Rhetoric and Technology – ENC 6421

One wonders how plagiarism and originality can be placed together with similar intentions. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart Selber make the argument that these can be in the same. The problem is that we are so use to seeing each in one light that there are no exceptions. Plagiarism is “an issue of academic honesty” (Johnson-Eilola and Selber, 2007). That is how people know it and we see it 99% of the time in the classroom policy. However, the authors feel students should be encouraged to take other peoples’ work and use it in their own. Instead of the focus on originality then sources, it should be the other way around. People can come up with new ideas and compositions just by copying, pasting, and rearranging the text. The authors use the terms remixing or assemblage to describe this process. These two terms actually replace the meaning of plagiarism throughout the rest of the article because this is what they are technically doing. The authors then go into examples where remixing takes place. The first is with music. One makes a tape with songs on it to identify themselves even though there is no citations for the music or where it came from. Rap also takes beats from other songs to come up with new ones which isn’t frowned upon. The next area is website design. The authors use the OSWD site which provides 2000 free templets to use. Some of them have restrictions which require users to report when using them but the majority are completely free to anyone. Many users find one they like and make slight adjustments, and call their new creation their own. This sounds just like plagiarism but is described as assemblage. Movies are also being done the same way by authors who just take what they want to create something they call their own. The authors seem to support this because it is a way to improve on the old and learn from what other people have created. They feel we should learn from other people and study how they came to this final piece. In conclusion the authors want to dispose of the plagiarism policy and try to encourage people to find other peoples’ work to create something better. Remixing is something that society needs to improve on material and help teach students. They want the teachers to encourage taking sources over originality, hoping it will improve a person’s thought process.