Having thoroughly investigated the matter, I think that this is one of those rare corner cases of the lability of the human brain. I do not think that Lauda realized what she was doing, or intended to rip off other people’s texts. I also don’t think that Lauda could fool me.
I do take into consideration that I have substantially interacted with Lauda, and I have seen her repeat things by rote in the course of ordinary conversation. (Just not from text written by other people—insofar as I am aware—and not so much as here.) I am too amateurish in textual criticism to be sure; but from my reading of the posts side by side with the source texts, I don’t think it’s implausible that she interpolated her own words with memorized talking points, without even thinking about it.
Occam's razor says that Lauda checked Google or Wikipedia for supporting arguments in a discussion and copied some phrases verbatim or with minor changes. I'd buy the talking point excuse if it was something simple, e.g. "blockchain is a decentralized ledger", but not "meanwhile, another invisible Spirit (the Holy Spirit) is constantly at work behind the scenes around the earth, keeping the whole thing straight and intervening whenever he can".
Regardless of the reason why the text was unattributed, it's still plagiarism. If he said something like "I've heard that <insert paraphrased or even verbatim text>" or anything else indicating that the text or the idea was authored by someone else - that would probably be sufficient to not consider it plagiarism even if the actual source is not provided.
Between that, the manner of her response, and the sincerity with which Lauda despises plagiarism (including what happened here), I do not think that any action is warranted in this matter.
Well, I very sincerely hate scammers and yet I don't think that'd be a good excuse for scamming someone even if I do it while sleepwalking.
As a practical matter, if Lauda were hypothetically to be banned for posts made in 2014–2015, then the archives should be scrutinized; and every user who has ever committed a plagiarism here should be banned, going back to the time when this forum was hosted at
forum.bitcoin.org, or even when it was a Sourceforge forum. Not that I would object to that, in and of itself.
There is nothing preventing you from doing that.
It adds credence to Kalemder and Suchmoon's comments regarding "word-spinning".
To be clear: I mentioned word spinning only as an example of plagiarism that is not copypasta. I didn't intend to say that word spinning is somehow relevant to Lauda's case.
To me, this is the most damning evidence of text edited post facto by someone with a different reading/writing level.
How does this (or anything in your post) make any difference?