That's all I could find. As you can see, I think there are no mistakes in your posts, just few "inattentions". : )

AnnaF said...

Hi Anna!
I completely agree with you that plagiarism is illegal and immoral. I have frequently been told that there are students who copy their thesis entirely and then present it as a fruit of their work. I think that it is a very sad thing! I can't imagine how shameful such a behaviour is...
Maybe the problem is that students don't have ideas or they don't want to spend time and energies and so cheating appears to be the best solution. I think that students and people should be educated in a different way: they should be brought up with the idea that it is better to make mistakes that copy!

As far as the liguistic feedback is concerned,I think that Valentina made good suggestions. I noticed this sentence:

" Everybody ,and we students in particular, should keep in mind that using the fruit of someone else’s troubles in an improper way, as pretending it is ours, besides being immoral, is illegal too, though here in Italy this is not considered a crime".

It is a very important concept and I think it is perfectly written but it is long and I would sugget you to divide the sentence.

For example:
Everybody ,and we students in particular, should keep in mind that using the fruit of someone else’s troubles in an improper way, as pretending it is ours, is immoral and illegal. Here in Italy, however, this is not considered a crime.

I appreciate your style: it is simple and colloquial and it is very appropriate for blog posts!

Bye AnnaF

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