Why It’s Unethical to Plagiarize

Why it’s Unethical to Plagiarize

Have you ever been assigned to write a college term paper and was tempted to copy someone else’s written work as your own? Well, if you have (especially with the ease of access to term papers on the Internet) and actually did turn in someone else’s written work as your own, than you have essentially committed not only an unethical act, but also an illegal one called plagiarism. To be clear, the definition of plagiarism is basically equivalent to literary theft and occurs when a writer duplicates another writer's language or their ideas and then calls that work their own. Copyright laws are meant to protect writers' words as their own legal property. So, to avoid charges of plagiarism, an aspiring writer should be careful to credit those from whom they borrow and quote (Dictionary, 2014). However, for the purposes here, I will concentrate on why it is considered an unethical practice to take another’s written work and pass it off as your own and thus not tempt you into committing an illegal copyright act.

Ethics is the study of right and wrong conduct and of the many views of Ethics, I will discuss three of the main views of Ethical principles; rules-based (Deontological), ends-base (Consequentialist), and virtue-based (Aristotle’s) ethical theory, to illustrate why plagiarism should be avoided.

First, from the perspective of rules-based ethical theory and view, one should have a since of duty to obey the rules as set forth for handing in an originally written peace of work rather than someone else’s. The same should be true even if taking a peace of someone else’s words and incorporating that material into your own paper. The idea of crediting the original author’s work when using their words is to set a good example for all to follow so that other aspiring writers, as well as established ones, will follow your lead in writing their own papers while