rights to copy or copyrights??

Here I am with some reflections about plagiarism & co.
I found some interesting sites on the web dealing with this problem and giving some good pieces of advice to get rid of it: http://www.plagiarism.org/index.html is one of the best in my opinion because it is very clear and goes straight to the point both explaining what plagiarism is and focusing on the most suitable tools to avoid it; furthermore, it provides many useful links to other sites for self-evaluation (some of them are the same that Sarah suggested in class).
After reading some of the information provided, I realized that I have never thought of copyright as a really serious matter. Some of the descriptions of the various forms of plagiarism left me quite upset because I understood that I actually used them in my past writing. What most struck me was the question of paraphrasing: in large dissertations or essays is really easy to turn the ideas you got from your sources into your own ideas by paraphrasing some parts of the text; and even worse, I realized that I have never asked myself if I had the right to do it or not, taking for granted that as they were my own words, they could not be considered plagiarism.
Now I know that in my next pieces of writing properly citing will be not enough. I have to improve my creativity and develop new skills in order to create original work without losing accuracy or meaning.
Blogs should be a good starting point! Until now, I think I have written my posts totally by myself, without copying neither from web sources nor from other peers' work. Moreover, I have always added links and references when I visited sites that could help me in collecting new ideas about the topic I was developing. From now on, I hope to be able to improve the ability to stop myself when tempted in non-respecting of copyrights, particularly as drafting my final thesis. So, once more, I thank Sarah for giving us such new guiding and useful tools!
Sara