Internet Detective | Keep the Right Side of the Law

Crime Stoppers

Don't get yourself into trouble by misusing Internet information - you need to stay the right side of the law!

Newspaper clipping You may already have had warnings from your tutors about:

Plagiarism
Copyright
Referencing and citation

If you don't acknowledge your sources (eg. via references and citations) you may be accused of plagiarism (claiming someone else's work as your own) or you may be in breach of copyright law (remember - information is someone's property).

Avoid the crime of "copy / paste"

Plagiarism is considered a form of cheating and breaking copyright law is an offence so both could land you in big trouble!

You may be surprised how easily your lecturers can spot plagiarism - and there may be serious penalties.

More about Plagiarism

If you would like to learn more about plagiarism there is a tutorial available called How to Recognize Plagiarism [ http://www.indiana.edu/~istd/ ] from the Indiana University Bloomington.

Give credit where it's due

But don't be put off - it is very important to use different sources of information to show that you are aware of the literature on that particular topic and to back up your own opinions.

You can protect yourself from the crime of plagiarism by always acknowledging your sources and by citing and referencing them correctly.

Your Department will have its own particular rules for citing and referencing correctly. They may prefer Harvard to Numeric and will give you guidelines on correct practice. Ask your lecturers for advice on this.

More about citation

To learn more visit: Citing References: a guide for users (7th edition) [ http://www.ntu.ac.uk/llr/document_uploads/66061.pdf ] It covers the Harvard and Numeric methods and gives a lot of information on citing print and electronic references and also more tricky ones like film and music. It's been compiled by David Fisher and Terry Hanstock at the Law School of Nottingham Trent University.

You will also need to honour any copyright restrictions - the words, images and ideas on web sites are all the intellectual property of someone and they may claim their rights to it which means you won't be able to re-use them in any way you wish. You need to check out the copyright - it might be OK to re-use them, it might not - you need to check.

More about copyright

Staffordshire University has created a web page with useful information on copyright, aimed specifically at students, which includes information about copyright on the Web: A student's guide to copyright [ http://www.staffs.ac.uk/legal/copyright/students_guide/index.jsp ]

OK, here's a quick quiz to see if you can keep the right side of the law ...