The Internet has become pervasive in all sectors. People in every nook and corner of the world use it.

The teaching pedagogy also is being transformed as we move towards modernization. From school to university, everyone uses the Internet.

The teachers and professors also encourage the students to consult “Google Guru” to study.

My little sister, studying in grade 5, gets homework almost daily to be completed consulting the Internet. And the little one simply copies lines from Wikipedia and any sites available.

And the teachers also do correction without any hesitation. This is the very first step of learning and doing plagiarism.

Plagiarism is, simply, a fraudulent act where one copies the work (lines, texts, paragraphs, images, etc) of someone else and declares them as their own.

They do not cite or open the source from which they got the material. Plagiarism is violation of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).

It is a burning issue in the field of music, arts, cinema, literature and even research. “I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes,” says Jimi Hendrix, a famous guitarist.

This issue is getting chronic every day.

Due to the wide availability of contents on the Internet, people conduct the misconduct knowingly and unknowingly.

When the teachers encourage school students to use the Internet while doing their homework, they unknowingly encourage the students for plagiarism. And the students get habituated to the copy-paste culture.

As a result, the same habit sticks to them till they reach university level and above where the offense gets more chronic.

A lot of cases have been found in Nepal (and in the world) where students submit plagiarized research reports and dissertations.

Just as the adage “an early bird catches worms” says, the school teachers play a great role in addressing this problem. They should encourage creativity and only let them use Internet for information, not for the sake of completing assignments.

After all, the teachers know the writing capacity of their students. Also, the college teachers and university professors must teach their students the proper way of citation so that when they really need to quote some scholar, there would not be any problem.

Moreover, the academicians should be very strict while checking the work of their students. For that, various plagiarism checkers, available on the Internet, can be used.