Upon leaving the symposium this week I felt an overwhelming sense of fear and regret.
Fear because the general gist of the entire lecture was that if you use anyone else’s work you will be caught, convicted and killed. (Okay maybe that’s a bit extreme, but sitting in the lecture theatre I felt like I was sitting in an execution briefing.)
Regret because I know that I have unknowingly plagiarised a plethora of materials in my technological career, consisting mainly of animals in fruit costumes.
like this one (taken by C Jill Reed)
I’m confident that this wasn’t the intention of Adrian, however I think maybe the scare tactic was both justified and probably necessary.
I’m going to be very careful with what I post now.
Having said that, I think it will be an important skill to master, because as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, it is a fantastic resource to be able to use other people’s work to create new and exciting things.
Maybe it will just take a bit of exploring, practicing and nervous posting of creative commons material before I can reclaim my dog-in-pumpkin-suit internet fame.
