The Greatest Anti-Plagiarism Video I’ve Seen

Over the years that I’ve run Plagiarism Today, I’ve seen a lot of anti-plagiarism videos. I’ve even created one myself based on a script I wrote.

However, yesterday I had the good fortune to run across a video by the University of Bergen from Norway. They, it seems, have taken anti-plagiarism videos to a whole new level.

With a video entitled “A Plagiarism Carol” (embedded below) they have created one of the funniest and best-produced videos on the subject I’ve seen, if not the best.

The video centers around a typical college student name Kaj who, after being given an important assignment, gets carried away with having fun and is forced to write his paper at the last minute. There he is tempted to plagiarize his work but is stopped by the Ghost of Plagiarism, which shows him what his life might be like if he goes forward with it.

The video is takes a humorous tone and has a lot of cultural references. The most obvious being A Christmas Carol but there are also references to Dirty Harry, CSI, Ozzy Osbourne and more. The story even ends on an elaborate song and dance number that explains the importance of citation.

Two words of warning about the video. First, it is in Norwegian. However, if you click the “CC” icon on the video, you can enable closed captioning, which gives you English subtitles. Second, content-wise the video is definitely aimed at a college crowd. I would describe it as being a PG-13 clip that, while certainly not adult-oriented, has some brief sexual and drinking references.

All in all though, it’s one of the most entertaining and best-produced videos on the subject of plagiarism I’ve seen, if not the best. It may not be the most thorough explanation on the topic of plagiarism, but it certainly gets your attention and gets its message across. My only regret is that I didn’t find it sooner…

So, without further ado, check it out for yourself.