NYC to youth, students: Plagiarism is wrong!

In light of the recent incidents of alleged plagiarism, the National Youth Commissioncalls on the youth to avoid plagiarism and to respect Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

“Even if a public official says that it is alright that he copied from a source and failed to attribute, still, we would like to remind young people, especially students, that plagiarism is wrong.” Undersecretary Leon Flores III, Chairman of the National Youth Commission says.

Plagiarism is derived from the Latin word “plagiaries” or kidnappers, referring to someone who steals other’s work. According to Oxford Dictionary, plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.

In the Philippines, the government ensures to protect and promote intellectual property rights through several policies.  These policies were both in the 1973 Constitution which provides that “the exclusive right to inventions, writings and artistic creations shall be secured to inventors, authors, and artists for a limited period” and in the 1987 Constitution which explicitly mandates that the State shall protect intellectual property.

“With seamless flow of information now provided especially by the internet, it is important that proper attribution be made. We should resist the temptation to copy-paste without attribution because that is still tantamount to stealing. Call it by any other name, but stealing someone’s idea through plagiarism is still stealing. Proper attribution is the difficult right, plagiarism is the easy wrong."  Chairman Flores adds.

 “Sometimes, even if we do not have a law against something that is blatantly wrong, it still does not make it right. In this case, we do have copyright regulations that are clearly outlined in the Intellectual Property Rights Law. But nonetheless, the lack of definition of plagiarism only means that the efforts of our legislative institutions have been found inadequate in pushing for these mechanisms to prevent stealing of ideas and information.”

The National Youth Commission, created in 1995 pursuant to Republic Act 8044 otherwise known as the "Youth in Nation-Building Act", is the voice and advocate of the youth. It operates under the Office of the President of the Philippines as the policy-making, coordinating body of all youth-related institutions, programs, projects, and activities of the government.