What constitutes as PLAGIARISM?

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Vee

@reflorated

Rocker

+ 4

Posted: 12 years ago

Plagiarism

I have made this topic to clear out to the forum about what constitutes as plagiarism. Some of the members apparently don't understand what plagiarism means, for if they did, they won't do it.

Wikipedia-DotCom defines plagiarism as the "wrongful appropriation" and "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work.

This basically means that copying ANYTHING from ANYWHERE is classified as plagiarism. Showing anybody's intellectual property as your own is WRONG.

There is inspiration and then there is plagiarism. Inspiration is being inspired from something to write your own fan fiction. What Fan-Fiction writers write, comes under inspiration, so to say. Plagiarism on the other hand, is blatantly copying stuff from other people's work.

There have been numerous cases on India-Forums where writers have been plagiarised, forcing them to shift to blogs or so. I fail to understand why must some people claim somebody's work as there own? Only for five minutes of virtual fame?

Is the admiration of people, whose faces you haven't even seen, worth so much that you steal from people?

Are you so low on self respect that you have to resort to means like this?

Ask yourself these questions, before you copy paste work to reproduce as your own. And I haven't even started on what happens after you are caught out.

I have started this topic, to lay out in the open what plagiarism means. It is time we lay this shit out, and took a step forward to protect our work. I like posting on India-Forums, but plagiarism refuses to let me do so.

Please do not go out of the topic at hand, and kindly don't name out anybody in particular. Public mudslingling is not what I aim at - and I don't want this topic closed. Thank you.

Edited to add - PLEASE EDIT YOUR RES's. -.-
Please check out the following replies - Reply#1

Reply#2

Edited by V323 - 12 years ago

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sj_arhi

@sj_arhi

Voyager

+ 4

Posted: 12 years ago

Very apt topic for the forum V.

Edit

I believe there are two classes of plagiarizers; one who know what they are doing is wrong and yet commit it for short-lived attention. Two those who do not realise that sharing content 'even after quoting the author' without his will is also a form of plagiarism.

I am not gonna discuss about the first group of people; what they achieve is something that I cannot understand. The second group needs to be more aware. In the world of academia we quote a person, accurately citing even the page number of the journal/textbook referred to. In this forum when we publish our stories we do not encourage others to take our idea of concept, take a scene without prior permission being granted. When an author has restricted the entry to his/her blog we cannot share his property with others without permission. Most authors think twice and rightly so before sharing the link with new readers due to a minority who simply cannot respect their wish.

One cannot copy paste and quote the author here without his knowledge, this is not accepted here. Authors who publish text books cannot personally allow each person to quote them and hence it is open to all; the rules here are different . This is something most should understand.

Edited by sj_arhi - 12 years ago

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Krani

@Krani

Dazzler

+ 9

Posted: 12 years ago

Sorry for the late un-res, but here it is.

Inspiration is something that stimulates you to do something - whether the inspiration is from a person, TV show, movie or a book - each of them provide us with inspiration to take the basic idea of something and develop something else out of it.

Plagiarism is stealing. I really cannot elaborate on that any more, because that is the simplest way of putting it.

You are literally taking somebody else's work and passing it off as your own - that is wrong.

I'll try and discuss the two a bit more because there seems to be a bit of confusion in people's minds.

Inspiration:

We are all inspired by either a book, TV show or a movie, which is why we are on this forum writing fan fiction and sharing our stories. Notice the word fan fiction, not fiction. The fan fiction shows that the piece of writing is inspired and based upon a certain fandom, and therefore the characters and other things used in the plot are not necessarily original creation.

Such as, if I was to write a story on Harry Potter, the characters, the idea of witchcraft and everything would belong to JK Rowling as she created the entire magic.

The only thing that would belong to me?

It's my creativity.

It's the creativity I would use to take her characters, weave them around my own storyline, and entertain my readers with a storyline completely different from hers.

