Plagiarism: The Overwrought Bastard Child of Copyright

Citations and plagiarism have strode hand-in-hand through the world of academia almost as long as the idea of “the institution” has existed. The theft and rebranding of another’s ideas, purely for academic credit and recognition, is the ultimate sin amongst professors, collegiate authors, and students, but this disease of morals is seen by many to be spreading in the current age of all things digital. However, there is a growing cloud of dissent that continues to rain on the copyright parade, contending that copyright itself is a flawed concept, and, therefore, so is the current system of academic citations.

Plagiarism is currently defined, by Dictionary.com Unabridged, as

the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work (“plagiarism”)

with citations being concurrently defined as “the act of citing or quoting a reference to an authority or a precedent” (“citation”). However, the rules and definitions get further defined and restrictive, as a few large governing bodies have arisen to act as the academic citations watchmen, the most pervasive of which is the Modern Language Association, or “MLA.” This godlike body has handed down the law from on high regarding when citations are necessary, and it has become the Golden Rule of all forms of academic writing: anything that is not completely original in origin is required to have a source. Exemptions include self-operated exercises, using self-created media, or an author retelling a life experience… but, for all intents and purposes, those are the only exemptions (Purdue OWL, Stolley, and Brizee).

The results of such stringent documentation necessities should be immediately obvious to any intelligent external observer: any written document that contains anything other than the author’s dream descriptions or embedded photographs of their children is going to be full of citations, to the point of excess and annoyance. Granted, in the scientific community, this makes perfect sense- scientific knowledge is heavily layered, building on previous work and its iterations of both research and writing, and cannot produce a truly original idea. A scientist writing a paper outlining a new theory or concept may be groundbreaking and revolutionary, but due to the very nature of scientific work, the paper will be acceptably laden with references to other theories, equations, and research outfits.

Outside the scientific community, such extreme reverence for prior works of art leads to a document that reads like the author has obsessive-compulsive citation tendencies. The typical argument for citations of all unoriginal work, including ideas that have been digested and reformed as the author’s own, involves statistics on the “rise of plagiarism” and how the stringent requirements of formats such as those by the MLA will help to squash such unethical and immoral activities. However, as Mike Hart and Tim Friesner mention in their whitepaper on academic plagiarism, “[e]stimates of the prevalence of plagiarism may […] be contingent upon the definitions employed” and that “plagiarism may be only weakly associated with cheating behavior”(89). The current situation of statistics vs. definition arguments is a stereotypical chicken-and-egg scenario that may not have a true beginning.

In “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”, Lawrence Lessig, a Standford professor known for his political activism, states:

"There has never been a time in history when more of our 'culture' was as 'owned' as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now (28)."

This not only aptly describes the copyright climate, but it also exists as a parallel to the citations argument: if such a large number of works have been written on an infinite number of topics, how can one write a truly original paper? The author may use or paraphrase concepts or ideas picked up many years ago from another source, and yet doesn’t think to cite them. It may seem innocuous, but this is still filed under the category of plagiarism. Because of this potential reality, many universities, and even high schools, have adopted an attitude of prevention in an effort to educate students on the intricacies of using information learned elsewhere (Wiebe).

However, it is such an attitude that will only perpetuate the current copyright cringing and citing-by-default climate. The central issue is not whether or not plagiarism exists, but rather why it exists, and if what is perceived as plagiarism may actually be a misinterpretation of the needs and purpose of copyright itself. An argument may be made that students, and otherwise authors of academic works, are viewed “as lazy cheaters who are guilty before proven innocent” (Regan 5), as the predatory behaviors of teachers, critics, and otherwise citation hawks is self-evident.

The result of such predatory behaviors has only one logical conclusion, which the academic world is only beginning to realize. Many times, after authors discover that citation-free blocks of text in a written academic work will be scrutinized for plagiarism, “there is a temptation to […] pad out [their work] with descriptive material leaving little time […] for their own […] comments” (Friesner and Hart 94). Academia is not alone in their problems with their own versions of perceived theft: both the music and movie industry are screaming obscenities as their glass houses built with sex, greed, and drugs quickly disintegrate under the flames fanned by Internet “pirates.” Despite the obvious differences in definitions of theft and their target audiences, all three institutions have the same central problem: copyright (Silverthorne).

For years “the industry” has continued to convolute the definitions of copyright, extending the terms of protection and prosecution, converting a system meant as a means of protection into something that resembles a heavily armed drug cartel, “protecting” their goods. And since citations are borne out of the ideas of “prior work”, a concept used in copyright law, the anti-copyright world of academia actually continues to support and favor copyrights by pushing overzealous citations.

Regardless of the chicken-and-egg birthcycle, there is a solution. Academic institutions need to de-emphasize the habit of wanton citing, and governing bodies such as the MLA need to loosen restrictions and definitions to a more reasonable, but still protective, level. Rather than regarding authors as highly likely to be cheaters and perpetuators of plagiarism, they should be given respect and a certain level of trust until they prove to not be worthy of it. The justice systems of the world have such a revolutionary concept: it’s typically known as “innocent until proven guilty.”

If a scientist isn’t required to prove e = mc² in order to avoid citing a well known and “common knowledge” theory, every time they use it in new equations, projects, and theories, then why would the academic literary equivalent be necessary?

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Works Cited

• "citation." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 25 Nov. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/citation>.


• Hart, Mike, and Tim Friesner. "Plagiarism and Poor Academic Practice - A Threat to the Extension of e-Learning in Higher Education?" Electronic Journal on e-Learning 2.1: 89-96. Feb. 2004. 25 Nov. 2008 <http://www.ejel.org/volume-2/vol2-issue1/issue1-art-35-hart-friesner.pdf>.


• Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture Control Creativity. New York: The Penguin Press HC, 2004. 28.


• "plagiarism." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 25 Nov. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism>.


• Purdue OWL, Karl Stolley, and Allen Brizee. "Avoiding Plagiarism: Is It Plagiarism Yet?" Purdue OWL. 30 Sept. 2008. 25 Nov. 2008 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/02/>.


• Regan, John. "Curing the Cold but Killing the Patient? Turnitin.com, Online Paper Mills, and the Outsourcing of Academic Work." Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification 3.2 (2008): 1-11.


• Silverthorne, Sean. "Music Downloads: Pirates or Customers?" Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge 21 June 2004. 25 Nov. 2008 <http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4206.html>.


• Wiebe, Todd J. "College Students, Plagiarism, and the Internet: The Role of Academic Librarians in Delivering Education and Awareness." MLA Forum 5.2 (2006).