According to Deutsche Welle, every year more and more students try to fool Deborah Weber-Wulff, a computer science teacher at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, by submitting "copied" works from the Internet for her review. But Deborah Weber-Wulff has no intention of turning a blind eye: after all, stealing other people's ideas is not a "gallant trick" but a violation of copyright. "I think some people don't even fully realize that they are violating other people's copyrights. But what outrages me most is this attitude: if the information is posted on the Internet, then it can be used. Of course, it's not forbidden, but only with a reference to the source."
"Of course, students have always cheated and copied from time immemorial," says Weber-Wulff. "But recently such cases have become noticeably more frequent." And it's no wonder: extracting information from the Internet is something even a child can do. For example, the database at hausarbeiten.de contains tens of thousands of various essays and term papers. And instead of spending weeks poring over books to prepare a scientific paper, a plagiarist only needs to click the "mouse" a few times - and a ready-made text is at their disposal. Who wouldn't be tempted by that!
No one knows exactly how many students actually pocket information from the Internet. But according to the results of a study recently conducted by Bielefeld University, at least a quarter of homework assignments can be considered plagiarism. Although it is quite possible that in reality there are many more.
"The damage this does to science is enormous," says Weber-Wulff. "We are losing our reputation. The fact that many German researchers commit plagiarism - and do not consider it shameful at all - has become a big problem for Germany now. But what they are doing is not science. Real science is new research conducted on the basis of what has already been achieved. And it is very important that we promote this attitude among students - otherwise moving forward is impossible. Endless plagiarism will simply stall the development of science."
Deborah Weber-Wulff intends to fight fraudsters with their own weapon. In her opinion, the Internet can be used not only for plagiarism, but also to detect plagiarists. If a teacher suspects that a particular paper is not entirely clean, she simply takes a passage from it and runs it through a search engine. As a rule, the original is found on the Internet within a few seconds.
However, there is virtually no possibility of properly punishing a plagiarist at German universities. In most cases, the detection of plagiarism results only in a bad grade for the cheater.
At the same time, in Deborah Weber-Wulff's homeland, the United States, stealing ideas carries a truly draconian penalty. The offender may even be expelled from the university. In addition, many American universities have a requirement: all exam papers must be checked for plagiarism. This can be done using special computer programs. For example, 800 American universities have recently used the paid services of the online service Turnitin.com.
Germany is also thinking about effective measures against those who sin by stealing information from the Internet. Mainz University has become one of the first German universities where there is no mercy for plagiarists: anyone found to have plagiarized is simply expelled from the university.