Young kittens imitate their mothers to learn how to cope in the world. Copying behavior is very useful in nature for learning to survive. Children playfully copy the behavior of father and mother. Successful examples are automatically followed. Not only sweet, young kitties engage in copying behavior, unscrupulous criminals also use this mechanism. NB! This article is written from the personal view of the author and may contain information that is not scientifically substantiated and/or in line with the general view.
Contents:
- Copycat effect
- Mass murder
- Spoof and Phishing
- Copyright
- Plato
Copycat effect
A copycat crime is a crime committed in response to a media report of a similar crime. Some people are seriously influenced by what they see on TV or read in the newspaper. The Copycat Effect occurs in crimes ranging from shoplifting to suicide. How exactly does it work? Suppose someone throws a stone from an overpass at a car. A serious accident occurs and the message appears in the news. A logical response to this message would be to abhor crime. There are always a few people who do not respond healthily to this message and think: ,Hey, I can do that too., If this person is going to carry out his crime, then he is a Copycat because he is imitating another crime.
Mass murder
The most poignant example of the Copycat phenomenon has spread from the United States to other Western countries; young people who commit mass slaughter in their own school and then kill themselves. It is becoming increasingly common in Europe, most recently in Finland. A Copycat usually carries out his crime a day or within a week after a media report. In the case of mass murder or homocide, it is almost always the case that the perpetrator has suicidal feelings in the period before his crime. These feelings are triggered in an extreme way by news of a massacre. The suicide bomber must first do one more thing to hate himself even more before he kills himself. Bowling for Colombia is a documentary by Michael Moore about this. Copycat criminals often copy their examples in great detail. For example, the Finnish mass murderer of September 23, 2008 made a video that used the same music that the Colombine murderer listened to.
Spoof and Phishing
Police forces take the Copycat effect into account. When a serious crime has taken place, they do not release all the details that they believe will be fodder for Copycats. Another form of copycat crime is spoofing. There is also such a thing as Copycat websites. These are called spoof websites. Spoof means to imitate. Spoofed sites imitate other sites. A site that you use to arrange banking affairs can be spoofed for criminal purposes. The Copy Cat criminals hope that the visitor will log in and reveal all his privacy information. This is also called ‘phishing’.
Copyright
A common and rarely punished form of unlawful copying behavior is copyright infringement. The introduction of the personal computer into society in particular has given copying a major boost. The nature of computer use makes it easy to use each other’s content, texts or images. This happens frequently in the scientific world. In databases for scientific research, a software instrument is used that detects whether paragraphs have been written about it. Students, scientists and professors sometimes do not feel like writing a thesis, but they copy theses from colleagues abroad in the hope that others will not find out. Another phenomenon is that articles on the Internet are copied in whole or in part. This happens so often that it is almost impossible to address. Most writers who write on the Internet consider their work to be in the public domain. They thereby give everyone permission to use their articles for other purposes. Infonu articles do not belong to the public domain. Copyright lies with the infoteur.
Plato
Plato wrote 2,500 years ago that young people should not be told that there are older people who commit serious crimes such as killing each other. Because when young people, up to the age of about 12, hear a lot about crimes, they think that it is normal in society. They then learn that killing someone is part of it, so to speak. As a result, the number of crimes will increase in the next generation. Today this wisdom of Plato is ignored. People are inundated with images of people killing each other on television or in books, games and films. It is not to be hoped that Plato is right and this will lead to a sharp increase in crime. Yet it appears that the Greek Philosopher was right. According to Plato’s reasoning, violence in films and on television is very bad for society.