Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Plagiarism is passing someone else's work off as your own. Unauthorized copying is just providing a work for others to consume without claiming credit for it, but without having a legal right to do so. Plagiarism doesn't really relate to authorization at all. If you have permission from someone to put your name on their work, that doesn't change the fact that you are lying, which can have consequences of its own (especially in an academic context).

I thought this was obvious, but maybe it isn't? I see disclaimers on Youtube all the time ("I don't own this") which seem to imply the person posting the video doesn't understand the difference.



Yep. The way I used to explain it to my students was this:

Distributing "Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare": not plagiarism or copyright violation.

Distributing "Romeo and Juliet by Turing Machine": plagiarism, but not copyright violation.

Distributing "The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien": Copyright violation, but not plagiarism.

Distributing "The Lord of the Rings by Turing Machine": both plagiarism and copyright violation.


Distributing "The Lord of the Rings by George RR Martin": Boatloads of cash


I remember reading an article about this phenomenon, and arguing from that "plagiarism" as a concept will eat the "copyright" concept. unfortunately i cannot find it right now.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: