[Nifty3929]

Without arguing the broader topic, I do think there's an important distinction between plagiarism in fiction and non-fiction or academic work: The theft of ideas

In fiction, taking ideas (hero's journey, middle earth, etc)[1] and adapting to a new story/characters is totally fine without attribution. There's probably only like 5 stories ever that just keep getting re-written this way.

But in non-fiction, academic research and the like, stealing ideas without attribution is a problem, because ideas are the whole point. Nobody reads a research paper for the plot.

But in school, and especially with non-fiction, we're so often told to "just re-word it to make it your own" which is actually the most insidious form of plagiarism. If I get an idea from you and want to include that in my paper, that's great, but I have to give you credit. Great non-fiction books I've read are riddled with citations and have 100-page bibliographies. The value of the book/paper is (often) in the synthesis of those ideas into something new, with maybe it's own ideas added on top. But "re-wording" does not make and idea your own, and does not escape a charge of plagarism.

[1] top comment as of this writing

[crazygringo]

> But in school, and especially with non-fiction, we're so often told to "just re-word it to make it your own" which is actually the most insidious form of plagiarism.

I think you might be confused, or had unclear teachers.

You're told to re-word it but still cite it. There are different combinations here:

1. Copy verbatim, no quotes, cite. Plagiarism, because you're copying the wording without quoting (even though you're citing).

2. Copy verbatim, quote, cite. Correct.

3. Paraphrase, no quotes, cite. Correct.

4. Paraphrase, no quotes, don't cite. Plagiarism if not "common knowledge".

Teachers should be telling you to do 3 rather than 1. You are maybe confusing 3 with 4, thinking they were telling you to do 4? (Or your teachers were just wrong?)

But the difference between 3 and 4 can actually get legitimately confusing in certain cases, even for academics, because there are a lot of ideas that are just "in the air" and it's not always clear if something is "common knowledge" or if there's some original citation for it somewhere.

[NeutralCrane]

The “theft of ideas” is itself an absurd notion. The true tragedy of AI is that in response people are reflexively embracing the dystopian concepts of IP and copyright, rather than merely tolerating it like in years past.