Is It Plagiarism or Copyright Violation?
Plagiarism is derived from the Latin plagiarius
("kidnapper"), and refers to a kind
of intellectual theft defined as "the
false assumptions of authorship, the wrongful
act of taking the product of another person's
mind, and presenting it as one's own.”
(Alexander Lindey, Plagiarism and Originality)
According to Gordon Harvey, Harvard Univ.
Expository Writing Program:
“In academic writing (unlike everyday
speech), all language, information, and I
ideas not the writer’s own are scrupulously
attributed to their original sources. Knowledge
never stands alone. It builds upon and plays
against the previous knowledge of previous
knowers and reports, whom scholars call "sources."
These are not, in a scholarly paper, the source
of your particular argument (you are), but
rather persons or documents that help you
arrive at your argument. They are sources
of information that you interpret; of ideas
that you support, criticize, or develop; of
vivid language that you quote and analyze.”
When you do a research paper in college,
for instance, first you go back and read what
everyone else has said about your topic. Then
you draw some conclusions, make some new points,
and – the point of it all – hopefully
advance the field of knowledge.
You mention who said what and when, as a
way of history, and then you move forward,
attributing to those who went before you.
Or you make a statement and use data from
writers and researchers to back it up.
Not to plagiarize is an agreement among scholars.
“Academic discourse communities,”
says The Plagiarism Tutorial, Texas A&M
(http://firstyear.tamucc.edu/wiki/Resources/PlagiarismTutorial),
agree to refer scrupulously to one another’s
writings and research findings by placing
borrowed terms and phrases in quotation marks,
and by explicitly linking quoted materials
to [those who wrote or said them].
UC Davis calls it The Art of Mastering Scholarship,
and has an excellent definition here:
http://sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm .
When you plagiarize, you ultimately cheat
yourself. To quote the Portland School system,
“the purpose of collecting information
is to create your own thoughts and ideas around
the information you have read and taken notes
over. If you copy someone else’s words,
you are not forming your own thoughts and
creative style.”
IS IT AGAINST THE LAW?
I like Ron Shook’s comment in this regard,
because it’s kind of a gray area. We
know copyright violation is against the law.
Plagiarism, on the other hand, says Shook,
“is moral outrage. It is certainly true
that a plagiarist can commit copyright infringement.
But what happens when for instance, I lift
wholesale information that is either in the
public domain or which has had the copyright
lapse? I’m plagiarizing but not infringing
on a copyright. In those cases, the objection
is moral/ethical rather than legal.”
This question is being tossed around on one
of my lists. I think it’s a matter of,
well, Emotional Intelligence - how you conduct
your life when only answerable to yourself,
and how you respect others. Laws are enacted
when people fail to do what's right -- watch
what's going to come up with cell phones shortly.
And everything that’s legal to do isn’t
the right thing to do.
Use your Emotional Intelligence. If you're
saying what someone else said, quote them.
How can you know for sure where the line is?
Take The EQ Foundation Course(c) and develop
your intuition, your ability to know things
without knowing how you know them. When in
doubt, err on the side of caution and attribute.
It's the right thing to do. “Can I get
sued for doing it?” is not the question
to ask. “Is this the right thing to do?”
is. Check out the Legal Information Institute's
overviews of copyright laws and trademark
laws.
This mandate to document sources fairly and
accurately is unique to academic writing.
At CoachVille, for instance, or for articles
on ideamarketers.com, or in much business
writing, no documentation of a ‘fact’
is required.
By Susan Dunn, MA, Marketing Coach.
©Susan Dunn, MA, internet marketing
coaching, consultant, web strategies and web
design, article-writing, ghost-writing. http://www.webstrategies.cc.
For eBooks on marketing, go here: http://www.webstrategies.cc/ebooklibrary.html.
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