Plagiarism and copying

As college students, we have become increasingly familiar with having to surf the web to find articles for various papers, projects, and assignments. Everyone would probably agree that plagiarism is wrong, but is it wrong to simply download an article that is not yours, even if you do not plagiarize it? Should you have to contact the author of the article in order to download it?

The purpose of writing and having an article is for the public to read and to inform society on certain topics. So naturally, people are going to download these articles from the web for their own personal use. These articles are helpful in supporting reports or essays that are being written on that particular topic. It is considered ethical to download these articles without asking permission as long as you cite where the information came from. It is when you do not cite another person's work that problems arise. If an article is easily accessible, then others should be enabled access to download it, as long as they use it in an ethical manner. If an author is adament on not wanting their work to be viewed or downloaded by others, then they should not post it to a web site where it is capable of being downloaded.

Plagiarism is very unethical and can lead to complications when work is not cited or documented appropriately. When you plagiarize someone else’s work, you are taking credit for something that is not yours. The original author is victimized by not being recognized or receiving the credit that they deserved for their research, opinions, and factual information. It is easy to avoid these complications by simply citing where you have obtained your information.

Question: Is it all right to download an article from the web for your personal use without asking permission?

There are different viewpoints in the download debate for any type of file (mp3, web page, pdf), ranging from no downloading without any permission to those who say that everything should be downloaded for free. Specifically, in the area of an article, there has been controversy and concern over commercial use of "downloading" articles. An example of this would be Google and their Google news feature, which allows people to search through news articles on the internet, and which some companies are arguing this is a violation of their copyrights. In the area of personal downloading though, it's a different ball game.

There probably isn't any real problem of downloading articles in of itself, otherwise there wouldn't be a File -> Save option in web browsers. The bigger question is the same when dealing with libraries and copies machines: what are you going to do with the article? As long as you use it for personal use, there shouldn't be a problem, as long as you give credit to who it belongs to. However, if the content is itself illegal (like the Complete Harry Potter book) or you end up claiming the text as your own, then that of course is wrong. It is fair to say that if there is a price on something then it is unethical to go else were and download it for free and to do such a thing and could lead to further complications. It is simple to avoid problems such as plagiarism if you are going to download an article. All you need to do is cite where the information came from.