Technology Use Scenario Discussion

Matt enjoys taking pictures with his digital camera. His pictures are quite unusual and can be easily identified as his work. He wants to let other people see his pictures so he posts them on his website. A couple of months later he is surfing the Internet and sees some of pictures on someone else's website. At first he is flattered that someone enjoyed his pictures but on closer inspection he sees that he is not credited anywhere on the site as the person who took the photos. The way the images are posted makes it seem as if the site owner had taken the pictures.

This individual that used Matt's pictures without citing his work is not using technology appropriately. Copying text, images, videos, etc. from another person without properly citing their work is considered plagiarism and is a serious technological offense. "Giving credit to the original author by citing sources is the only way to use other people's work without plagiarizing (Plagarism.org, 2014)." To avoid these consequences, the other user would have been safe from this illegal act if he had used some type of simple citation that can easily be found online to keep the integrity of his website and still share these images with his readers. It is always important to make sure that all ideas are cited if they aren't original or common knowledge and a good rule of thumb is that if you aren't sure, just cite it! There is no harm in having too many citations and it could save you from getting in a lot of trouble!

Plagiarism.org, (2014), Retrieved from: http://www.plagiarism.org/citing-sources/whats-a-citation/