Plagiarism

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), the English lexicographer and the author of the Dictionary of the English Language (1755–1756), commented on a certain piece of writing that he believed to have been plagiarized. He stated that he thought the passage was both good and original. However, he added that the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original. Plagiarism has long been a subject of interest in academia, the media, and the creative arts. It has been with us since our ancestors first learned to commit their thoughts to paper or parchment.

So what actually is it? Plagiarism is, according to one source, knowingly presenting the work or property of another person as if it were one's own without appropriate acknowledgment or referencing. In plain language, plagiarism is a form of literary theft. It is intellectually dishonest and usually (though not always) occurs within an academic context. A London-based dictionary of 1721 defined plagiarism as stealing other [Page 1598]people's works and publishing them as one's own. Samuel Johnson said that plagiarism was a form of theft. It was literary adoption of the thoughts or works of another. It was one of the most reproachable, though perhaps not the most atrocious, of literary crimes.

John Aubrey (1626–1697), a social gossip and a writer of anecdotes, described someone he thought was a plagiarist in the following terms. He was, he said, a person of real worth who stood very gloriously up on his own basis and did not need to be beholden to any man for fame, yet he was so greedy of glory that he stole feathers from others to adorn his own cap. Another comment from the 17th century was that it was a worse sin to steal dead men's writings than their clothes. These comments from the 17th and 18th centuries suggest that people have always felt strongly about literary theft. Dictionaries offer a range of definitions: (1) the wrongful appropriation, or purloining, and publication as one's own of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.), of another; (2) the unacknowledged use of somebody else's ideas or words, the misappropriation and publication of ideas and words as one's own, or the act or practice of taking the thoughts, writings, or inventions of another as one's own; (3) using the work of another with intent to deceive; and (4) passing off someone else's work as your own, intentionally or unintentionally, for your own benefit.

There are a number of other issues to consider: For instance, where do imitation and legitimate borrowing fit into this argument? Thinking people would regard any form of plagiarism (whether in academia, the media, or the creative arts) as morally objectionable. The argument becomes confused if we take the opposite approach and argue that very little intellectual activity was ever original. People have been tweaking or filching other people's ideas forever, as the examples later in the section will illustrate. Plagiarism is a subset of the intellectual property argument. It is a Western construct and one that did not really apply to the classical masters of old. So what actually is intellectual property?

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