Plagiarism and Copyright Rules and Regulations

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, plagiarism is the act or instance of the stealing or passing off of the ideas or words of another as one's own or the use of another's production without crediting the source. Common types of plagiarism include copying and pasting text from the Internet, buying papers from online sources, hiring a professional writer to write a paper, and borrowing papers that someone has already written. The best way to avoid being suspected of plagiarism is to always make sure to give credit where credit is due. The only time something in a paper does not need to be cited is if the information the author is writing about is comes from his or her own life or if the information is common knowledge. There are many tips offered on The Owl at Purdue website that can help all students avoid plagiarism. A few of the tips mentioned include marking another author's words with a big Q to indicate that these words need to be in quotations, marking ideas of another author with a big S to indicate that the thoughts came from a source, summarizing text relying only on memory and notes rather than looking at the original text, and going back after completing a paper and checking to be sure that credit is given in all places where credit is due.

Copyrights are also important when discussing the works of other people. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary a copyright is the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something as a literary, musical, or artistic work. A copyright can protect both published and unpublished works. With a copyright comes many rules and regulations. Rights that come along with copyrights include the following: only the owner of the copyright can authorize the reproduction of the work, only the owner of the copyright can authorize the sell, lease, rental, or transfer of ownership of the work, and only the owner of the copyright can allow the work to be publicly displayed or performed. With a copyright in place, not following these rules and regulations is considered by the Copyright Act to be illegal.