Your Say: A plague of plagiarism charges on Sotto's house

 

The problems are:

 

1. The senator hasn't read the RHbill

2. If he did, The Senator doesn't understand the RHbill.

3. The senator can't give a good argument so he plagiarized other people's argument.

4. He is our senator.

5. The electorate are easily bedazzled by actors or TV personalities.

6. We have lots of them in the Congress

7. What now, Lapid?

8. Most of them are staying until 2016

9. Among the Actors-turned senators Only Sotto is vocal on the rhbill issue

10. Aga Mulach entering politics?

 

While we, students, are trying hard to not copy and trust everything on Google, here is one of our Senators that seemed like he just clicked 'I'm feeling lucky' button on Google. Hey, surely, there by doing this you've just proved that many other people are more suitable for your spot even undergrads students who work their bodies out just to provide reliable sources AND they don't forget to cite them.

 

... many people use other research and studies as REFERENCES. By means of using them as REFERENCES, they do FURTHER research and you have to CITE them to avoid PLAGIARISM. It's not bashing and degrading of someone who supports pro-life if that's even pro-life. It's degrading for us, for his fellow senators, to think that with just a couple of teardrops, and a speech copied from some recipe blog, we could be fooled. Sadly, no. We're not as ignorant as he look right now.

There are tons of reason for Sotto to apologize. And they fall under one category: ETHICS. Ethics is the guiding principle of people who belong to a prestigious group like a profession or an institution. Morals are the personal guiding principles governed by conscience. Translating that to Sotto's actuation (and for you to understand): It is unethical even for students to do "cut and paste" in their reports and submit them as originals. Sotto did a "cut and paste". To respect another author's work, we teach students how to paraphrase and do at least an APA citation. Blog materials are NOT accepted as facts when you write a college paper. The very least is an expert opinion which Ms Pope is not. Still, when you copy them you indicate where you got them. So the basic tenet in paper reports: No matter how nice your  report reads, it is still farce and unreliable. Therefore, Sotto's argument is thrash. Now, where did you get the idea that blogging is not protected by any copyright? If ethical principles is the rule for student paper, the more it would apply for privilege speeches by a senator who belongs to an august body. If a young student cannot get away with it and a senator can, then blatantly deny it, then something is wrong with the senator's morals. 

 

Whether intentional or not, the act was in fact committed.  Yellow is yellow and red is red, a circle is a circle, and in the same manner, plagiarism is plain and simple plagiarism.  No amount of excuse would justify the act of claiming another person's idea as his own.

 

Ideas are also considered personal property, that is why there is a necessity to acknowledge our sources when we lift or use others' ideas.  A local Supreme court judge is facing a disbarment case because of plagiarism where a decision made by a US .  This only goes to show that indeed, failure to acknowledge someone because of his idea is a very serious offense.  The staff, especially Atty.Villacorta, should have known better to have acknowledged the source.

 

Even if the senator's staff was responsible for creating the speech that the senator delivered,  by delivering the speech, Mr.Sotto is taking responsibility for such a statement because he consented to use the speech.  He should have diligently checked on the speech himself before deciding to deliver it.

 

But of course, the scholarly discipline of quoting sources and references is known only by those who have in fact gone through the rigorous process of research as in the case of thesis writing.  This makes me think about the qualifications and standards set by the law in the selection of our government officials whose work heavily involve input from other documents, since the standard is much limited to the citizenship and age.  Kulang na lang sabihin ng batas, basta humihinga at may pulso, pedeng tumakbo sa kahit anong posisyon sa gobyerno.  Maybe it's high time that we raise the bar for the qualifications of government officials, the Filipino people deserve better.

His speech was no more than a mere case study of the bad effects of contraceptive pills. If I listen to his speech intently then fine, he has a solid point, as backed up by the exact same unchanged words of Ms. Sarah and the researches of Dr. Campbell-McBride. Although you cannot deny the fact that there was no citations given to those needed to be cited. Senator Sotto even explicitly said that, and i quote, "You have a blog, it is meant to be shared, it’s in the public domain, so it’s not plagiarism”. 

