Certificated Originality

Lately, I’ve noticed a recurring trend among * that leaves me feeling somewhat uneasy. There is this sudden rush to register everything for HKI (Hak Kekayaan Intelektual). From teaching modules to various learning media, it seems everyone is eager to slap a certificate of intellectual property on their work. On the surface, it looks like a celebration of productivity. But when I look closer, I can’t help but wonder: what exactly is being “owned” here?

I think there is a dangerous misconception that “originality” is simply the absence of a plagiarism warning. I see people running their text through a checker, and the moment the percentage drops below a certain threshold, they feel a sense of triumph. They believe that as long as the words are slightly rearranged or the phrasing is tweaked, the work becomes theirs. To them, the plagiarism checker is the ultimate judge of truth. But we all know that these tools only scan for text; they don’t scan for the soul or the actual origin of an idea.

What bothers me more, however, is the “invisible” side of these works—the assets. I’ve seen learning media filled with stunning visuals, icons, and infographics, all meticulously collected from the corners of the internet. I think many of them forget that an image is just as much a piece of intellectual property as a paragraph of text.

Oh, by the way, for those of you who instantly conclude that every sentence marked with this: “—” is AI, you seem to be lacking in literacy. —

Of course, I understand that citing non-journal assets is tricky. How do you formally cite a random image found on a personal blogger’s page from 2012? It’s clunky, it’s tedious, and often, people just ignore it. But just because a source is hard to cite doesn’t mean it’s free for the taking. By claiming HKI over a collection of curated internet assets, they aren’t really creating something new; they are essentially claiming ownership over a collage of other people’s hard work.

It feels like we’ve shifted the goalpost from creating to collecting. There is a vast difference between being an author and being a curator. A curator organizes existing beauty; an author brings something new into existence. The problem arises when the curator pretends to be the author just to get a piece of paper that says they “own” the result.

I can’t help but feel that this pride is misplaced. There is a certain irony in proudly displaying an HKI certificate for a work that is 90% “borrowed” and 10% “arranged.” It makes me think that we are becoming more obsessed with the proof of ownership than the act of creation itself. In the end, a certificate can validate a legal claim, but it can never replace the genuine integrity of creating something from scratch.