Plagiarism Should be Penalized on DDO

I cannot disagree that Ragnar gives a compelling reason to believe that plagiarism should be penalized, I think it is very, very well put together and there is reasonable doubt to believe it is true, however I think there are truly huge problems with it, problems which are glaring, and cannot be overcome. I do not do this debate in spite of Ragnar, no matter how much I dislike his vote or disagree with him on it. I am here solely to give my honest reasons to why plagiarism should Not be penalized on Debate.org. My argument: The purpose of debate and the real impact of plagiarism on itThe reason that plagiarism should not be penalized on DDO is because of what debate really is. Debate is the outset of two sets of viewpoints, or arguments, which are being compared and analyzed. In such a stage, originality and literary creativity are unnecessary, the only thing necessary is that there is a sound argument for an opponent to refute, and whether that argument is from the depths of your creative imagination and is totally new and innovation, or whether it is a commonly used argument rehashed with the same phrases as the original speaker, are fundamentally irrelevant to the actual debate; so long as there are sounds points made and those points are argued against, the debate is a success. To stress how unimportant plagiarism is, think further about what debate is. Is debate usually about the creation of brand new arguments? No, it’s about analysis of those arguments, and That is what counts, your response, your voice to those arguments, your opinion, that is where your ideas come in, that is the real debate, not the underlying arguments, whether copied, or created yourself. For this reason, what debating IS, I must stress that there is no impact on the round itself. There is no advantage to either team through plagiarism, there is no dishonesty to the other player. In fact there are only positives to plagiarisms in debate; like having concise arguments, which can reduce confusion and intentional or unintentional straw man arguments, decreased argument time, freeing up more time to actually think about your response and increase its depth and increase your strategy, it gets right to the heart of the issues and goes to the brink of where the debate is among the scholars, and once you get to that edge, then there is no-one else to quote but yourself. Think about this, how many times have you seen somebody use the Kalam Cosmological argument? Do they ever source it? No, and there is no other way to give the KCA than to just give the exact logical proof, word for word, you cannot sum it up or rephrase it. According to many, including Wylted, even if you gave credit to the author and put citations, if the quote is over 50% of your argumentation then they will deduct points as that is somehow plagiarism. That is another thing, the plagiarism argument is just another way for people to pretend to do RFDs when really they just want to get another vote under their belt or help their friend out, these actions are truly subversive to debate. So the main point here is again that there are only benefits to plagiarism, specifically within debates, and thus there should be no penalty to doing it,. I believe this makes sense, as the success of deates should be the central purpose of Debate.org.The proposition that all laws should be enforced Even if we accept all of Ragnar’s argument as true, what he really shows is that plagiarism is against the rules, not that plagiarism is bad, his arguments operate under that assumption that all laws should be enforced and through penalization we can enforce. I disagree, when a law suppresses people or objectively stops them from realizing the greater good or the greater benefit, then if it cannot or will not be repealed, it should be ignored. This is the case with Ragnar’s argument, even if it is right. Picking upon Ragnar’s argument specifically There are two parts to Ragnar’s argument. 1.) plagiarism is impersonation If you look back at pro’s source [3], it clearly is not in reference to literation, it is in reference to holding other accounts or pretending to actually be another person. Asserting that someone is literally claiming to be another individual just because they use their writing is absurd. In no way do you seek borrow someone’s identity when you seek to borrow their ideas, Ragnar has simply conflated these two ideas, and although similar they are not at all the same. In any case, this particular situation should be an exception to the rule, and not be penalized on DDO. 2.) Plagiarism is theft First, the website cannot legally claim things that are not theirs, to be theirs. Think of it this way, if someone gives you the title to a car they stole, then your ownership will simply be revoked as it wasn’t valid in the first place, you will not be arrested or anything, no legal action will be taken, the website in this case, will simply have revoked any ownership it was given by a member and there will literally be no consequences. Second to last, theft is not bad sportsmanship, this link was never established, but presumed. Sportmanship is a relation between the two players, theft is an individual crime which in instances of plagiarism doesn’t affect the opponent and thus cannot have anything to do with sportsmanship. Again, eve if this is true, there should be an exception to the rule. Counter PlanSo let's say you disagree with everything I have said. Counter plan, Instead of giving conduct, the debate should simply be removed from the website, furthermore DDO should begin a campaign to weed out all debates which have plagiarism. Ragnar’s argument is (undeniably) complex, and the simple fact is there is no explicit comment or rule from the website which directly mentions the subject of plagiarism. Thus, even if one reads the TOA in full, they may not understand that plagiarism is unacceptable. They will then be punished for something that: A) They were ignorant of, and B) Might have made them change their minds about accepting the TOA of DDO in the first place; just as how in any debate the rules should be laid out before you accept, one should easily be able to tell what they are agreeing to in a TOA. Not only does the counterplan prevent this ‘TOA-abuse’ if you will, but it stops the actual, real, societally illegal theft committed on the website; whereas right now, all we do is leave those debates to sit for years, increasing the chance that real legal action will come upon the website. Imagine if the police investigate all of the theft committed on, and thus by, DDO, surely head members will be arrested for theft or fined which will negatively impact the website and these members’ lives. The counter plan helps to solve this problem.