Question

Sourabh has to prepare a project on “Digital India Initiatives”. He decides to get information from the Internet. He downloads three web pages (webpage 1, webpage 2, webpage 3) containing information on Digital India Initiatives. Which of the following steps taken by Sourabh is an example of plagiarism or copyright infringement? Give justification in support of your answer.

1. He read a paragraph on “ Digital India Initiatives” from webpage 1 and rephrased it in his own words. He finally pasted the rephrased paragraph in his project.
2. He downloaded three images of “ Digital India Initiatives” from webpage 2. He made a collage for his project using these images.
3. He downloaded the “Digital India Initiative” icon from web page 3 and pasted it on the front page of his project report.

Answer 1

Option (a) and (b) both are examples of plagiarism. Because he uses some other author's work without giving credit to the author.

Option (c) is an example of copyright infringement. Because he downloads an image from the Internet and uses it in our project. But if the owner of the copyright of the image does not permit its free usage, then using such an image even after giving reference to the image in our project is a violation of copyright. Just because it is on the Internet, does not mean that it is free for use. Hence, check the copyright status of the writer’s work before using it to avoid copyright infringement.