What makes plagiarism a wrong thing to do?

First of all, when we steal someone else’s ideas and pass them off as our own without giving them credit, we are engaging in plagiarism, which is wrong.

And secondly, by taking other people’s ideas and qualifying them as our own, we are benefiting from this.

Plagiarism is deemed unacceptable because:

• You are depriving the content’s author of credit.
• By engaging in this behavior, you are taking advantage of other people’s labor
• You are degrading your level of academic integrity.

If you’re plagiarizing, you’re doing yourself a disservice because you’re tarnishing your reputation as a student, which could get you suspended or expelled. 

You are also destroying your professional and academic reputation because you will encounter problems during your career and you will not be able to develop your career as you thought. 

And you, in committing plagiarism, can face monetary and legal consequences that will cost you more than the time to write an article based on your ideas.

Plagiarism will also hinder your flow in the learning process. By taking each of your tasks ready, you will not be able to develop your ideas. Ignoring your ideas and taking ready-made ideas harms you in the process of academic development.

Educational institutions let students know why plagiarism is bad and why you are not allowed to use it in the process of your creation. None of the academic institutions encourages plagiarism, as shown by the following arguments:

1. Your work is not original
2. It is considered theft
3. It risks your career
4. Academic integrity decreases
5. It destroys your reputation and trust
6. It is not ethical

Your work is not original

Your ideas and thoughts are required in each of your creations. If you don’t include your ideas and you’re getting ready-made ideas, your paper will have no value. If you must include ideas, you should cite them and present where they came from, showing them in your own words. 

And if your work is based on other people’s ideas, you’ll feel deprived of advice and criticism because it’s based on someone else’s work and not your own.

It is considered theft

Plagiarism, as we said, is also a form of stealing someone else’s work, but in specific cases, it is considered illegal when it violates copyright and you can face the law. 

We have specific cases when people have faced the law and were imprisoned when they committed plagiarism, for example. 

The Deputy Prime Minister of Delhi University in India Deepak Pental was imprisoned as a result of the accusation that he had plagiarized the research of his colleague. On the other hand, a Polish professor received three years in prison for plagiarizing a book according to the national copyright law.

Read also: What is self-plagiarism?

So, the permissibility of plagiarized content in your creations is zero and will penalize you as a person. You should avoid plagiarism to avoid facing the law and the consequences of plagiarism.

It risk your career

During the process of your work, if you are involved or caught in plagiarism, it can have a terrible impact on building your career. In the past, it was probably harder to get caught plagiarizing, but not now.

It is now very easy to find out if you have plagiarized through plagiarism detectors like Crossplag. Plagiarism in your work will be highlighted once your document is uploaded to the platform.

Academic institutions can very easily detect plagiarized content in your work by uploading your work to a plagiarism detection platform.

If you as a student are plagiarizing, you are putting your education at risk because you could be suspended or even expelled.

If you’ve been cited for plagiarism once, it can follow you throughout your career.

You will not be able to develop your career because any employer can research you and get information that you have plagiarized at one time. This can become a hindrance in your academic career.

Academic integrity decreases

If you include plagiarism in your creation, it will lower your academic integrity. When you qualify for something through plagiarism, it is considered fraud for your readers, colleagues, or professor. 

To have a good academic level and not ruin it, you must be sincere, honest, and ethical in your creations. You must completely avoid deception and work sincerely on your ideas.

Also, when you get a degree through plagiarism, it does not represent you or your abilities as a person. This will not only lower your values as a person but will also damage your educational values.

It destroy your reputation and trust

As we said, plagiarism can badly affect your reputation if you are caught plagiarizing your creations.

As a consequence of plagiarism, your people like peers, colleagues, professors, and work staff will probably have suspicions of plagiarism in your creations if this has happened before. 

You may find yourself being monitored or interrogated from time to time, which can also happen during tests. None of us would like this phenomenon, so the best way to not be in this situation would be to avoid plagiarism as much as possible.

It is not ethical

Plagiarism is improper and immoral. It is unethical because in one form or another you are stealing someone else’s ideas without giving credit for them. 

Why exactly is it so immoral?

Because you are taking credit from someone else’s work and qualifying for it, you are simply deceiving an entire audience by making them think that these are your creations and merits. 

It is also not ethical when you are violating the academic integrity and intellectual property of someone else, through this unethical violation you will bear the consequences that may cost you.

Is plagiarism illegal?

Basically, plagiarism is not illegal or a crime. In fact, plagiarism is more like a violation of moral ethics.

Plagiarism is taking the original ideas or creations of others and appropriating them as your own without giving credit to the respective author.

When you are committing theft, it is known as an ethical violation of copyright, these violations can be fined according to the level of plagiarism.

Plagiarism is more commonly referred to as ‘copying’ or ‘cheating’ and can happen intentionally or unintentionally. The consequences for this start from lowering the grade in college, suspension/expulsion to a fine.

