Plagiarism Essay

Plagiarism

The phenomenon of plagiarism is increasingly common in our daily life. In order to protect intellectual property rights, many countries have formulated the relevant legal provisions to prohibit plagiarism. However, people do not really understand what plagiarism is, and then, this essay will introduce that what plagiarism is, how to identify it and how to avoid it.

There are many kinds of description about plagiarism, and it is widely believed that plagiarism is just about copying other person’s work or borrowing other person’s idea. What’s more, the definition about plagiarism in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English shows that ‘the act or an instance of plagiarizing or something plagiarized’. (Della Thompson, p.1043) Furthermore, according to the MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE DICTIONARY, there are four acts can be regarded as plagiarize, first of all, to steal or pass off the ideas or words of another as one's own. Secondly, it can be regarded as plagiarize to use another's work without crediting the source. Thirdly, literary theft can be regarded as plagiarize. Lastly, to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source. In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud and it involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward. (Plagiarism, 2014a) For example, if someone copies other’s words as their own without makes comment, if a software company copies program which is from other company, novelist copies other writer’s storyline, designer copies someone else's idea, and all of this behavior can be called plagiarism.

In our daily life, plagiarism can be subdivided into many aspects, for the perspective of law, about the intellectual property, which is any product of the human intellect that the law protects from unauthorized use by others. (Cornell University Law School, 2015) To be more specific about the intellectual property, it is banned by law if someone does not have the permission of the writer to take copies of a copyright material. For example, in China, there is a very popular plagiarism case between two novelists Jingming Guo and Yu Zhuang. (Chinanews, 2014) According to the case, Jingming Guo copied the contents of Yu Zhuang’s article, and then he was asked for compensation about 21,000 RMB in 2003. About the individual patent, company patent and trademark. It illustrates that if someone steal the registered trademark and use it, it could be constituted a crime to sell merchandise which is purposely to counterfeit the trademark. For example, it is banned to sell pirated discs. Furthermore, it is illegal to use the trademark which is registered by others. Apart from the prospective of law, behaviour like plagiarism might make the person suffer the inner condemnation from their heart, when the person copies the work of others, the person might feel fear because it is illegal, then, when the work is completed, and the person might feel a virtual sense of accomplishment. However, if other people mentioned this work, the person also feel fear and guilty. From the point of society, if the act of plagiarism is found, the person would not be welcome and accept by society, and regarded as not honest person.