Margaret finds some good information about plant growth nutrients for her science fair project on a CD-ROM reference title that came with her home computer. She uses the copy function of the computer to take an entire paragraph from the CD-ROM article and pastes it directly into her report. She also forgets to write down the title of the article and the CD-ROM from which it was taken. When she writes her report, she does not cite the source in her bibliography.
Questions:
What is the property?
Who is its owner?
Is most plagiarism deliberate or due to a lack of understanding? Please Explain.
It is intellectual property.
It is owned by the original creator or the person or company (could be an employer) that tasks an individual and pays him or her for the original work to be created.
The rights of the copyright holder and the need to cite sources should be drummed in to all students at the beginning of their studies. It is impossible to say whether most plagiarism is deliberate or due to ignorance without having more information that you have probably been given during your course
plagiarism is often very hard to prove if you've just used other people's ideas or the odd phrase. However, copying and pasting whole paragraphs is definitely plagiarism. As hc4361 says, it's the intellectual property of the original writer (or anyone he or she may have assigned it to).
If anyone finds out, Margaret could be sued or banned from the fair. Always credit the original source - or even better, study it so you understand it fully and then express it in your own words.