Tenner's "The Rise of the Plagiosphere"

     The quote that sticks out most in my mind from Edward Tenner's "The Rise of the Plagiosphere" is the one before his writing even begins, "How new tools to detect plagiarism could induce writer's block."  After reading the entire article, I completely agree with this beginning statement.  Although I do think that it is mostly a good idea for teachers/professors to utilize the new technology that develops for detecting plagiarism, I also agree that it may cause many students to feel as though they might not even be able to begin to write their own paper.  Tenner states that "40 million pages from the public Web, plus 40,000 student papers" are being added to comparison programs each day.  In addition, he writes that a New Jersey electronic librarian observed that these "programs were so thorough that they often flagged chance similarities between student papers and other documents."  When you consider this and the fact that Google also "plans to scan millions of library books for its Print database," how can students not be apprehensive about writing papers?  

     Even though these programs might be very useful in catching students who cheat and plagiarize, I am not completely sure if I think they are necessarily the best ideas.  Just think about how many students could also potentially be accused of plagiarism when in fact they were simply one of those "chance similarities."  After all, this article does mention how "the clever phrase a writer coins usually turns out to have been used for years worldwide."  With so many possible phrases, descriptions, ideas, etc., it is very understandable that a student could unknowingly create an entire paragraph quite similar to someone else's in this world.