> "Plagiarism is never illegal..." should be changed to "Plagiarism
> is almost never illegal..." adding the word "almost" because of
> Section 106A.
If my buddy, who took Sociology 101 two years ago, "lends" me his term paper (i.e., I just put my cover page on it), I have committed plagiarism... but nothing illegal (at least not in the statutory sense; the school has contractual grounds to do bad things to me under its academic policies that I agreed to.)
If I take a bunch of sonnets by Dryden, Shakespeare, Donne, Owen, and others, and publish them in a chapbook, under my name, as if I were the poet, I have committed plagiarism. Really stupid plagiarism. Really, spectacularly stupid plagiarism. But I have done nothing illegal.
"If I must write prose and poems, the words I use should be my own. Don't plagiarize or take 'on loan'". Plagiarism? More like allusion. And, especially if it were a line from an essay or book, far to insubstantial to constitute anything illegal. Received on Mon Sep 18 2006 - 20:45:30 GMT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:57 GMT