We've all seen the excuses in the recent mass ban appeals, first they claim to have no idea why they were banned and then they claim it's 'such a hard punishment' for a 'simple' mistake.
Those are the same things they've always said, and it's definitely bullshit.
I'm not sure what the situation is with plagiarism bans right now--are people still getting permabans with some people getting exceptions in the form of signature bans? If Theymos made an official post about it, I must have missed it--but I do know exceptions are being made for members who are otherwise productive members of the forum.
The main issue IMO with the recent mass banning is that the punishment is (I'm assuming) for plagiarism that happened a long time ago, and some of these members might not have repeated that behavior since then. In those cases I do think it's very harsh to permaban them, though I think a signature ban is appropriate.
OP, I agree that plagiarism is despicable and shouldn't be tolerated--but even if not all of the members who recently got caught got permabanned, it's definitely sending a loud and clear message to would-be plagiarists. Hopefully we'll see a lot less of it from here on out.