photo credit: greyloch

One fact I’ve often repeated when giving lectures and in conversation with friends is that I’ve managed to detect, track and stop some 700 plagiarists of my work, all within the last 7 years or so. That’s an average pace of about 2 per week.

Though there hasn’t been what I would call a “typical reaction” to being found out, reactions range from denial, indignation to sweepingly apologetic, there has been one question I’ve been asked over and over “How did you find me?”

The assumption, I suppose, is that the Web is a huge place and they felt safe in their little corner of it. The problem, of course, is that even the tiniest corner of the Web is extremely public and can be easily found.

Plagiarism isn’t just a lie, it isn’t just cheating (in cases of contests or academia) and it isn’t just copyright infringement (in many cases), it’s also incredibly stupid.

Anyone who takes a moment to think about plagiarism will quickly realize that the odds of getting away with it, especially repeated plagiarism of text works, are effectively nil.

But if you need it spelled out, here’s the basic rundown of why plagiarism is a stupid thing to do, just in case you are seriously contemplating doing it.

It’s Called Google, Duh

Whether you’re a writer checking for plagiarists of your work, a professor checking students for cheating or an editor looking into misbehavior by employees, you already know well the power of Google.

If it is on the Web and not somehow made private, such as on closed forums, Google can find it and will do so eventually. No matter how out-of-the-way you might think your source or your reuse of it is, Google will know what it is and that enables anyone to backtrack it.

The process is very trivial and doesn’t need any special tools. All one has to do is punch in a unique phrase from one work and they can either find the duplicates or the source depending on what they’re trying to achieve. It only takes a few minutes to perform such a search and confirm the results.

Even better, I don’t actually check for my work. Google, through Google Alerts, does all the work for me. I simply set up the alert and Google is nice enough to email me when it detects a copy, plagiarized or not. I simply follow up.

But what makes plagiarism so laughably dumb is that many plagiarists use Google to find the material they want to copy. They understand the power of using Google to find material they want to claim as their own, but don’t understand that the same tool works in reverse.

This is comparable a bank robber using the bank’s security system to case the location but then walking into the bank not expecting that the camera’s would be used to catch them after the crime was done.

However, this isn’t to say that you’ll get caught every time you plagiarise, or even most times, just that it is easy for someone to do when properly motivated.

Russian Roulette

Despite the ease with which verbatim plagiarism and other copying can be detected, at least for textual works, most plagiarists don’t get caught on the first incident. The reason isn’t because they outsmarted the technology, but because no one was using the tools to check their work.

The simple truth is that, even in professional environments such as newspaper, few are motivated to do thorough checks of others works or actively look for plagiarism of their own content. Some of this is due to poor ethical judgement, some of it laziness but more often than not it is due to one being unaware of even the risk.

But people are becoming more aware. Colleges have widely adopted anti-plagiarism checking systems that largely automate the process of looking for copied text, newspapers may be slower to adopt but after the Jayson Blair and other scandals, are waking up. However, more importantly, authors online are becoming more aware of misuse and are actively searching for their works, including using tools like FairShare and Copyscape.

But even if we assume that the likelihood of being caught for plagiarism is extremely low, such as five percent, even a basic understanding of statistics shows that the odds of getting caught increases quickly the more you do it. Since few plagiarists, in my experience only plagiarize once or twice, the odds of getting caught increase significantly after a relatively small number of incidents. In fact, after about 20 incidents, your chances of going without being caught completely drops to less than half.

Plagiarism is, essentially, a form of russian roulette. Though your odds for each incident remain relatively constant, the more chances you take, the more likely the negative outcome will happen at least once.

However, it is all an unnecessary risk. The really stupid thing about plagiarism isn’t that it is easy to get caught and, for most, a practical inevitability. Rather, that there’s no point to it at all.

The Really Dumb Part

The plain truth is that, when one plagiarizes, they undertake a huge risk but gain almost nothing in return. The time it takes to provide attribution to content is insignificant compared to the time it takes to find the work in the first place.

Most instructors are happy to allow you to quote and paraphrase outside sources so long as you attribute them and most content creators are equally happy to allow you to use their work under the same rules, especially for education.

