Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s written work and passing it off as your own or not giving due credit to the author of the work. It is considered stealing and that’s why plagiarism is wrong.
As a student, however, it’s often easy to get into the temptation of wanting to copy other people’s work, especially when coming up with your own content becomes a tough task. But does that justify plagiarism?
Plagiarism is unethical for three reasons.
- Firstly, it is unethical because it is a form of theft. By taking the ideas and words of others without their consent and pretending they are your own, you are stealing someone else’s intellectual property.
- Secondly, it is unethical because the plagiarizer subsequently benefits from this theft.
- Thirdly, once something is published, it is assumed to have copyright protection. That means that whoever wrote and published it owns the copyright to it. This is similar to a patent. How would you feel if something you designed was licensed to someone else and they reaped the benefits of it?
No doubt some students do cheat. They deliberately take the results of other people’s hard work; use it to gain credit for themselves, mostly because they find it hard to develop their own content. But if you are one of those students who are finding it hard to come up with their own content, you don’t need to copy others. We’ve got you covered.
