Digital Age And Sampling The Product-- How Do They Tie Together?

In the age we and my peers grew up in, it's really difficult to know when something is stolen, or just simply borrowed. Everything is so available to us, it's hard to tell when stealing is stealing. Internet, netflix, hulu, and databases make it all to easy for the line of Plagiarism to be blurred and crossed. The internet makes everything way too available and out there, and with us growing up with it, it's a natural occurance. I'm getting this CD for free online, but I don't really think twice about it being stealing for the record label because it's so easy to do, and I've been doing it for so long. Millions of kids think this way, I have since I was in middle school. All this transfers into academics, when students get their information, they feel they don't need to site it because it's so easily found. Just like I didn't think twice about that free CD, I didn't think twice about quoting that article, either. What's the point? If it was that important to own (and for people to buy), it wouldn't b posted so freely on the internet. Th article by Gabriel even states, "Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing,Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image." Everything is business, every website, every article we read, every illegal track we download is all apart of one big grand scheme of things- all about making money. It's difficult to transfer that mindset in the intangible world of the internet. It doesn't feel like this "sample track" that is only for promotional use being downloaded to my computer is exactly like taking a CD from Target. The same for articles we don't cite: It doesn't feel like I'm copying from this person because it's so freely put right in my face, on the internet. It doesn't feel as if I'm ripping out an article from a magazine at the supermarket and turning that paper in for a grade at school. The internet is the most free and easy thing ever created, with that, we're going to have to deal with the strings.