Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
“intellectual property” has been rapidly diminished as a central obsession within the
mentalities and practices of contemporary social institutions, including education.
From that standpoint to confront students, schools and universities with a digital
search engine that endlessly looks for evidence of “stealing” are simply deranged.
The absurdity of the Turnitin program is exquisitely revealed on the iParadigms
corporation’s web page. It says the program helps foster (of all things) student originality.
What the program turns out is an “Originality Report” 3 .Certainly, any good
teacher tries to encourage creativity in one’s students. But how is that best accomplished?
The program achieves the goal by systematically ferreting out any and all
signs of plagiarism. By eliminating all pieces of borrowed thought, one arrives at
products that are pristine and “original.”
In point of fact, we all borrow extensively in our thinking and social production.
If that is stifled, creativity and, yes, “originality” are suppressed. For one always
builds upon foundations that were laid down previously and moves forward from
there. True creativity requires a rich set of origins and resources but eventually transcends
them.
As an alternative to the police state surveillance of Turnitin, a fascinating challenge
does present itself. The interesting task is seeking to understand how young
people use the Web in their learning and in their work. Yes, they are taking materials
freely, even wildly, from all over: from Wikipedia, blogs, web pages, and a vast
array of other sources. People educated in earlier times have a hard time grasping
what such practices involve. Before we criminalize and punish their lively activity,
we need to understand what it is that they are doing. Then and only then can we
suggest ways to adapt what they do to defensible, positive standards associated
with borrowing, thankfully acknowledging one’s precursors, for example. Practices
of borrowing, sharing, recombining, remixing, and the like are, of course,
the sources of vitality that movements in free software, open source, free culture,
and the digital commons seek to recognize and expand, possibilities that today’s
students ought to understand and embrace rather than avoid. Insofar as there are
moral and legal limits that need to be observed, students can turn to the writings
of Lawrence Lessig and others to discover what remains of “copyright” and how
quickly it is being reformed.
3. http://turnitin.com/static/products.html#originality_checking.
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