History MediaNotes / Plagiarism

A big reason for the misconceptions surrounding plagiarism is the tendency to confuse it with UsefulNotes/{{copyright}} infringement. While they often occur hand in hand, they're not the same thing. Copyright refers to an artist's right to make money from the work, and if you're making money from someone else's work without their permission, they can sue you to recover the money and stop you from doing it. Plagiarism is an ''ethical'' consideration; rather than a question of who makes money from the work, it's a question of who deserves artistic credit for it. It's true that they share certain elements in determining whether they have occurred (how similar the story elements are, whether permission was given, whether it's clearly a parody, ''etc.''), but the consequences are different.

Copyright law includes protections such as UsefulNotes/FairUse for parodies and homages that don't require direct permission from the copyright holder. That said, in some circles it's still considered unethical to do so without some degree of permission from the original author. This is exactly what artists like Music/WeirdAlYankovic do; although they might legally be allowed to write their parodies without permission from the copyright holder, they might seek the artist's permission anyway as a courtesy and acknowledgement of who deserves the original credit (not that it stops most of them from making a parody when permission is refused).

Many people are introduced to the concept of plagiarism in academia; however, academic works and literary works have very different ends, so plagiarism as we define it here tends to have more serious consequences in academia than it does in art (where [[https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html copyright infringement]] is the heavy hitter). In school, it is considered intellectually dishonest to use someone else's work and pass it off as your own because you're being ''judged'' on it; you're getting a grade for how well you write, how well you can organize and formulate your ideas, and how good your conclusions are, so if you're copying from someone else, you're not being judged on your own merits. The consequences for a student caught plagiarizing in college are serious and often include expulsion. And in research, it's considered bad form to use too many of your own ideas anyway; citation is a way of telling the reader, "I didn't pull this out of thin air; other people have said it first, and I'm just reporting what they're saying." In other words, plagiarism is bad in that respect because it asks the reader to trust that you're a genius who knows everything. Students and researchers who are aware of this occasionally suffer from "plagiarism paranoia", or the idea that they haven't cited their work enough to avoid accusations of plagiarism. As a general rule, a well-researched academic paper should look like it has a severe case of FootnoteFever, each assertion of fact having a note that tells exactly where the reader can look up the source for themselves. Some disciplines, like ethnography, mandate that the practitioner report on defined activities at a study site; you would think that ''there'' you can assert facts ''ex nihilo'', but in fact you should keep meticulous records of what you see and hear, again to preserve your credibility.

We also don't like people copying and pasting text from Wikipedia or other sites to TV Tropes, partly out of plagiarism concerns; it's considered bad form to just lift something from elsewhere and pass it off as our own work. TV Tropes has its own style, and we encourage Tropers to write about that information in that style in their own words, even if you can find the exact same information elsewhere.

->''Plagiarize''\\
''Let no one else's work evade your eyes''\\
''Remember why the good Lord made your eyes''\\
''So don't shade your eyes''\\
''But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize --''\\
''Only be sure always to call it please "research".''

Plagiarism is when you take another person's work and try to pass it off as your own. In academia, the definition tends to be more technical -- it's when you discuss another person's facts or theories without properly citing them, which is tantamount to passing them off as your own. Around here, though, we're more concerned with literary plagiarism -- ''i.e.'', taking another person's creative work (or parts thereof) and passing it off as your own.

Literary plagiarism is often used as a plot point, as described in our trope on the subject, PlagiarismInFiction. However, this Useful Note will attempt to dispel some of the misconceptions people have about plagiarism in real life. Not all plagiarism is the same, and it's rare to encounter "blatant plagiarism", or the exact text copy-pasted from another work but passed off as one's own. There are many different, subtler ways to plagiarize, and many more different ways to skirt that line but not cross it.