Taking two seconds to add an attribution line means nothing. Taking the extra moments to paraphrase and cite sources means almost nothing. The difference between a plagiarism and a good research assignment or a welcome use on the Web is often just a few more moments of time.

If you’re worried about the quality of your writing, not only does plagiarism not actually correct the issue, but your instructors, friends and readers, almost certainly, are aware of your struggles and will treat your sudden improvement with suspicion. This makes it far more likely your work will be scrutinized closely and you will be caught.

In short, if you are plagiarizing as a shortcut, you are wasting your time. If you are plagiarizing to cover up your own perceived deficiencies, you’ll more likely find yourself arousing suspicion.

Bottom Line

In my experience, people don’t become plagiarists because they are the best and the brightest. Though some smart people make mistakes, the majority of the worst offenders are simply idiots looking for a way to skate through an assignment, building a Web site or some other project. They don’t think their actions all the way through and, often, feel that they’ve done nothing wrong.

And that is the truly amazing thing about plagiarism. Despite all of the dire warnings, the lectures, the stiff penalties, many refuse to believe that it is an offense, inside or outside the classroom. After all, the second most common question is “What did I do wrong?”

When I was in the very early stages of my fight against plagiarism, I have to admit that seeing how widespread the problem is almost made me lost a lot of my faith in humanity. Hundreds of people taking credit for my writing, often in very stupid ways, can certainly have that effect.

But I’ve come to realize as I’ve gotten more involved that the hardcore plagiarists are the extreme minority and, while they do seem to have at least some issues with their ethics, the bigger problem seems to be one with their ability to think through their actions.

In short, plagiarists are not evil geniuses, at least on the whole. Whether it is out of panic, laziness or sheer stupidity, plagiarism is one of the dumbest ways a person can land themselves in trouble and its an offense that, even with the most basic evaluation, stops looking like a good idea.

photo credit: joelogon

Plagiarists are not typically known for being the brightest nor the hardest-working people on the planet. If they were, they wouldn’t be plagiarizing. But for every reasonably intelligent person that makes a mistake and gets caught up in a plagiarism tiff, there are dozens, if not hundreds of morons blundering their way through copy and paste 101.

But while I don’t assume I’m dealing with Mensa candidates when I’m handling plagiarism cases, there have been a few that really raised the bar on stupidity.

So here are three of my “favorite” plagiarism cases from the 700 plus I’ve handled involving my own work. I’m obviously not going to mention any sites or names, but all of the stories are accurate retellings (memory and evidence allowing) of actual idiot plagiarists.

The 10-Year-Old Poet

The second case of plagiarism I dealt with introduced me to just how asinine some plagiarists could be and almost put me off to dealing with plagiarists directly at all.

I had noticed that some of my poems were on a journal hosted a LiveJournal-like site. I attempted to contact the admins since the individual had no email address on his journal but apparently something went amiss. After waiting a few days, I left a comment on one of the posts and then watched as all Hell broke loose.

He claimed not just to have written the items be posted, but every single one of the works on my site, over 100 of them. I then confronted him with the fact that my site, at that time, had been up for well over six years, something easily proved in the Web Archive, including many of the poems he had copied. He didn’t deny the time frame and continue to claim he had written the works, even though his profile said he was about to turn seventeen. This meant that he would have been only ten years old at the time the first poems went up.

The logic train pulled further away from the station as he later began to make claims of somehow telepathically delivering the works to me and began to pen vulgar fantasies about how he would beat me in court by being too “sexy” to prosecute.

After a brief mention on my site, it quickly erupted into a flame war with my readers inundating his comments. However, even that was for naught. Even after being called out and facing overwhelming evidence, he actually increased his posting pace, adding two or three of my poems every day.

Eventually the admins did step in, after I sent a second email, and the journal was suspended. The case was resolved but I’ve never been able to forget that someone actually claimed to be a 10-year-old poet with magical telepathic powers to get out of a plagiarism accusation.

Mitigating Circumstances: If I were to defend this individual I would plead insanity. I often wonder if this person had mental problems far beyond his love for copying mediocre poetry.

