Plagiarism: You Won't See it the Same Way Ever Again!

byiZED

560 followers

9 years ago

When we think about it, pretty much any piece of content does contain some “plagiarized” portions no matter what the topic or the source.

As a freelance writer, I did plenty of “rewording” gigs when clients specifically asked for a piece to be rewritten. And I’m still selling original content. So the concept of plagiarism is on the table, since we all are concerned especially that “content” is the holy grail of affiliate marketing.

“Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.” Wilson Mizner

The idea of taking the words or ideas of others and passing them off as one’s own, is known as “plagiarism”, but this well-ingrained tradition of “immaterial theft” so to speak, does not stop at this limit and goes much further.

Plagiarism is indeed a practice that goes way back in the history of literature and arts, and it is difficult to fix its boundaries.

Throughout the ages, from antiquity up until today, the imitation of authors by successors, has raised many controversies, indignation, and justifications. And the ill-defined concept of “Intellectual Property” doesn’t help.

The practice is directly related to the evolution of techniques of reproduction of texts, from the copyists of ancient times, the invention of printing press, to the disruptive effects of digitization.

In Fiction, plagiarism is less common nowadays and, if any, it’d be glaring. Yet we found a way around: Fan Fic, for example, is basically pure plagiarized content but somehow considered legit. Fanfic writers are like: “ I like that person or that story, this is an homage!” BTW, with all due respect, I think Fanfic writers just can’t come up with their own stories, so they rehash other’s stuff.

In Non-fiction, however, as soon as non-fiction news hits the web, the next day there’d be oodles of websites perorating on it. And there’s nothing wrong about that. But the search for references, associated with the practice of CTRL-C/CTRL-V, sometimes leads to misuse and abuse.

Plagiarism is a Multi-Faceted Issue:

Turnitin, a platform that offers among other things anti-plagiarism software for students, conducted a worldwide survey and asked 900 instructors about prevalent plagiarism practices in education institutions. Their findings are gathered in the two infographics below:

10 Types of Plagiarism:

Frequency and Problematic:

Turnitin gives the results for free as a poster to raise awareness. For more info, you could visit their website.

Then again, Turnitin, to make these infographic, must have "replaced, mushed up and made fit together" the thoughts and words of 900 instructors interviewed :) :) :)

ZED,