Plagiarism in the Perspective of Ethics and Law

Abstract

Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else`s work or ideas such as papers or articles or essays without the permission of the authors and then passing them off as his or her own. Plagiarism constitutes the type of copyright crime, and it violates The Copyright Law if the object or victim is the original creative expression. From the moral and ethical view, plagiarism clearly violates the norms of society and even breaks The Law of Copyright since the plagiarists take the ideas of others without the legal permission of the owners and usually do not mention explicitly and clearly the sources of the original works. The academic environment is very susceptible with the practice of plagiarism. So it is very difficult now to overcome plagiarism or piracy which is getting more prevalent. Ethic awareness that commonly seems to be ignored in quoting the ideas or works encourages the habit of taking copyrighted material without permission. The students` awareness publishing and prioritizing their original compositions have not been any better up to now that triggers the prevalence of plagiarism among students. The students committing plagiarism usually dissemble their pirated ideas by arguing that just get inspiration from the works of others, not pirating. The globalization and modernization of the cyberspace that is getting advanced generate the prevalence of the practice of plagiarism and piracy especially in the academic environment. The highly developed cyberspace technology is commonly abused by plagiarists or anyone to ruin the originality of the academicians` works and internet users are generally facilitated to commit plagiarism and piracy upon the academicians` scientific works.