by: Michael Southon

About two weeks ago I received an article submission that
immediately attracted my attention. The title was identical to the
title of an article I wrote and which was published in 'WebProNews'
in May 1999.

"Probably just a coincidence", I thought to myself, and kept
reading. But the first paragraph stopped me in my tracks. It was
quite clearly plagiarized from my article. As I kept reading I
recognized sentence after sentence that had been lifted from my
article and then modified slightly.
The whole article was plagiarized. I could hardly believe it. As the
English say, I was 'gob-smacked'.
What Is Plagiarism?

'Plagiarism' comes from the Latin word 'plagiarius', a kidnapper.
Here are two dictionary definitions of plagiarism:
'[to] take (the work or idea of someone else) and pass it off as
one's own' (Concise Oxford Dictionary, Third Edition, 1999).
'to appropriate ideas, passages etc. from another work or author'
(Collins Dictionary of the English Language, ed. P. Hanks 1979).
Plagiarism can be done in many ways, but the most common technique
is to paraphrase someone else's words.
Here's an example:
Original:

"And if you've matched the ezine to the product you're selling,
you've reached your target audience."
Plagiarized version:
"If you have correctly matched the ezine or newsletter to the
product you're selling, then you will have reached your target
audience."

As you can see, the plagiarist has simply taken the original and
then replaced the phrase 'you've matched' with the phrase 'you have
correctly matched', inserted the words 'or newsletter', and replaced
the word 'you've' with the words 'then you will have'.
Part of the reason that plagiarism is so rampant on the Internet is
that many people genuinely believe that it's okay to take someone
else's writing, make a few changes, and then present it as their
own.

Is Plagiarism a Crime?
As far as I know plagiarism is not a crime in most countries, and
this is probably because plagiarism is so difficult to define. How
many words does a plagiarist have to substitute and rearrange before
the copied version ceases to be a copy of the original?
This is why plagiarism is much more difficult to deal with than
copyright theft. A copyright thief simply steals your work,
lock-stock-and-barrel. A plagiarist steals your work and disguises
it as their own.

But while plagiarism may not be a crime, it is heavily sanctioned in
professions that are based on the written word. I know of one
professor of sociology who lost his job almost overnight because he
plagiarized someone else's work. And in journalism the consequences
of being exposed as a plagiarist would be the same.
Unfortunately, internet plagiarism is flourishing. There's now a
whole industry that supplies college students with 'model' term
papers for the purpose of plagiarism. Here are just some of the
websites that are part of this industry:
School Sucks http://www.schoolsucks.com/
Other People's Papers http://www.oppapers.com/
Evil House of Cheat http://www.cheathouse.com/
But the plagiarism industry has spawned another industry: websites
and software designed to detect plagiarism. One such software was
developed by turnitin.com (www.turnitin.com) and plagiarism.org
(www.plagiarism.org).

This is how it works: the software makes a 'digital fingerprint' of
a submitted document using an elaborate set of algorithms. That
fingerprint is then checked against a database that contains over 1
billion publicly-available web pages. Plagiarism.org then produces
an 'originality report' that gives the user an index of how original
the submitted paper was, and whether it falls above or below the
'plagiarism threshold'.
This software, however - while an excellent tool for college
professors - probably wouldn't help writers find out if their work
has been plagiarized.
What Can You Do About It?

The Internet is so vast, chances are you wouldn't know if someone
had plagiarized your work. I only discovered that my work had been
plagiarized because the 'author' sent his plagiarized article to me
for publication in my own newsletter.
But if you do discover that someone has plagiarized one of your
articles, you could do what I did.

I immediately contacted the author of the 'article' and requested
that he email everyone to whom he had sent the article, explaining
that it was plagiarized, and that they should on no account publish
it. I added that if he did not withdraw the article from circulation
I would contact his web host and the moderators of any lists that
distributed the article.

The author replied within a few hours and admitted that the
similarity between the 2 articles was "VERY uncanny". He said he had
no idea "how they could be so similar". But after a few emails, he
did withdraw the article.

In a way, it's a compliment when someone plagiarizes your work: it
means you're writing good stuff. But that's little consolation. If
you make your living from writing on the Internet, plagiarism could
be the greatest threat to your livelihood.


(c) 2001 by Michael Southon
About The Author

Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to get massive free publicity and
dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find
out more: http://www.ezine-writer.com