If I re-wrote Philosophers stone and said that it was my work, I would be in trouble. If I took passages of her books and copied them word for word and pasted them in my story, that would be wrong. These things are not inspiration, they fall under plagiarism.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is when you take somebody else's creativity and try to pass it off for your own.

Plagiarism is also when you illegally distribute copies of an author's work without their permission, it is also when you post their work elsewhere (credit or no credit), if you do not have sufficient permission.

Plagiarism is illegal, and you can have severe repercussions for it.

At my University, you can be chucked out if you are found to have plagiarised anything - in fact our Vice Chancellor was fired when they found out he had plagiarised 20-some years ago during his University days. So don't think it won't come bite you in the ass, because Karma always gets you back.

Now as a person who enjoys writing, and spends days trying to perfect her chapters, trying to think of her characters, visualise them properly before writing them - it angers me when somebody comes and takes all that hard-work, copies and pastes it in a matter of seconds and calls it their own.

This is not right. Don't think that just because all this work is shown to you for free, you have some right over it, because no, you don't.

The time and effort that goes into trying to think of something original, writing your own dialogues, keeping the story moving forward takes a lot of time and therefore it's unfair when people think it's alright to just copy and paste it.

Let me tell you something - writing original work, and being rewarded for that with reviews and comments is way better than copying somebody else's and getting comments for that.

If you think you are a bad writer then make mistakes and learn from them! Read stories on this forum, read books, dabble in different kinds of genres and slowly start to make yourself better.

By taking a shortcut and taking somebody else's work is frustratingly annoying because it causes some really good writers to remove all their work, just because of the selfishness of a handful few.

I know that some plagiarisers have no conscience whatsoever, and I know that they think that they can get away with it - for them all I can hope is that someday you get what you deserve for hurting somebody by stealing their work, that you face the consequences of plagiarising and that you are woken from this ignorance that the world revolves around you and that you don't need to respect anybody else's work or wishes.

For the others who had he confusion between plagiarism and confusion, hopefully this thread clears it up.

Please, stop plagiarising and get original.

Stop stealing and actually write something you can feel proud of.

I can't even say "grow up" to some plagiarisers because the person who plagiarised my story was a software engineer, and an adult - I have no idea how someone so educated can be so freaking ignorant and stupid of how awful plagiarism is.

Lastly, IF (Vijay), you really need to take a stand on this now. Enough is enough. Stop twiddling your thumbs and watching writers leave this forum one by one, and actually try and make your members feel safe to post their work on this forum by taking strict action against plagiarism.

Edited by Krani - 12 years ago

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Nameera

@Nmyra

Voyager

+ 5

Posted: 12 years ago

RES

Definition:

By now, you lot have read the first post which more than eloquently lays out what Plagiarism is. If your still confused - allow me to elaborate. If you copy something that is not yours (a concept, a scene, a character layout, a plot, a specific conceptual bearing etc) - and then you proceed to use it as your own under your own mantle/ even under that writers mantle but without their specific permission - you are a thieving piece of scum aka a Plagiarizer.

Issue:

Okay so quite honestly I am practically fed up - with this issue when it comes to this Forum. As someone who has been writing FF's for well over 5-6 years now, in addition to being involved in the print-media, I can honestly say I have NEVER, in my entire life seen as much blatant disrespect for writers by "readers".

That said, what is worse is how little the 'reader's' of these plagiarizers care. In their head all that matters is that they keep reading - it doesn't really matter what internal war is going on. Sad but true.

As for why - they plagiarize - well to be blatant - it's because one they know they suck and lack the integrity to try to improve themselves through trial and error and secondly because they face little to no consequence.

What would happen if a kid you know was caught stealing?

He'd be at the least slightly ostracized, right? He'd be noted, marked. He'd be embarrassed, as the truth of what he'd done would come out to the people he was friends with. In short - their would be backlash.

