EXCUSES TO THE WORLD

Hello everybody! Now we are going to talk about IPR and Plagiarism!
I must admit that I don't know very much about it and the first thing I will do is to go on delicious and find some information! I cannot hide that I will search on wikipedia too...;)
Let's start!
Intellectual Property (IP) are legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial. Owners are granted some exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets such as musical, literary and artistic works. Even ideas, discoveries, inventions and tecnologies are covered by intellectual Property Rights.
The majority of intellectual property rights provide creators of original works economic incentive. Modern usage of the term intellectual property began with the 1967 estabilishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) but the concept itself made its appearance after the French revolution around 1818. Although the term is in wide use there are some critics who reject it.
I completely agree with the existence of property rights because if a person makes a great effort to invent or discover something it would be completely wrong if someone else would take the same idea and pretend to be the owner! If a person is a very good musician or a nice scientist because he has the right abilities to carry on that kind of job we should recognize unanimously that specific person has something more than anyone else and should be appreciated for his skill.
This first introduction leads us to the concet of plagiarism. It is an act of fraud and involves both stealing someone else's work and then lying about it. Is a form of plagiarism to use another's production without asking permission or without crediting the source or to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
I think that avoiding plagiarism is one of the most difficult things in our life. Every time that we hear someone speaking or we read something we try to keep in mind the exact words we heard or read and if we repeat them in a public discourse without adding the author we would fall into plagiarism. Even now I am realizing that I read information about plagiarism on blogs posted on delicious, on wikipedia, on the blogs of Mario and other peers of mine and I have already used words they had used before! However I am not completely sure whether this is plagiarism or not because I didn't copied their words but I rielaborated the same ideas (...and it could be possible that I used the same words too...)
On plagiarism.org I found interesting information: "according to U.S. law the expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property, and is protected by copyright laws, just like original inventions. Almost all forms of expression fall under copyright protection as long as they are recorded in some way (such as book or a computer file). All of the following are considered plagiarism:
- turning in someone else's work as your own
- copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
- failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
- giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
- chiangin words but copying the sentence stucture of a source without giving credit
[...] "
Wow..it is pretty scaring...we are barely allowed to remember what we read!!! We should always quote what we write!
But where is the limit between the legal and the illegal? If I copy five words out of a sentence made of fiveteen words could it be considered plagiarism? And even if I quote all the sentences that I took from someone else's text should I ask permission before doing my work?

The unique and genuine way to avoid plagiarism is to make quotations and provide information about the author which is also a good way to inform the audience on where you took the information from.
Personally I tend to use a lot the information that I find around myself! I do not simply copy what I see or hear or read and I always try to rielaborate the concepts! If I have to write something such as this post I begin searching on the web for some information, I read them, and when I have a clear idea about the topic I start to write my post. If I do not remember the exact words that I need to express something I return on the web site and copy the exact words...and often I forget to quote them...I'm sorry....but if I really copy just two or three words could it be considered plagiarism??
I will enquire about it!
Now I feel I learnt a lot about IPR and plagiarism but I still have to focus on the Italian laws about it because the respect is one of the most important things in the World and we always have to respect everybody, even when they create something! I cannot simply take examples from other people's works without giving importance to it...The best way for respecting the others is to know how to do it!

I rielaborated some material from: http://www.plagiarism.org/learning_center/what_is_citation.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property