Plagiarism vs. Copyright

When you are writing and you are citing other people to support your thesis, you can cite in-text, with footnotes, or with endnotes. How you cite usually depends on your publisher. However, in that case, the document you are creating is something that is yours, and you are just using what others have researched to support your work. A citation is required whether you are directly quoting someone else or whether you are paraphrasing them. If you are directly quoting someone in your work, you must include quotation marks (as well as the citation) and you also cannot change even one misspelled word (as a general rule-- it would require a whole post to explain all the nuances so it is best to just stick to this rule of thumb). Not citing others is plagiarism.

In addition, as long as you cite others, you are reporting "facts." So, although The Da Vinci Code would have been considered plagiarism if it had been a work of non-fiction (because it didn't cite its source), since the book took plot lines from another book that purported to be non-fiction (instead of fiction), Mr. Brown was not convicted of plagiarism. Had both books been fiction, Mr. Brown probably would have had to pay the original authors for the rest of his life because of the copyright infringement.

(Plagiarism is using someone else's work and not including a citation. Copyright infringements occur when you don't get permission to use someone else's work, and this is why so many Youtubers get their videos taken down. If you are using a part of someone else's publicly posted work for educational reasons-like teaching children numbers and you don't add commercials into your video so you can make money- you are usually okay. If you are pasting an entire movie online when it doesn't already have free public access and adding in a few commercials or ads without getting permission from the copyright holder, you are definitely not okay.)

One problem with poetry and songs is that they tend to be short. In general (and I am not a copyright lawyer so please check with someone who is), 70% of anything you write needs to be yours or you cannot copyright it. In other words, you don't own it. Now, reverse that- if you are borrowing from something and you take 35% of it, you have plagiarized even if you do include a citation. In fact, if you use more than 500 verses of the NIV Bible in your book, you are breaking copyright law unless you obtain permission.

Unfortunately, the word "plagiarism" is thrown around to mean true plagiarism (not citing your source in an academic non-fiction work); copyright infringement (using someone else's work without permission); and cheating (turning in schoolwork that you did not do and claiming to have done it). These are three specific issues that need to be addressed in academic and other literary areas. They especially need to be addressed at the high school level. Many teens are accused of plagiarism when they either did not actually commit that crime or they were never taught what is acceptable and what is not.