However here on this wonderful forum, in an attempt to 'humanize' these issues, there is no backlash. As a result, the plagiarizers have no fear. They don't worry about being called out, or of their online reputation going down the drain. They don't worry about anything - because they are to well 'protected' - There is no list of noted Plagiarizers who have been banned. There is no immediate ban set on IP's of users who have Plagiarized, no matter how little, there is no stickied post that says "Member X stole work from Member Y who is the actual writer of Story XYZ - readers may defer to the original writer."

So, why would the plagiarizers stop? If they had any sense of moral right and wrong they wouldn't be 'plagiarizers' to begin with you know.

How to fix it:

Well there is the ever efficient quit the forum and use a blog - which many writers have reverted to, but that isn't really a solution. The how has been elaborately discussed previously in quite a few threads, I think the reason we fall back is because we lack the ability to get our points out to the higher authorities, aka Vijay, so "How to Fix it?" Get Vijay to realize, his forum is hosting individuals who are leaving him open to quite a few Intellectual Property cases, not to mention some basic Negligence Suits as well - that if nothing else should get his attention. Nothing like suing someone to get your point across.

Edited by Nmyra - 12 years ago

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@guggu

Rocker

+ 5

Posted: 12 years ago

Oh no, I am so late and I am sorry. Coming back to the topic -

What is inspiration to me? Discarding any dictionary/encyclopaedia meaning, it means when something just inspires you to write your own thing. For example, we take the characters of an existing show or book and put them in our own story. Characters can be essentially same but the story is ours. The storyline, scenes, etc., has to be the writer's own.

Plagiarism? It is plain and blatant copying. End of story. You copy a storyline, you copy certain scenes, you lift off lines directly from someone else's work - you have just indulged in plagiarism. There is no other thought about it.

What we write at I-F, as fan fiction writers, is inspiration. However amateur it may be, no one has the right to reproduce/copy/pass it as their own. We write for the joy of writing, for our own selves first and then for people here on I-F who like to read our work.

Personally, I have a lot to thank I-F for. It introduced me to writing four years back and for someone who aspires to be a published author someday, the issue of plagiarism is very disturbing. We never know if someone reading our stories is a lurking thief!

Although I am not too sure about what I-F can do about this, I would this love it if someone enlightens me. This is a widely known fact that no copy code is no good code. Even a person like me knows the loopholes, so we can't really know what tech-holics can do.

I read Appy's suggestion about images and watermarks, which is very good by the way, but this won't stop the people who want to cheat and steal. Sure, they will have to work a lot harder if they want to copy it word-by-word but we can't really protect our ideas. I-F cannot efficiently prohibit people from coming on their site, can they? The most they can do is ban that particular user but we all know how effective that would be. I personally think that FF DT is doing the most they can in cleaning this forum, but this is one humongous forum we are talking about.

About blogs - I believe in each to their own and the people who have shifted to blogs have a very good reason to do so. The only itch is, if a new reader wants to read it, they cannot. I am not blaming the writers in any way, but the only thing is that it prohibits readership. Also, one still cannot be sure if any of the existing readers is not a threat. All of us our a part of a website where people are faceless and nameless. One can never predict a potential threat and block them out.

To plagiarizers - I have only one thing to say. Get a life!

Edited by guggu - 12 years ago

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Mishty Shah

@MishtyShah

Voyager

+ 4

Posted: 12 years ago

This is what Plagiarism is in General Terms:

What is Plagiarism?

Many people think of plagiarism as copying another's work or borrowing someone else's original ideas. But terms like "copying" and "borrowing" can disguise the seriousness of the offense:

To Plagiarize means:

to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
to use (another's production) without crediting the source
to commit literary theft
to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

All of these things are considered as Plagiarism:

turning in someone else's work as your own
copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not

Plagiarism is illegal. It is also wrong.

Why should people be allowed to copy each other's works and present it as their own? Those people have spent hours into something. They have put their efforts into their works, so why should people be allowed to copy, even if it is a FanFiction.