 

This speech may have the potential to change the mind of people's take on the RH-Bill issue, although I'm sorry to tell you that my position remains unchanged. THE POINT IS NOT RELATED TO THE RH ISSUE, BUT ABOUT PLAGIARISM WHERE HE IS AT FAULT. This could have been a speech about the existence of Hogwarts for all we care. Whether you're Pro-RH, Anti-RH, a catholic, a muslim, a buddhist, a ninja, a sexually active person, a mother of stillbirth, a parent of 20 children, a homosexual, a government official, a priest, or just an ordinary citizen, you would know that what Senator Sotto did was a big middle finger to the ethics of public speaking. It's simple morals, something I hope every kid was taught by his/her parent or someone of authority, regardless of whoever you maybe, that it is NOT RIGHT TO TAKE SOMETHING THAT ISN'T YOURS (WITHOUT CONSENT). 

 

And to think I voted for Sotto. 

There's a silent but active participant in all of this brouhaha: Google! I'll bet my pants that's how Senator Sotto's staff found Ms. Pope's blog. Unfortunately, Google also makes it easy to be found out if you plagiarize with copy and paste, even if you change some of the words and their order. Which is why bloggers found more evidence of the same in Senator Sotto's speeches. Come Senators, Congressmen, please heed the call (attributed to Bob Dylan!): George Orwell's Big Brother is watching every word you utter in the halls of the senate and congress and he's not who you think. It's Google! Be therefore forewarned:  Google giveth, and Google taketh away! Ha ha ha!

Yes, blogs are meant to be shared. It's like being in a restaurant full of diners, with food at every table. Theoretically, the diners can share food to others. But any self-respecting diner would ask permission if he can partake of the food at the other table.

sotto [s tu]

 

verb (sottoing, sottoed, sottos, sottoes)

 

1. (intr; often foll by to or before) to read a speech full

of phrases copy-pasted from web sources, usually a blog; sotto (to) a group;

sotto (before) the Senate

 

2. (intr) to deny an obvious commission of plagiarism

 

3. (intr) to deliver a speech tearfully

 

4. (intr) to pass on to his speechwriters the blame for a

speech that is found to be plagiarized

 

6. (tr) to copy phrases from a source verbatim to sotto a

blog post

 

7. (tr) to speak or act with end view of getting the support

of a sector, usually religious to sotto the Catholic vote

 

8.  (intr) to appear

emotionally shaken and helpless after delivering a sotto

 

after sottoing for more than 1 hour, he needed to be

comforted by Sen. Enrile

 

 

noun (sotto, sottoes/sottos)

 

1. a speech or lecture with content, punctuations and all,

copy-pasted from one or more blogs

 

2. an advocacy that any Web content belongs to public domain

and may be freely copied without attribution nor legal liability

 

3. a person who delivers a sotto

 

4. a person who treats bloggers with disdain but freely

copies their blogs without attribution

 

5. copying a content (usually from Web sources) without

acknowledging the sources See also plagiarism, attribution

 

[Origin: related to a Philippine Senator (circa 2012) who

got caught plagiarizing a blog but vehemently denied committing any violation]

Aside from the fact that blog sites are public domains and therefore not covered by copyright law, here are my personal views:

 

Even if the staff of Sen. Sotto admitted that they copied the comments of the US blogger named Sarah Pope, I submit that plagiarism does not exist. Plagiarism necessitates copying an “original work or idea” and passed as one’s own. The blogger herself admitted that she translated the works of Dr. Campbell-Mcbride. There is no such thing as “plagiarism by copying the translated work of the translator” where the original author of the source was incidentally mentioned by Sen. Sotto in his two speeches. Would it not be more despicable if Sen. Sotto credited the blogger Sarah Pope instead of Dr. Campbell-McBride? Magisip nga kayo mga pro RH supporters-critics-of-Sotto?

 

Be that as it may, I want to add a very important point which even Sotto failed to raise and this is: By ridiculing and criticizing Sen. Sotto as regards plagiarism, his critics inadvertently and indirectly admitted that Sotto’s expose’ constitutes the facts and the truth. For how can you plagiarize a lie? It is incredibly revolting that Sotto's critics went to the extent of nitpicking on a trivial matter yet the glaring truth is that no one from the pro RH bill supporters debunk his expose' in seriatim. which should be more important in this whole brouhaha. As far as I am concerned, I don’t care if Sotto plagiarized the whole encyclopedia or all the volumes of medical dictionaries for as long as the truth is revealed for the protection of our people - this is the bottom line.

Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.