''Franchise/StarWars'' is a good illustration of this. A story about a FarmBoy who rescues a princess and destroys the BigBad's DoomsdayDevice is not necessarily plagiarism ''if'' the rest of it is sufficiently different from ''Star Wars''. The characters, story beats, settings, and dialogue could all serve on a unique take on the same story -- all you could say in that respect is that both works use the same {{trope}}s. And indeed, Creator/GeorgeLucas did exactly this in creating ''Star Wars'' himself; the work is a GenreThrowback and borrows a lot of its tropes and conventions from old Franchise/FlashGordon serials and Creator/AkiraKurosawa films.

Finally, a [[SatireParodyPastiche parody]] is the hardest to defend against accusations of plagiarism, because parodies tend to lift as much as they can from the source material to make fun of it. Internet parodies in particular disclaim their claim to the original work and will often point out the real rights holder in an IDoNotOwn sort of way. ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' and [[FollowTheLeader its imitators]] do this OnceAnEpisode, codifying the convention for TheAbridgedSeries, which tend to lift the clips and some dialogue directly from the source work. On TV or film, a parody generally has a sufficiently different plot and dialogue to technically count as a different work.

[[RearrangeTheSong Remixing]] ''can'' be considered plagiarism, if it's done poorly enough that the song isn't changed in any appreciable way, or if it's done without permission and for financial benefit. But it's difficult for a remix to be so similar to the original as to be plagiarism; many remixes will change instruments, rhythm, which bits loop, and other elements so as to be distinct from the original.

The musical version of an homage is where artist Alan chooses to be an {{expy}} of second artist Bob's appearance or style; it's generally not considered plagiarism, unless Alan claims to have invented that appearance or style himself and it's such an exact copy as to be no different from the original.

There is a very slight gradient here--while still potential copyright infringement and plagiarism, tracing from a photograph of something the photographer doesn't have copyright of (say, a building, an animal, or a human) is considered slightly less gauche than tracing somebody else's artwork--'''slightly'''. Of course, in the infamous case of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Land#Plagiarism_accusations Greg Land]], tracing from porn in a non-porn work drove the gauche factor into the stratosphere.

A big reason for the misconceptions surrounding plagiarism is the tendency to confuse it with [[UsefulNotes/{{Copyright}} copyright infringement]]. While they often occur hand-in-hand, they're not the same thing. Copyright refers to an artist's right to make money from the work, and if you're making money from someone else's work without their permission, they can sue you to recover the money and stop you from doing it. Plagiarism is an ''ethical'' consideration; rather than a question of who makes money from the work, it's a question of who deserves artistic credit for it. It's true that they share certain elements in determining whether they have occurred (how similar the story elements are, whether permission was given, whether it's clearly a parody, ''etc.''), but the consequences are different.

The difference is even if you acknowledge that the work isn't yours or copy someone else unwittingly (and thus avoid technically plagiarizing), you could still be committing copyright infringement if you don't have permission from the holder. Going back to the ''Film/AFistfulOfDollars'' example above, Leone plagiarized Kurosawa because he never acknowledged he was copying from him; Kurosawa successfully ''sued'' Leone for copyright infringement because he never asked for permission or paid for the rights. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to plagiarize without committing copyright infringement if you're copying a work in the public domain; while publishing a play copied from a Creator/WilliamShakespeare anthology is not copyright infringement, it is plagiarism if you try to pass off Shakespeare's writing as your own.

(Note that the above paragraphs don't apply if your jurisdiction recognises [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights "moral rights"]]; with these, there is a greater possibility that a broader spectrum or even ''all'' cases of plagiarism will be punished as copyright infringement, as moral rights protect ''non''-economic interests - they are the personality rights as specific to the author, and they protect, among others, the right to be credited to one's work, which is the most important right in this case. In other cases, doctrines such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity substantial similarity]] in the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates may apply here.)

