Introduction
Currently, the renowned form of corruption that degrades the efforts of man in the search and quest to discover novel things and innovatively new ideas is plagiarism. Instead of forging ahead, the hard work of human beings has been downtrodden by the shortest routes that human beings try to pursue to get things done, plagiarizing. As human beings move backward to the dark ages, plagiarism could be embedded as the main course of the ensuing problems which will never permit beings to advance and become successful (Mirow, n.d.). Therefore, given the nature of the crime committed to plagiarizing, there are two sides that individuals and groups need to defend themselves against:
- From producers, editors, and authors believing that their works have been plagiarized through what has been published, and
- Personal authors who become upset by the acts assumed when it is apparent that the undertaken assignment is plagiarized.
This paper examines four legal aspects that concern plagiarism. The first section expounds on the differences existing between copyright breach and plagiarism. The second section deliberates on the types of plagiarism considered to be illegal. The third section highlights the permissible penalties of plagiarism and their remedies. The final section examines ways through which producers may handle the matters concerning plagiarism without encountering more hitches relating to human rights breaches, privacy, and defamation.
Differences amid copyright breaches and plagiarism
Copyright entails two procedures including ascertaining if the new work or text incorporates any copy of the previous old texts and establishing whether the copied work is deemed substantial. In this case, acknowledging the old work is considered irrelevant. However, acknowledgments might be used as a defense component in case the plagiarizer claim that the copied work served the purpose of its legalized use namely; reviews, criticisms, or non-commercial research. The authors are not permitted to copy other people’s works as they want even with acknowledgments. In fact, cases have been reported where acknowledgments persist yet the injured publishers successfully get the infringement damages since economic values have been derived by the infringers (Mallor et al., 2009).
For instance, in a case involving University Tutorial Press Ltd vs. University of London Press Ltd (1916), the magistrate asserted that anything that can be copied should prima facie be protected. This implies that acknowledgment defense is not given priority, but it should first be established that a substantial part of the old work has been copied. If this is the case, then an anomalous situation is reached where the writer of the published work might be termed a plagiarist and not necessarily a copyright infringer (Mirow, n.d.). In contrast, another writer might breach the copyright although the author is not necessarily a plagiarist due to the provision of an acknowledgment.
Plagiarism incorporates a broad scale that ranges from the documented copying of term to term to the alteration of certain words while preserving the elementary structure. This means that both arguments and concepts can be copied and the copied texts must be acknowledged. Thus, any unacknowledged work makes the copied texts to be dishonest, hence plagiarism. If an author quotes the work of another writer and offers the reference, then such an author is generally not a plagiarist.
Types of plagiarism considered illegal
The defense of fair dealing offers some fascinating insights on the extent to which copying might be legalized. Neither the United States nor the English laws proffer an outright ban on copying. Basically, the fair dealing concept in the US traces back its roots to the 1841 case that involved the copied letters of George Washington. According to Justice Story, provided a substantial part of the original work has been taken to an extent that the worth of the original work is rationally reduced and the effort of the inventive writer is reasonably shrank to an injurious level, it would be adequate based on the law to institute piracy pro-tanto (Mirow, n.d.).
Patent rights given over inventions are widely considered monopolies and this is not the case with copyrights. Usually, copyright is by far a textured and more abstruse concept that offers a balance between the individuals who are interested in the promotion of the authors’ creativities and individuals who are interested in the promotion of knowledge. Such a balance provides the broad continuum of what constitutes plagiarism, and these are subsequently discussed.
Verbatim copying
This involves copying a substantial fraction of the text which could probably add up to copyright breach. Such a case of plagiarism materializes to be on word-based copying. A clear illustration is where thirteen pages out of one-hundred-page book were verbatim copies in a single book. Another case is where an external assessor caused a doctoral scholar to fail after producing chapter four of an academic paper where the student copied verbatim.
Such cases sometimes become plain frauds since the intent to copy is to deceive (Mallor et al., 2009). The authors’ institutions are always obliged to take disciplinary actions against such fraudulent misrepresentation claims. In case the author copied but slightly altered the phrases in the original text to extent that verbatim reading depicts that there is no substantial copying of a given text, copyright infringement will not exist.
When the overall thrust of the revised text remains identical after certain words have been altered
Copying the work of another author is comparatively an infringement given that only minor alterations are made in the new text. However, it should be tested if substantial copying existed. For instance, Shakespeare used Macbeth’s ideas from the text Holinshed, yet he treated them differently to produce a dissimilar work. If academic work has been published in an article that claims some chronological history, the law tends to be slow in preventing the reworking of similar ideas. However, when the new work exhibits similar paragraphs and headings in a matching sequence with minor alterations in the wordings, copyright infringement is likely to appear (Mirow, n.d.).
When ideas are taken from a text with substantial word alterations
Words, arguments, and ideas that have been taken from a given text ought to be acknowledged. Plagiarism but not necessarily copyright infringement will materialize in case ideas have been borrowed from an academic source without any acknowledgment of the source (Mirow, n.d.). Thus, when an author uses other academic ideas while innovatively expressing them in a firsthand article, copyright will not have been infringed even when such conduct is regarded as plagiarism and unethical. Nevertheless, plagiarism has some legal effects.
Plagiarism and its legal consequences
Contractual infringements often occur if academicians forbid the conduct required in the visibly stated rules or contract for compliances that were entered into with publishers. The infringement consequences of such conduct may make the publishers cease their publications. Based on the rules of the editors and whether such guidelines were availed to the authors, any breaches might make the writer be banned from any imminent publications, the published work may be refuted, and published articles extracted from the documentations (Mallor et al., 2009). The matter can equally be referred by the publishers to the department that heads the authors so that disciplinary actions are taken against such conduct.
For example, there was a published disciplinary story carried out by the Times Higher Education Supplement. It showed that a professor who allegedly used nearly five sheets from a certain United States article in his article saw the publisher of that article pulp the academic work and institution disciplining the professor. Plagiarism can also draw us into unexpected litigations, database rights, moral rights breaches, frauds, misrepresentation as well as contractual breaches. In case copyright breaches persist, the consequences may incorporate court injunctions to stop the handing over of account of profits accruing from such wrongdoings alongside the prevention of further damages and publications (Mirow, n.d.).
Conclusion
In conclusion, therefore, it is worth noting that publishers can handle the matters concerning plagiarism without encountering more hitches relating to human rights breaches, privacy, and defamation. Allowing plagiarized work to be published may lead to the peril of libel and risk relating to the breach of the Data Protection Act. To effectively handle plagiarism allegations, the publisher may opt to use libel laws to safeguard the publication allegations (Mirow, n.d.).
A private letter may be written to senior reviewers and the department of the author to retract the journal from publication. Besides, the author may safeguard plagiarism allegations using fair comments defense. In this case, statements of facts should not be used but rather an opinion statement needs to be applied. In fact, the detection rate of plagiarism continues to escalate with the invention of new plagiarism detecting software and this will translate into tides of litigations. Publishers might be forced to incessantly face plagiarism issues but the prompt yet not precipitous handling of such claims with care might help them overcome the ensuing legal perils.
References
Mallor, J. P., Barnes, A. J., Bowers, L. T., & Langvardt, A. W. (2009). Business Law: The Ethical, Global, and E-Commerce Environment. London, UK: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Mirow, M. C. (n.d.). Plagiarism: A Workshop for Law Students. Web.