INTRODUCTION

 

Student writing has economic value.

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Student writing is an economically scarce good.

The fact that people are willing to pay for student essays indicates that there are not enough student essays to go around for free, and this is the definition of economic scarcity.

 

Writing is a non-rivalrous good.

Information is unusual for economists because its consumption does not result in its diminishment. Lawrence Lessig quotes Thomas Jefferson: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me" (94).

 

Plagiarism policies therefore impose an artificial scarcity on student writing.

 

Copyright is what permits this to happen.

According to the U.S. Copyright Office, "Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright." http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html

 

Plagiarism policies serve as a motivation for writing.

Lessig continues: "If a resource is nonrivalrous, then the problem is whether there is enough incentive to produce it" (21). Plagiarism policies, in order to offer an incentive for writing, impose an artificial scarcity upon student writing and thereby make it into a commodity with economic exchange value.

 

The scarcity and the ownership of academic writing carry deeply economic implications.

Production and ownership of a literary text is the ultimate marker of class distinction within our field: if you're a professional, you can produce, own, and sell texts. The loose relationship between salary and CV length may serve as further evidence that our labor has economic value. Inasmuch as student texts are exchanged for grades, as they are produced by classroom labor, as they circulate in our classrooms, they possess academic currency and value: there's a reason for the explicit economic metaphor of students "earning credit" towards graduation. Economic understandings of copyright, student writing, and plagiarism point to the originary problem that authors must be compensated, yet taking words means no less of those words; they are scarce only in their commodification as items with economic value.

 

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Introduction: turnitin dot com

1. Writing as Process and Writing as Product

2. Neoclassical Economics and Marxian Economics

3. Market Transactions and Gift Transactions

4. Use Value and Exchange Value

Conclusion: sharingwriting dot net

 

 

Student writing has economic value.

Student writing is an economically scarce good.

Writing is a non-rivalrous good.

Plagiarism policies therefore impose an artificial scarcity on student writing.

Copyright is what permits this to happen.

Copyright's rationale.

Plagiarism policies serve as a motivation for writing.

Incentive and cooperation.

The scarcity and ownership of academic writing carry deeply economic implications.