Many people are introduced to the concept of plagiarism in academia; however, academic works and literary works have very different ends, so plagiarism as it is defined here tends to have more serious consequences in academia than it does in art (where [[https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html copyright infringement]] is the heavy hitter). In school, it is considered intellectually dishonest to use someone else's work and pass it off as your own because you're being ''judged'' on it; you're getting a grade for how well you write, how well you can organize and formulate your ideas, and how good your conclusions are, so if you're copying from someone else, you're not being judged on your own merits. The consequences for a student caught plagiarizing in college are serious and often include expulsion. And in research, it's considered bad form to use too many of your own ideas anyway; citation is a way of telling the reader, "I didn't pull this out of my ass; other people have said it first, and I'm just reporting what they're saying." In other words, plagiarism is bad in that respect because it asks the reader to trust that you're a genius who knows everything. Students and researchers who are aware of this occasionally suffer from "plagiarism paranoia", or the idea that they haven't cited their work enough to avoid accusations of plagiarism. As a general rule, a well-researched academic paper should look like it has a severe case of FootnoteFever, each assertion having a note that tells exactly where the reader can look up the source for themselves.

In artistic endeavors, though, creativity is encouraged and rewarded. People like to see artists come up with things from whole cloth; they're there for enjoyment and entertainment more than for science and future citation. Plagiarism is thus an ethical consideration; if you pass off someone else's work as your own, you're covering up your own deficiencies as an artist and taking credit for someone else's accomplishment. The problem here is that it's difficult to define originality in art, as everything is based on what came before, so it's impossible to create something that nobody's seen before. If nothing else, almost all the {{trope}}s will have been used elsewhere in a previous work somewhere, and JustForFun/TheTropelessTale is generally accepted to be impossible. So, if you're worried about plagiarism, just remember to provide credit where credit is due and change enough of the original work to make it distinct. And if you're worried about unwittingly copying someone else, there's a great line from Creator/CSLewis:

%% No, seriously -- Don't add any examples.

Literary plagiarism is often used as a plot point, as described in our trope on the subject, PlagiarismInFiction. However, this Useful Note will attempt to dispel some of the misconceptions people have about plagiarism in real life. Not all plagiarism is the same, and it's rare to encounter "blatant plagiarism", or the exact text copy-pasted from another work but passed off as one's own. There are many different, more subtle ways to plagiarize, and many more different ways to skirt that line but not cross it.

''Franchise/StarWars'' is a good illustration of this. A story about a farmboy who rescues a princess and destroys the BigBad's DoomsdayDevice is not necessarily plagiarism ''if'' the rest of it is sufficiently different from ''Star Wars''. The characters, story beats, settings, and dialogue could all serve on a unique take on the same story -- all you could say in that respect is that both works make use of the same {{trope}}s. And indeed, Creator/GeorgeLucas did exactly this in creating ''Star Wars'' himself; the work is a GenreThrowback and borrows a lot of its tropes and conventions from old Franchise/FlashGordon serials and Creator/AkiraKurosawa films.

A ShoutOut is generally the least controversial; it's only a brief reference to another work that rarely lasts longer than a couple of seconds. A ShoutOut is not plagiarism because it's clear from the context that the person knows the reference is not his but wants to acknowledge what came before. This allows a ShoutOut to be directly lifted from the source work (the exact same line, blocking, facial expressions, scenario, ''etc.'').

An {{homage}} is more difficult to defend; in general, it will use imagery and ideas from the original material, but with sufficient differences as to be its own work. This lets the viewer easily see that the work is influenced by what has come before. For example, the fifth installment of Creator/StephenKing's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series sees the heroes defending a town from raiders who attack every so often, a WholePlotReference to both ''Film/SevenSamurai'' and ''[[Film/TheMagnificentSeven1960 The Magnificent Seven]]''. But the characters were original, the setting and the raiders were largely the product of King's own imagination (with numerous {{shout out}}s), and the series itself [[LampshadeHanging acknowledged the similarity]].

A [[TheRemake remake]] or "retelling" is more explicitly the exact same work, but done by a different person in his own way. The way to get away with this is to be open about your intentions, and to seek permission from the original author. A famous example of a retelling that works is John Sturges' ''[[Film/TheMagnificentSeven1960 The Magnificent Seven]]'', which had the same plot and even some of the same dialogue as Akira Kurosawa's earlier ''Film/SevenSamurai'' -- the only real difference is that while Kurosawa's film was set in feudal Japan, Sturges' was set in TheWildWest. It wasn't plagiarism because Kurosawa knew what Sturges was doing and gave his approval, and Sturges never pretended it was his; he openly acknowledged that he was simply moving ''Seven Samurai'' to the Old West. Compare this to Creator/SergioLeone's ''Film/AFistfulOfDollars'', which is a frame-for-frame remake of Kurosawa's ''Film/{{Yojimbo}}'' but set in Texas. When Kurosawa saw the film, he wrote to Leone, "It is a very fine film, but it is my film."

