Features

“Using one person's ideas is plagiarism. Using lots of people's ideas is research.”
 
I like this quote, but I'm not sure who to attribute it to; I heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, and who knows where they got it. (Actually ,the original quote is “Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.” It’s either by John Milton, or Wilson Mizner, or John Burke. Who knows.) And that is exactly the point.
In an economy of ideas, plagiarising someone else's work is downright thievery. But is there a difference between borrowing a phrase, and copying out an entire thesis? Is the internet rendering the old ideas of intellectual property redundant? And is Osama Bin Laden really a dirty plagiarist? Susan Smirk explores this, and explains 'SafeAssign,' the originality-checking software the Uni is now using to catch the sneaky plagiarists that lurk among us. 
 
The biblio-blues
What was the first thing I did upon starting this article? Had a browse of an excellent article Salient recently published on plagiarism ('Copy Paste Plagiarise' – www.salient.co.nz). Then I muddled my way around cyberspace for a bit, finding to my amusement that the Wikipedia page entitled 'Plagiarism' has three '[citation needed]' brackets in the first two paragraphs. I looked at some news stories, blogs, and even a YouTube clip. This article has begged, borrowed, and possibly even stolen from a good number of sources – I do hope the irony is not lost on you. I also hope you haven't already labelled me a disgusting plagiarist, and thrown down the magazine in disgust.
At university, we are always taught to carefully reference quotes, phrases, theories, and ideas. I guess since we aren't born with an i

nnate knowledge of quantum mechanics or Victorian literature, nearly all our ideas are second-hand. But I confess to struggling when I have summarised a theory that every lecturer has been drilling into me for the last three years, and am suddenly required to reference the exact document it came from. And there are so many ways you can slip into the sin of plagiarism:
 
The Seven Sins of Sourcing
(as explained on http://www.scanmyessay.com/plagiarism/types-of-plagiarism.php)
1) Deliberate plagiarism is simply trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own. It's big, and usually obvious, and there's honestly little justification for that kind of laziness.
2) 'Paraphrasing' can also be plagiarism. You just find a good source or two, mix around the words a bit, and voila! However, considering your lecturers are experts in the field, they probably know the texts and are going to notice this. 
3) 'Patchwork paraphrasing' involves reading widely, thieving bits from each source, and patching them all together. 
4) 'Bluffing' is a term that can be used for the process of picking key phrases or ideas from another author, then writing and extrapolating around that so they seem like your own ideas. 
5) 'Stitching sources’, which is definitely heading towards the grey zone of copycat territory, is more likely to result from poor-quality work than deliberate deception. An essay with stitched sources may use a number of works, and cite them all correctly, but fails to understand, interpret, and rework them into an essay which genuinely expresses the author’s own original ideas. 
6) Self-plagiarism is an idea that is hotly disputed as 'ridiculous' by some. It simply involves taking some of your previous work, perhaps on a similar topic, and reworking it a little, then resubmitting it. It's often argued that within a degree you shouldn't get two grades for the same piece of work, so perhaps this is a kind of plagiarism. Then again, as a pretty successful director one said, “Self-plagiarism is style.” (Alfred Hitchcock)
7) There is no seventh. It just sounded nicer than “The Six Sins ...”
 
Post-plagiarism?
Postmodernism. For all who aren’t aware, that's what we live in. It's a pretty sad, cynical age, actually. Postmodern thought believes there is nothing new under the sun (that's from the Bible) – that we don't really have new ideas, we just rework or reinvent old ones. Postmodernists are big believers in mixing and matching, in piecing things together from anywhere and everywhere. We think we are very clever. A lot of our televised humour is about subtle allusions to, or outright parodies of, other things – everything from Shakespeare to Monty Python to Britney Spears. It's all about intertextuality, referencing other things left, right, and centre. 
So, in this climate of intellectual collage, is plagiarism as relevant a concept as it once was? This debate was stirred up recently when a 17-year-old German author, Helene Hegemann, was found to have borrowed liberally from numerous sources – it's 'artistic sampling', or 'just mixing', she and numerous other authors claim. She apologised to those she 'borrowed' from, but argued in a press statement that “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” (NY Times) Perhaps she is right ... perhaps what we would call 'originality' is just undetected plagiarism. (paraphrased quote from W. R. Inge – I'm not that clever)
Beside, it is so much easier to plagiarise these days. There is not only a shelf of well-known academic texts available to us – we can trowel through the entire internet for freelance bloggers, writers, and academics to borrow ideas from. Their names will remain in the obscurity of cyberspace, but who knows where their ideas might end up. Of course, you could end up making a fool of yourself by submitting complete rubbish without realising it ... but if you are resorting to deliberate plagiarism, you probably aren't the brightest crayon in the box anyway (a common cliché, no reference needed ... probably). Conversely, it could easily be the bloggers who plagiarise you one day. Bloggers are now being accused of limited ethics for their rampant use of quotes with little referencing. Some people suggest that copyright is becoming a dirty word on the internet. (http://www.plagiarismtoday.com)
 
