Editorial: Plagiarism and intellectual theft – a rising popularity to attain success?

Have “free thought” and innovation crossed the line from poetic license… to plagiarism? It’s an old solution to a common challenge: grade schoolers, high schoolers, college students, even CEOs have been known to steal, misrepresent, and concoct histories and career events which astound. Because of social politeness, challengers to such theft remained few until recently.

As quality professionals, intellectual theft is a real no-no, crossing over cultural, professional, and international laws. How can we maintain our integrity when the internet provides a nearly inexhaustible supply of “free information”, ours for the picking?

There are several things we can do to establish and maintain ourselves as role models:

1) Buy international standards. Don’t ask someone in an online forum for a free copy to be emailed to you.

2) Don’t copy someone else’s work from the internet, and then proclaim it as your own in a professional publication or office memo.

3) Check the content of a downloaded paper or “draft business standard” with a plagiarism checker – the career you save might just be your own!

4) Challenge outright theft of intellectual property. If you don’t, who will?

5) Don’t download a free copy of an international standard and then post it on your company intranet – alleging a “site license.” If an auditor asks to see the purchase agreement, you’re nailed. If the auditor notices the fine print in the margins of the standard – and the company name is not that of the company being audited – you’re busted for more than a minor nonconformance.

6) If you suspect that information was plagiarized, confirm the material by using an online plagiarism checker. Many are available for free –

http://www.plagscan.com/seesources/analyse.php

http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/
https://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker/

7) In my MBA program, my e-classroom mates were constantly being “busted” for submitting individual papers which were stolen from the internet. Use your noggin, not the internet, for creating your success.

In closing…

It is easy to become caught up with cutting corners during pressure situations and to offer another’s work in your place. Sooner or later, the devil will catch you – and there’ll be hell to pay.

 

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