Hiring a {{ghostwriter}} could be considered a marginal example, as in that case the ghostwriter has contractually agreed (and hopefully been [[MoneyDearBoy paid a fair wage]]) to let you pass off their writing as your own. So while that might still be a bit dubious in terms of taking credit for someone else’s work,[[note]]Some ghostwriters do receive a credit as "coauthor" or "with assistance from" or similar, but even that can be disproportionate to their actual writing contributions[[/note]] it’s at least above board since the ghostwriter gave permission for it.

Conversely, it can fall into dubious territory if an original song has too much in common with an existing one, as Music/GeorgeHarrison learned the hard way when his song "My Sweet Lord" was found to be so closely identical to The Chiffons' earlier hit "He's So Fine" that a court ruled he had to split his royalties with them. In an extra bit of ParanoiaFuel for songwriters, Harrison claimed he had never intended to rip off the Chiffons' tune, making it a case of what was called "subconscious plagiarism." [[note]]To make matters even more complicated, both songs are strongly similar to the [[GospelMusic Christian gospel song]] "Oh Happy Day", which is PublicDomain and which Harrison ''did'' acknowledge as an influence, but this wasn't found to be legally relevant.[[/note]]

The musical version of an homage is where the artist chooses to be an {{expy}} of another artist's appearance or style; it's generally not considered plagiarism, unless the artist claims to have invented that appearance or style himself and it's such an exact copy as to be no different from the original.

True actionable musical plagiarism generally arises from not crediting samples or remixes, ''entirely'' mimicking someone else without any of the above-mentioned defenses, lifting musical passages or lyrics note-for-note without permission or credit and claiming them to be your own (''e.g.'' if you claim you personally wrote the guitar solo in [[Music/VanHalen "Eruption"]] or the lyrics to [[Music/JohnLennon "Imagine"]]), or giving your band or act the exact same name as another one.

There is a very slight gradient here--while still potential copyright infringement and plagiarism, tracing from a photograph of something the photographer doesn't have copyright of (say, a building, an animal, or a human) is considered slightly less gauche than tracing somebody else's artwork--'''slightly'''. Of course, in the famous case of Greg Land, tracing from porn in a non-porn work drove the gauche factor into the stratosphere.

Copyright law includes protections such as UsefulNotes/FairUse for parodies and homages that don't require direct permission from the copyright holder. That said, in some circles it's still considered unethical to do so without some degree of permission from the original author. This is exactly what artists like Music/WeirdAlYankovic do; although they might legally be allowed to write their parodies without permission from the copyright holder, they might seek the artist's permission anyway as a courtesy and acknowledgement of who deserves the original credit (not that it's stopped them from making a parody when permission is refused).

(Note that the above paragraphs don't apply if your jurisdiction recognises [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights "moral rights"]]; with these, there is a greater possibility that a broader spectrum or even ''all'' cases of plagiarism will be punished as copyright infringement, as moral rights protect ''non''-economic interests - they are the personality rights as specific to the author, and they protect, among others, the right to be credited to one's work, which is the most important right in this case. In other cases, doctrines such as the U.S.'s [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity substantial similarity]] may apply here.)

