Eng 101

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I read two articles in English Classes last week. One of them is “Is Music Piracy Stealing?” which is written by Charles W. Moore and the other one is “The Copycat Syndrome Plagiarists at work” which is created by Meghan O’Rourke. I will be referring the first one as Text A, and the second one as Text B. They have some points which differentiate them, such as the intents, contrary to the similarities such as the ethical sides.

Text A is about the piracy which is downloading music from Internet without paying any money. On the other hand, Meghan O’Rourke mentions about the plagiarism, to be more specific, it is stealing someone’s work without referring anything to the owner. Moreover, both texts are perceived as their contents, are the same, which is the stealing issue. However there is a line between the types and usage of the stealing. Furthermore, students or authors or artists plagiarize. Their aim can be to escape from a challenging work or to use an enchanting piece to have a better reputation in the end. As it is discussed in the first page of Text B, a student copies down the work of a hardworking friend of him, and he receives an A. If he had given the one that he wrote on his own, he would get a C. Contrary to that, music piracy is just getting music from somewhere especially from the Internet just to listen to music free of charge. As referring to Text A, “Personally music piracy is not a big part of my life. Like many people with a computer and an Internet hookup, I experimented with downloading MP3s during the Napster era, but didn’t do a whole lot of it, and I think in the past two years I’ve downloaded a grand total of two songs, while testing file-sharing client software for review” (page#5) as the author declares that he just does that just to have some pleasant time. In short, people download the music for themselves not to use them for profit or economical incomes like the individuals who copy someone’s product. To be honest, both are stealing, however their purposes are totally different. To exemplify, I downloaded a song of Justin Timberlake from the sharing software programs. If I just listen and have fun with it, this is called music piracy. On the other hand, if I use the song, as if its mine, and make a CD then sell this CD to the people with my name under it and without taking any permission from Justin Timberlake, this time it is called plagiarism. This thin line creates a huge distinction between them.

To sum up, “Is Music Piracy Stealing” and “The Copycat Syndrome Plagiarists at work” are presented as Text A and Text B. Their topics sound similar to each other at first however as you look from different perspectives you realize that they are divergent at one point which is the aim on the way of committing them. Therefore, it should not be said that plagiarism and music piracy are both the same and they are crime. Instead of combining them under a certain topic, they should be evaluated separately. Nothing seems as it is.

Reference list

Moore, Charles W. “Is Music Piracy Stealing.” (Aug. 2003).
Rourke, Meghan. “The Copycat Syndrome Plagiarists.” (Jan. 2007).