A rose by any other name ... would stink of plagiarism.
At the start of the year, Critic tied me to a chair, threatened me with hot implements, and forced me to sign a contract specifying that whatever I wrote for them would remain theirs for all eternity. So, despite having lovingly slaved over every word of this article (except for the ones I stole, of course) I couldn't publish it elsewhere, should I so wish. It is no longer mine. But who knows if someone in Uzbekistan will next week come out with a brilliant blog entry on plagiarism, based on this brilliant article? Would I mind? Well, yes, I probably would. Would I ever find out? Well, no, I probably wouldn't. Does that make it okay? Errmmm. Then again, if they mentioned my name and by some freak chance it rocketed me to journalistic stardom, I really can't say I'd mind that much.
Arguably, in our postmodern pastiche world, the problem is not so much about using other people’s ideas, as it is not giving them credit for them. We'd all like to think we own the contents of our own brain. But even this concept has a limited societal application. Think of jokes, for example. Every time we tell jokes we are winning ourselves social kudos by climbing on the backs of people who were actually funny. Yet no one finishes a 'knock-knock' joke with “... originally by Bob Jones, of Michigan, 1986.” If we did, one thing’s for sure – the very first person to say “that's what she said” should be the most famous person in the world by now.
(earliest know usage was in 1975, uttered by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live ... according to http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/That's_what_she_said)
 
SafeAssign and your Assignments
The generally paranoid and the Law students among us may have actually read the fine print the University has introduced this year when you submit assignments. It's about plagiarism. More specifically, it's about the Uni's recent investment in anti-plagiarism technology. Should we shudder in fear at the feet of some elaborate machine with a brain the size of a planet, (phrase lifted from A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams) scrupulously checking our assignments against the entirety of the internet, dooming you to eternal shame and a life of hairdressing, if something matches too closely? “What is this thing?!” cry the terrified plagiarists among you, no doubt having visions of an evil R2D2, or HAL’s twin brother (Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey references). In actuality, the fearful beast is called 'SafeAssign' (a friendly title to lull us into a false sense of security, do doubt), and it's a piece of “originality checking software.” It is one of the two software tools most commonly used in Australia and New Zealand for cheacking the originality of texts. SafeAssign was introduced at Otago at the start of the year, and will be reviewed at the end of 2010, and again in 2011 (http://www.otago.ac.nz/blackboard/safeassign_info.html). It checks work submitted against other students’ work, and online databases of academic work. So, if you find some obscure material published only in hard copy, it probably can't get you ... but karma still can. The official line is that it is as much a deterrent of plagiarism as it is a checker or it – the idea being that we will all quake in our jandals on hearing about it, and immediately cease our dirty plagiaristic ways, and begin to strive for academic purity. Its use isn't mandatory, so it depends on your department and your lecturer as to whether your work will be checked or not. But remember, the penalties for plagiarism at our fine institution range from a warning, to a rewrite, to reduced marks, an instant zero grade, or even exclusion for the University in extreme cases.
 
[huge sidebar]
Famous and not-so famous plagiarism scandals:
 
It’s not just students that steal other people’s work. Celebrities do, too! Here are a few classic examples of our best and brightest stars borrowing for success.
 
Witi Ihimaera 
The highly-acclaimed Whale Rider author blatantly used material from 16 other writers in his recent work The Trowenna Sea. He argued that this material accounted for only 0.4 percent of the 528 pages of his book, but ended up personally buying all the copies off shelves and apologising. If you want to plagiarise stuff, you’re totally at the wrong university, as Auckland’s standards are clearly different. In the wake of the scandal, Auckland University Dean of Arts Jan Crosthwaite, who is Ihimaera’s boss, issued a statement saying she was satisfied there was no deliberate wrongdoing on his part. Critic dares you to use that excuse here.
 
J. K. Rowling 
Rowling was sued in 1999 by a wannabee author who fabricated evidence to say Rowling had plagiarised Harry Potter from her. But good ol' J. K. worked her magic and won the case easily.
 
Martin Luther King
The sainted Martin Luther King was not altogether squeaky clean in terms of academic genius. In a 1990 review of his theological thesis from Boston University (submitted 1955), he was found to have plagiarised over a third from the dissertation of a previous student. His ‘I Have a Dream’ speech was also heavily inspired by the speech of an African American preacher in 1952.
 
Osama bin Laden
No kidding. After 9/11 he eulogised himself and Al Qaeda in a poem he plagiarised from Jordanian poet Yusuf Abu Hilalah.
 
Girl Guides vs. Men at Work
A nasty court battle over the 1934 Girl Guide song Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree has been waged after the musical group Men at Work used it in their 1984 hit song Down Under. They stand to lose up to 60 percent of their profit from that song. And they might make the Girl Guides cry. 
 
Dan Brown
Dan Brown has been twice accused of plagiarism, but both suits were dismissed. 
 
Joe Biden
The current US Vice President lost his nomination for the top job in the 1988 US primaries, all because he plagiarised. Let that be a warning to ye future rulers! Biden not only allegedly stole part of a speech from a British politician, but the following scandal soon revealed he had plagiarised a paper during his first year at Syracuse Law School. 
 
NB: excellently relevant cartoon
 
http://xkcd.com/285/
 
It's under creative commons license, so you can use it (with citation!).