Can I outsource writing to India at $.25 per page and pass it off as my own?

[MsFish]

Oh no, MsFish.  If you paid for it, it's yours.  Is there some question about who owns the plastic shark I just bought? Does it somehow still belong to the rickets victim who assembled it in far off Taiwan?  In what way would a paper that I paid a legless Indian street urchin to write not be "my own?"

In the way that if a student in my class did that I would fail them outright, and the university would support me in it.  You might own it, but that doesn't make it okay in an academic setting.

[neiana]

No, I mean objective.  We can make ethics anything we wish.  We can change them to suit our needs.  While they are subjective, they are also objective.

That makes it subjective...  objective means you look at it from an outside perspective and try to decide what is right.  Subjective means you look at it from your own perspective and try to decide what's right for you.  So, you mean subjective.

[Miyabi]

Oh my wow.  I just looked them up and like . . . I've had them backwards for . . . quite some time. ha ha.  Thanks for that.

[neiana]

Oh my wow.  I just looked them up and like . . . I've had them backwards for . . . quite some time. ha ha.  Thanks for that.

hehe np! 

[Skar]

Oh no, MsFish.  If you paid for it, it's yours.  Is there some question about who owns the plastic shark I just bought? Does it somehow still belong to the rickets victim who assembled it in far off Taiwan?  In what way would a paper that I paid a legless Indian street urchin to write not be "my own?"

In the way that if a student in my class did that I would fail them outright, and the university would support me in it.  You might own it, but that doesn't make it okay in an academic setting.

Well, thank heavens that I was never in your class. All the professors I had at BYU were fine with it.  Where do you teach?

[neiana]

In the way that if a student in my class did that I would fail them outright, and the university would support me in it.  You might own it, but that doesn't make it okay in an academic setting.

I wonder how many researchers and scientists would lose their authorship of material merely because they had to pay someone else to take dictation and/or copy notes.

[Necroben]

I think the question in general is more along the lines of:

If Einstein paid someone to come up with E=mc2, and then passed it off as his own;

                              vs

Hawking having a some grad student transcribe his own theories since he cannot.

[neiana]

Who invented the radio?

Marconi?


Don't you mean:  "Well, Marconi took a bootyload of patents created by Nikola Tesla and then put them together before Tesla was able to." ?

So if nothing was designed by Marconi other than the physical placement of already-patented items, who really designed the radio?

[Reaves]

 In writing I believe thats called "plagiarism."   He should've at least given works cited 

[neiana]

I'm not sure you could even do a cited list and get away with it.  In writing it would be like taking Mr. Sanderson's stories, chopping them up, then creating a new story 100% from the text within Brandon's books or from his blog.  It's all Sanderson's writing but it's not in the order, nor does it tell the same story, as Sanderson ever did...  What then?

[Necroben]

I'm not sure you could even do a cited list and get away with it.  In writing it would be like taking Mr. Sanderson's stories, chopping them up, then creating a new story 100% from the text within Brandon's books or from his blog.  It's all Sanderson's writing but it's not in the order, nor does it tell the same story, as Sanderson ever did...  What then?

Well, the question is whether or not it’s wrong to do something like that, in any case.  I believe in most cases we as readers agree that plagiarism 'is' wrong.  Moreover, that to take credit for someone else's work no matter the semantics would also be wrong.

In addition, with trying to cut and paste around someone’s work, well, it would just look awful!  Voice and style would be lost, along with any coherence.

[neiana]

In addition, with trying to cut and paste around someone’s work, well, it would just look awful!  Voice and style would be lost, along with any coherence.

I strongly disagree.  A talented creative force can do a very good job of creating a new voice and a new style while creating a coherent story.  It would take a lot of time and plenty of research, but it is really no different from composing music as long as you have enough material to draw from.

[Necroben]

"...taking Mr. Sanderson's stories, chopping them up, then creating a new story 100% from the text...   It's all Sanderson's writing but it's not in the order, nor does it tell the same story, as Sanderson ever did... 

In addition, with trying to cut and paste around someone’s work, well, it would just look awful!  Voice and style would be lost, along with any coherence.

I strongly disagree. A talented creative force can do a very good job of creating a new voice and a new style while creating a coherent story. It would take a lot of time and plenty of research, but it is really no different from composing music as long as you have enough material to draw from.

It's that 100% that throws me.  If your mean just words then that’s one thing, but if your talking whole sentences or paragraphs, well, that’s another thing altogether.  As a music lover and writer I could take the same chords from say, "House of the Rising Sun", and make a new song out of it, but every thing else has to change with it, for it to be "my" song.  In addition, someone who has --"A talented creative force”-- would, I think, just make their own masterpiece in lue of plagiarism.

[neiana]

It's that 100% that throws me.  If your mean just words then that’s one thing, but if your talking whole sentences or paragraphs, well, that’s another thing altogether.  As a music lover and writer I could take the same chords from say, "House of the Rising Sun", and make a new song out of it, but every thing else has to change with it, for it to be "my" song.  In addition, someone who has --"A talented creative force”-- would, I think, just make their own masterpiece in lue of plagiarism.

Yeah I mean sentences or paragraphs.  Paragraphs would make it a lot easier but a truly creative person could use sentences.  Yes you could take the same chords from that song...then if you took the same drums from another song by the same artist, then the same x from another song, so on and so forth.  It's how a lot of techno is made, these days, too.  You take prefabricated sounds and put them together in a way that sounds nice.

Heck.  I can do that on the simplest level.

[Necroben]

Yeah I mean sentences or paragraphs.  Paragraphs would make it a lot easier but a truly creative person could use sentences.  Yes you could take the same chords from that song...then if you took the same drums from another song by the same artist, then the same x from another song, so on and so forth.  It's how a lot of techno is made, these days, too.  You take prefabricated sounds and put them together in a way that sounds nice.

Heck.  I can do that on the simplest level.

Ha-ha, yeah a lot of 'em do!    On the other hand what their doing is sampling.  They still have to get permission or they can be sued.  U.S. and International copy write Laws prohibit one from just sampling from another’s work without permission.  In music as well as writing.  Take Mr. Sanderson for example, he has permission to work on Robert Jordon's AMoL, without that, it would be illegal.  Society as a whole made these laws because they felt it 'is' unethical to sample or otherwise steal from another body of work.  That, I think, is what the main question of this thread is about.  Yes, someone could and probably will, but it is still unethical.