Quote from: KingsDen on Today at 02:36:30 PM

Quote from: Lucius on Today at 01:02:50 PM

I believe that there are big differences between people from different parts of the world regarding the perception of plagiarism.

Rightly pointed out sir.
This is the greatest factor affecting or influencing plagiarism in the forum. Maybe in different countries is is a serious offence, while some other countries it is close to a habit because of very flexible and unenforceable laws guiding it

Lucius hit the nail on the head. Posting something and pretending it's yours, is plagiarism. The rest is not. (Which doesn't mean that the rest might not be violating some other rule.)

There is however no difference between countries. Plagiarism is plagiarism and the definition of plagiarism does not change if you're in an other country. Surely some countries have laws or no laws or flexible laws or unenforceable laws or whatever terminology fits you to try to act as if you didn't know you were breaking the rules. But even if your country doesn't punish plagiarism, the definition of plagiarism is VERY clear.

Because if you don't know the definition of plagiarism, then how can you tell your country is flexible towards plagiarism? Roll Eyes

So I'd suggest everyone to quit the useless pseudo intellectual discussions about countries, cultures and definitions, and to get to the point:

- you copy-paste something that's clearly not yours: a photo of Brad Pitt or Britney Spears? An article from the New York Times or Yahoo Finance? A Youtube clip of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean? If it's clearly not yours, it is common policy to post a source, and if you don't, it's generally frowned upon. You should do this especially for written posts and articles, because in general it's less evident that the post is a copypaste. (for instance, in the case of photos, virtually 99% of all photos posted on this forum are considered non-plagiarizing copypasting, and most of the time so obvious that quoting a source is simply not necessary)
>> this is not plagiarism, but this doesn't mean your post doesn't violate any other forum rules like zero value, burstposting, spamming etc.
- you copy-paste someone else's work and pretend it to be yours: this is plagiarism.

Sure, there may be differences between individual country's legal approach, flexibility and punishment of plagiarism, but there is no difference in the definition of plagiarism. Therefore, your culture, country or origin never counts as an excuse or a justification for plagiarism.