Many people are introduced to the concept of plagiarism in academia; however, academic works and literary works have very different ends, so plagiarism as it is defined here tends to have more serious consequences in academia than it does in art (where [[https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html copyright infringement]] is the heavy hitter). In school, it is considered intellectually dishonest to use someone else's work and pass it off as your own because you're being ''judged'' on it; you're getting a grade for how well you write, how well you can organize and formulate your ideas, and how good your conclusions are, so if you're copying from someone else, you're not being judged on your own merits. The consequences for a student caught plagiarizing in college are serious and often include expulsion. And in research, it's considered bad form to use too many of your own ideas anyway; citation is a way of telling the reader, "I didn't pull this out of my ass; other people have said it first, and I'm just reporting what they're saying." In other words, plagiarism is bad in that respect because it asks the reader to trust that you're a genius who knows everything. Students and researchers who are aware of this occasionally suffer from "plagiarism paranoia", or the idea that they haven't cited their work enough to avoid accusations of plagiarism. As a general rule, a well-researched academic paper should look like it has a severe case of FootnoteFever, each assertion having a note that tells exactly where the reader can look up the source for themself.

In artistic endeavors, though, creativity is encouraged and rewarded. People like to see artists come up with things from whole cloth; they're there for enjoyment and entertainment more than for science and future citation. Plagiarism is thus an ethical consideration; if you pass off someone else's work as your own, you're covering up your own deficiencies as an artist and taking credit for someone else's accomplishment. The problem here is that it's difficult to define originality in art, as everything is based on what came before, so it's impossible to create something that nobody's seen before. If nothing else, almost all the {{trope}}s will have been used elsewhere in a previous work somewhere, and JustForFun/TheTropelessTale is generally accepted to be impossible. So if you're worried about plagiarism, just remember to provide credit where credit is due and change enough of the original work to make it distinct. And if you're worried about unwittingly copying someone else, there's a great line from Creator/CSLewis:

!!Plagiarism, citation, and Website/ThisVeryWiki

Conversely, it can fall into dubious territory if an original song has too much in common with an existing one, as Music/GeorgeHarrison learned the hard way when his song "My Sweet Lord" was found to be so closely identical to The Chiffons' earlier hit "He's So Fine" that a court ruled he had to split his royalties with them. In an extra bit of ParanoiaFuel for songwriters, Harrison claimed he had never intended to rip off the Chiffons' tune, making it a case of what was called "subconscious plagiarism."

Plagiarism Checker site : https://pltext.com/

!!Plagiarism, citation, and Wiki/ThisVeryWiki

Here on Wiki/TVTropes, we are (kind of) a creative endeavor, and so there is work you can do as a Troper to avoid accusations of plagiarism yourself. That said, we're not exactly making a literary work here; many of our requirements are for academic reasons or to avoid copyright infringement.

We don't require formal citations like Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} does in the middle of the article. But that's because when you're writing a trope example and you link to the work it appears in, that link acts as a citation in and of itself. It tells the reader that if he reads/watches/listens to the work, he'll find what you describe. This is why we like better outside citations to certain RealLife examples and why we don't accept examples from DarthWiki/UnpublishedWorks on trope pages; the former doesn't point to something specific to look for, while the latter is not a citation because the work doesn't exist for anyone to verify the trope's existence. That said, you'll find a lot of uncited real-life examples and whole essays done in a conversational rather than academic style here, which might be fun to read but not necessarily {{useful|notes}}.

Many people are introduced to the concept of plagiarism in academia; however, academic works and literary works have very different ends, so plagiarism as it is defined here tends to have more serious consequences in academia than it does in art (where [[https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html copyright infringement]] is the heavy hitter). In school, it is considered intellectually dishonest to use someone else's work and pass it off as your own because you're being ''judged'' on it; you're getting a grade for how well you write, how well you can organize and formulate your ideas, and how good your conclusions are, so if you're copying from someone else, you're not being judged on your own merits. The consequences for a student caught plagiarizing in college are serious and often include expulsion. And in research, it's considered bad form to use too many of your own ideas anyway; citation is a way of telling the reader, "I didn't pull this out of my ass; other people have said it first, and I'm just reporting what they're saying." In other words, plagiarism is bad in that respect because it asks the reader to trust that you're a genius who knows everything. Students and researchers who are aware of this occasionally suffer from "plagiarism paranoia", or the idea that they haven't cited their work enough to avoid accusations of plagiarism.