Our writers in these forums, spend a huge amount of time. It takes me 2-3 hours to write a detailed chapter on 1 of my fictions. Why should someone copy it and paste it such websites like "Myeduniya" and "Facebook".

Since the beginning, Plagiarism has always seen morally and ethically wrong. In exams, students are not allowed to copy each other's work because it is not your work. It is somebody else's. If they get caught, they are disqualified from their exams, so why can't India Forums ban these members as a form of punishment.

If India Forums is setting such strict rules on other aspects such as blog links and mature content, then why cannot they take strict action on Plagiarism?

Also many people feel that copying other people's work is okay and they say that they have been inspired by them, that's why it is okay.

However Inspiration & Plagiarism are two different things.

What is Inspiration?

The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative: "flashes of inspiration".

So in more simpler words it means that if you see something you like, you get inspired by it and that makes you become or innovative. It brings out the creativity in you. However it does not mean that if you like something, copy it.

To be honest, I don't know why people want to copy other people's work.

Are they too lazy to type something?

Or is it the fact that they think that other people are better so it is okay to take their concept?

What we need in this Forum is some strong rules that will stop people from Plagiarizing.

We also need lots of originality, but that has to come from the new writers themselves:

What is Originality?

The ability to think independently and creatively.

I hope you all understand the difference. There is no shame in being inspired by someone's work. I am too. However, at that point you need to become more innovative rather than Plagiarize.

Love,

Mishty

Edited by MishtyShah - 12 years ago

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Mishty Shah

@MishtyShah

Voyager

+ 4

Posted: 12 years ago

I have updated my post.

Edited by MishtyShah - 12 years ago

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Koeli

@Koeli

Channel Moderator

+ 16

Posted: 12 years ago

How to save your work getting plagiarized?

Well i dont know how effective and efficient this is going to be but i have thought a lot about it. though it is not fuel proof but i am sure this will definitely reduce mass plagiarizing which is happening these days.

We can post the chapter as an Image file with our name as watermark behind the write-up.

this way the person who wants to copy have to type the whole thing by himself/herself and then post it. i doubt how much he/she will be interested typing it out when he/she doesnot want to apply his/her brain to create his/her own story.

Below is an example of what i am saying

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Mishty Shah

@MishtyShah

Voyager

+ 4

Posted: 12 years ago

Yes that is right. This stops Plagiarism. Otherwise like you said, if you want to Plagiarize, the person would have to manually type it out.

I think "Lazyleaves" has tried that and has been successful.

One of her thread links: http://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3071959

It is a brilliant idea for existing writers.

However, if people still do not feel very safe on this Forum. I suggest that you shift to blogspot or wordpress and use PM's to inform them of your updates. I guess it mainly depends on what the writer likes. Some people can't stand blogs, while some people hate the idea of Pming.

I have come up with an idea to resolve Pming.

Instead of Pm's:

Writers should get their reader's email. They can make a contact list on their gmail, yahoo, hotmail or outlook (if they have a personal domain). They can then create one email. Then then can "BCC" everyone in their contact list. This whole process of emailing over 300 people, takes less than 20 seconds.

I do that now. I am on my blog, and I have my own website and I use emails as a way to inform people and my own face-book group. New readers can contact me through email directly or through PM's.

It is a very efficient method.

Sorry I kind of went off topic there, but I thought it is a good idea.

Thank you for the lovely post.

Love,

Mishty

Edited by MishtyShah - 12 years ago

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Vee

@reflorated

Rocker

+ 4

Posted: 12 years ago

#10

Originally posted by: Krani

Lastly, IF (Vijay), you really need to take a stand on this now. Enough is enough. Stop twiddling your thumbs and watching writers leave this forum one by one, and actually try and make your members feel safe to post their work on this forum by taking strict action against plagiarism.

~K

Agreed. Enough is enough. We come to India-Forums, only to get plagiarised?

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What constitutes as PLAGIARISM?

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