Plagiarism, Law, and Ethics
Law may not be able to "catch" all those who plagiarize; but it is a question of personal integrity to acknowledge all the sources. Acknowledgment of sources is not necessarily a matter of commerce, or a matter of satisfying the ego of the original author; it is simply a matter of personal integrity of the individual, who uses the sources. Not all plagiarists are or will be caught and hauled before the courts and duly penalized; but one has to live with the knowledge of personal integrity. It is not uncommon not to be able to prove, before the court, one has plagiarized. Many will go in life, unaffected and perhaps, will flourish in their professional life. The rule of thumb indicates that corrosiveness of "small time" plagiarism leads to large scale cheating, and eventual "big time" downfall. Integrity cannot be legislated; if legislated, cannot be effectively enforced. The standards of personal ethics (or ought to be) are much higher than organizational and corporate ethics; these in turn are much higher than the standards of law. Recently, in a high profile case, Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code and two other authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh battled unsuccessfully in British Courts. Baigent and Leigh accused Brown of having "lifted the whole architecture." Basilio Monteiro -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/attachments/20070321/226f1640/attachment.html