Plagiarism can also be a failure to cite when you fail to cite the author of that material.

So in general, through plagiarism, you are only violating the ethical norm of an author.

What is copyright?

Copyright is the intellectual property that protects the original works of that author. Let’s say that it is more or less a kind of status that is given to the author when creating a work.

Copyrighted materials are mainly literary, artistic, and musical creations defined by copyright law. But copyright protection is also limited, usually lasting 50 years or more.

You commit copyright infringement when you republish an entire creation or participate in that creation without the permission of the respective owner.

You might be interested in: Why is academic integrity so important?

Through legal procedures, your creation can be banned or even rejected if it contains plagiarism and you have violated the copyright.

The law for the protection of copyright differs depending on the state, we will present the law for the protection of copyright in:

• UK
• Germany
• France

The difference between plagiarism and copyright

Although they may seem the same to some, copyright and plagiarism are fundamentally different.

The main differences between plagiarism and copyright are

• Copyright is a legal subject
• Plagiarism is about ethical skepticism.
• Copyright protects work and intellectual property
• Copyright is based on production material and not on ideas or information
• Plagiarism involves similar ideas and thoughts, that is when you pass off someone else’s ideas and works without giving credit.
• Plagiarism violates the ethical norm but does not contain illegality in itself.

Some plagiarism and copyright infringement means the reproduction of a work.

In the case where plagiarism infringes copyright, in fact, it is an ethical violation and can be classified as illegal when it is actually copyright infringement and not plagiarism in substance.

Plagiarized concepts are not protected by copyright. So plagiarism is a broader form of copyright infringement and is punishable. But copyright can be specifically specified as an act of plagiarism. This refers to the use of copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder.

Law for the protection of copyright in the UK

Copyright protects your work by preventing others from using it without your permission.

In the UK, copyright automatically belongs to you when you create an original work and you don’t have to apply or pay tax for copyright protection.

• Copyright belongs to you immediately when you create
• Original literary work (including photos)
• Original non-literary works (such as software or databases)
• Original artwork
• Television productions (films, programs)

When you create an original work, you must include your name, year of publication, and copyright symbol. But that doesn’t affect if you don’t present it, the copyright belongs to you even if you wrote it or not.

Law for the protection of copyright in Germany

German law protects copyright equally for all rights holders. It does not matter if a person has violated copyright or moral rights under German law.

German law protects:

• Literary works (whether written on paper or computer programs)
• Musical & artistic works
• Mimic works (including dance works)
• Photographic and cinematographic works
• Scientific work.

The law also mentions the author’s right, giving the author the right to exploit the work, including:

• The right of reproduction
• Distribution
• Of exposure
• The right of public performance
• The right to broadcast and
• The right to publish and use derivative works.

In addition to these, German copyright law also protects moral rights. 

It specifically protects the right of publication, the right to be recognized as a worthy author of the work, and prevents the damage that can be caused to the work, according to which the intellectual property of the author is endangered.

Law for the protection of copyright in France

French copyright law protects it as a representation of the author’s personality and is protected by a certain number of copyrights.

According to French law, the author has the right to have his name, status, and work respected.

French law protects these rights:

• Right of publication (only the corresponding author can decide when his work will be published)
• Right of attribution (the author has the right to indicate his name and authorship)
• The right to respect the academic integrity of the work (the author has the right to prevent modification of his work)
• Right of withdrawal (the author can stop the reproduction, use, or distribution of his work and demand monetary compensation for damages caused to the work)

Moral rights under French law are permanent and inviolable. These rights pass to the heirs of the author after his death and cannot be sold or transferred to other persons who are not the heirs of the author. 

Any insistence on the waiver of moral rights is void and disregarded by French copyright laws. But the author is not obliged to protect moral rights and can use the rights to stay away from their exercise.

Conclusion

In reality, stealing intellectual property is also an improper act that violates academic integrity and violates the moral right of the author.

Many students engage in plagiarism as a result of the short time to submit their creations. But professors say a late submission is better than a plagiarized one.

You are evaluated and represented as a student through the ideas displayed in your creations, it is good for everyone to work hard with their ideas to represent themselves worthily.

As we said above, plagiarism is a broader form of copyright infringement and is punishable.

But copyright can be specifically specified as an act of plagiarism. Academic dishonesty is a topic of concern for everyone, all institutions deal with it.

Your works are checked for plagiarism and if plagiarism is found in them, you will bear the consequences.

Also, every country has a law on copyright and morals that are protected and if someone violates it, they face consequences that are known to be unpleasant for people who have committed plagiarism.

Finally, try to create original works even if they are not unique, when using external materials, specify them in quotation marks, be careful not to violate copyright, and always check your work at the end through a plagiarism detector (eg. Crossplag).