As a Writing Center tutor and instructor of first-year composition and research writing classes, I often deal with cases of unintended plagiarism. Most students who commit this “crime” do not do so because they are intent on stealing someone’s work, but because they don’t grasp the concept behind citation.
Two recent readings may help me explain the concept in a simple way. Siva Vaidhyanathan, in his book Copyrights and Copywrongs, writes about the idea/expression dichotomy. According to Vaidhyanathan, copyright law is based on the notion that ideas and their expression are two different things. The principle is that ideas belong to all, but the expression of those ideas is protected.
Though copyright is different than plagiarism, the concepts behind them are similar. If a student writes a paper arguing that the school curriculum should be changed, he may do so without worrying that others who have made similar arguments will accuse him or her of plagiarising the concept. That is because ideas, once they are spoken, belong in the common domain. If, on the other hand, that student expresses the idea the same way as another writer (whether word-for-word or in a paraphrase), he needs to give credit to the source of that expression.
Another way to explain the notion of crediting sources is through a file sharing analogy. Danielle Nicole DeVoss and James E. Porter, in their article Why Napster Matters to Writing: Filesharing As a New Ethic of Digital Delivery, point out that peer-to-peer file sharing of music has always credited sources. The fact that a piece of music is authored by a certain group or artist is what makes the file so valuable There is never an attempt to take credit for the work, and the original artist is always given credit.
Thanks for the nice citation and thoughtful words.
I actually think of copyright infringement and plagiarism as distinct and often contradictory sins.
One may infringe while avoiding plagiarizing, as with the Napster example above. One may plagiarize without infringing, as when one rephrases a concept and claims it without granting credit.
We often conflate infringement and plagiarism. And it’s a shame. Copyright infringement is a complex legal concept — a matter of civil law (and sometimes criminal law). Plagiarism is purely an ethical abrogation — an offense against the norms of a discursive community. Thus is it policed by and within that community.
The idea/expression dichotomy makes it clear that plagiarism and infringement have almost no intersections.