It's widely accepted that plagiarism is a bad thing. But why is this? What makes it wrong?
You might say that plagiarism is theft of intellectual property. To be sure, if I copy someone else's work and publish it myself, I'd be in breach of copyright; I'd be pirating their material. However, I think that the legal issue of copyright and the moral problem of plagiarism are quite distinct. I could pirate your work without plagiarizing it, if I made it freely available but attributed it to you. Conversely I could plagiarize without breach of copyright if the original work was in the public domain. Another view would be that plagiarism is wrong because it is stealing credit from the original creators. On this view the problem is that if you pass off my work as your own, then you're taking credit that's rightfully mine. You're making me a victim ...
