Plagiarism, what is it exactly, and why do most colleges and universities have such stringent rules and strict penalties and consequences for those who are found guilty of this offense? Plagiarism is actually a form of theft and can carry with it the same sense of violation and betrayal as does stealing someone’s credit card, checkbook, wallet, artwork or precious heirloom, such as Grand mom’s wedding ring, or Dad’s stamp collection. According to the online Encarta dictionary, plagiarism is the process or act of stealing someone else’s thoughts or another person’s ideas or written words and claiming them as your own. It is an act of writing what someone else has said verbatim without properly citing the origin or giving due credit to whom credit is due.

            With the popularity or resources readily available and easily attainable via the “information super highway”, “Internet Plagiarism” is becoming a growing problem, especially among college and university students. Information, research, and reference material is floating in a virtual vast sea of data to be viewed and accessed at the ‘push of a button’ or ‘click of a link’ and then “X’d” out and cast back into the deep ocean of technological text, making it very difficult to verify the source of that collected information.  The internet has change the world of writing term and research papers for college students around the world.  More and more students who are required to write many term and research papers throughout their educational career, are opting to retrieve there information from Web sites, and online reference sources. Because of this phenomenon, it becomes very difficult to track or trace whether or not a student is properly citing work attained from the internet. A borrowed line here, a slight paraphrase there inserted falsely into a students work can very easily go unnoticed, yet be illegal. There are even online sources or companies that are selling papers to be plagiarized to students for the “right price”.  This is a problem, and regardless of your personal convictions, is a crime, especially against the person or author of whose work you “borrowed” and called your own. It is something that may be done unconsciously and may need to be brought to your attention; I know that it has been brought to mine as a point of caution and notation. Since “Internet Plagiarism” has been a slow growing epidemic, it may be time to bring the problem to light, call writers and students to accountability, and perhaps protect and advocate for the ethics of writing.