Until the Romanticism, it was not important who had written certain books or plays as the figure of the author was not relevant. However, in this period this changed radically. Owing to this, the rights of the author have been preserved with dedication by the Intellectual Property Organization, which refers to creations of the mind -inventions, literary and artistic works,symbols, names, images-, for the last 2 centuries
As it’s known, there had been plagiarism before, but it is a fact that with Internet, specifically with the WWW, it has increased due to many reasons.
Internet has expanded the number of resources and contents, being their access easy, free and rapid, now more than ever. On the one hand, all this information given by Internet is very useful in education, since it makes the learning process easier due to the fact that anyone with a computer and internet can have access to a lot of information. On the other hand, its use makes plagiarims easier.
This is a problem at Universities because students usually take information from the Internet without verifying it and without saying the author or the source of that idea, what is plagiarism. It’s important to verify the information taken since in Internet everyone, with criteria or without it, can participate.
In order to decrease plagiarism in Universities, they punish students. The consecuences of these activities can be from rewriting the essay to the expulsion of the University. In the English-Speaking countries (USA, Canada, Australia, UK…) is where plagiarism is more controlled and pursued.
SOURCES:
* Ciber-Plagio Académico, Una aproximación al estado de los conocimientos.(2007) In Revista TEXTOS de la CiberSociedad, 10, by Comas, Rubén & Sureda, Jaume, Temática Variada. from http://www.cibersociedad.net and http://www.cibersociedad.net/textos/articulo.php?art=121
