Plagiarism is stealing a person’s ideas or writing word by word. So, things that are not one’s own, but the intellectual property of others should be put in quotation marks and tell from where the information is obtained. If this is not done, it amounts to plagiarism.
There are copyright laws to protect intellectual property. Plagiarism is punishable by fines and jail. So, even if a person did not know that he was plagiarizing, still he will be found guilty because — ignorance of law is no excuse. Therefore, it is said, “Originality is power and imitation is death.”
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But copyright laws do not protect facts that are of ‘common knowledge’ and hence they can be used freely without naming the author.
Some belong to a generation that freely mixes and matches from whirring flood of information across new and old media to create something new. Perhaps, such group could be doing some research which perhaps could lead to new unearthing. They do not cheat by saying that certain idea, in what they write, is completely original; for sometimes, some ideas may or may not be wholly, their own. Because, may be, many were picked up from long years of reading, from listening to lectures in their college days or possibly, it may be, they have kept their own library of some interesting facts which they did not deliberately used someone else’s information in their writings. Truly, their sole, sincere desire was and is to do, good to others as they communicate with the public through the radio, TV and the press.
Secondly, there is so much knowledge in the field of medicine, engineering and information technology. No individual can know everything on one’s own. One has to depend on others’ knowledge to make a discovery. “To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism but to steal ideas from many is research.”
Someone, I do not remember, said, “Nothing is original. So, pick up that fuel your imagination — that speaks directly to your soul. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams. If you do this, your work will be genuine. And genuineness is very helpful. Again, I remember the words of some wise man who said, “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to discover something new.”
Some open the eyes of many, by playing with one idea, to build up new thoughts, be it political, social or in any other field. Some ideas with high sounding words are explained in simple words, so that people of average education and those who have no time to open the dictionary can understand the true meaning of the original idea by comparing it with various ideas of different individuals.
Many use simple words, so that plain people who like little fishes who cannot talk like big whales understand the difficult idea and sketch new pictures. This is how some sail with the art of writing in the world of print. If different ideas from several writers are not digested with various other thoughts then the original idea would be lost in the past for ever with no new discovery from old idea to produce new design for the future generation.