A Friend’s Betrayal

In 2004/2005 I had an online friend that was helping me settle into New Orleans a bit. She was right across the border in Mississippi and new the city’s literary scene pretty well. Having just moved into town a bit over a year prior, I was still getting my feet wet some and needed the help.

She knew well my battles with plagiarists, by that point I had written about them many times before on my site, and I even demonstrated the power of my detection tools to her, showing her plagiarist links that had only gone up the day before.

So I was incredibly surprised when one of the Google Alerts I received pointed me to a site run by a woman who was eerily familiar. She was from the same town as my friend, roughly the same age and had a very similar screen name. Despite that, I didn’t put the pieces together right away, but when I clicked a link to her Myspace profile, it all fit.

To make matters worse, this woman had included all of her personal information in an informal resume, including real name, address and phone number (all of which I had previously) and had even linked to my site from her Myspace page. Yet, on this personal Web page, there were 12 of my works, all under her name.

I tried to call but got no answer. I then sent a hostile email about the matter and consulted with my attorney about what to do. He advised me to sue and I hurriedly registered my work with the Copyright Office in preparation. Eventually, I heard back from her,after several weeks of waiting, and she flatly denied being the one who posted the works.

The only problem, other than the mountain of personal information that I could easily verify, was that the week before she had emailed me asking if I had removed three works. I hadn’t, they had just changed categories, and I directed her to the correct place. Those three works were the most recently plagiarized.

In the end, Hurricane Katrina put an end to the lawsuit preparations. When it hit and both of our cities were severely damaged, everyone involved felt there were more pressing issues. Furthermore, it was unlikely she remained in the same location, making it very difficult to file the suit.

The site, however, was quickly shut down.

Still, I find it stunning not only that someone who I considered a friend could betray me knowing full and well what I could do in this area, but that her best defense was “Not me” despite her literally telling everyone it was.

Mitigating Circumstances: Looking back on this individual, I see that almost everything about her was a lie. Though she had good information, everything about her was either a lie or an exaggeration. I usually pride myself on being a good judge of character, but this time I got fooled. I have come to believe this person was a compulsive liar, just not a very smart one. I, as with the first one, wonder if this is due to some kind of serious mental issue.

No Plagiarism: That’s the Policy

I am often alerted to plagiarism issues not by Google Alerts, but via concerned readers and fans. One such case involved a stranger who asked me to confirm if I had written everything on my site. When I replied in the affirmative, he informed me that he had seen almost a dozen works on a forum he visits.

When I checked it out, I was surprised to find that this was no ordinary forum plagiarist. It was the administrator of the community, which in turn was part of a larger community/social networking site.

To make matters worse, I was literally stepping into the matter mid-fray. The plagiarist was already being bombarded with hostile questions and a forum topic about the posts had already received many dozens of replies. Even the plagiarists girlfriend, who was apparently a part of the forum, was part of the discussion (especially interesting since had claimed to write one for her).

To make matters worse for him, he had apparently made all of his posts “sticky” putting them at the top of the forum. That made it very easy for me to locate. However, as I began to look up information on how to contact the higher ups at the site, the admin-turned-plagiarist started lashing back, locking the thread in question and removing the sticky from the posts. This, in turn, buried them under dozens of pages of other people’s writing.

Fortunately, that was nothing that a “site:” search in Google couldn’t resolve (still no idea why I did not get a Google Alert for these items) and I was able to get the site admins to remove all of the posts. As I left the plagiarist to patch up things with his community and his girlfriend, I noticed he had posted a terms of service for people posting his site, I took a quick peek and found that the second item began with the words “NO PLAGIARISM” (caps his).

I was tempted to enter the fray on this one, but thought better of it. Leaving this one behind.

Mitigating Circumstances: I’ve got nothing. Hypocrite and jerk are not mitigating circumstances.

Your Turn

Have you had any dealing with stupid plagiarists? If so I’d love to hear your thoughts, leave a comment below and share your stories.

I look forward to hearing your stories!

Note: The guy in the image is not a plagiarist, just someone I imagine expressing a natural reaction when confronted with high levels of human stupidity.