A Very Brief History of Plagiarism

For as long as there has been creativity and expression, there likely has been plagiarism, at least in some form.

It’s likely that plagiarism predates written language, even if no one at the time was calling it plagiarism (or anything at all). As soon as there was work or ideas to be copied, there were probably those copying it and claiming credit.

However, since plagiarism is an ethical issue and not, by itself, a legal one, what is and is not acceptable has changed a great deal over time. Though the focus for the past few centuries has been on authorship and creator’s rights, that was not always the case.

Plagiarism has been shaped by changing social norms, shifting legal climates and, perhaps most of all, advancing technology.

Yet, in one way or another, the idea has been with us for at least 2,000 years. However, even as I’m writing this, we are entering a potential new chapter for plagiarism and authorship, one driven by computers rather than human.

Still, it’s important to take a look back and see how we got here today.

The Early Years

The first time the word “plagiarism” (or a variant) was used in this context was, most likely, around 80 CE. That was when the Roman poet Martial accused another poet, Fidentinus, of plagiarizing his work.

At the time the word “plagiary” meant “kidnap” or to “hold hostage” and that was what Martial accused Fidentinus of doing. However, his focus wasn’t purely on attribution, it was the fact that his rival was taking his work, reciting it as his own and not paying him. The focus was less on the issues of authorship and more on the lack of payment or permission.

But, while that was the first use of the word “plagiarism” it wasn’t the first plagiarism story. For example, there is a well-documented plagiarism controversy between two authors, Aristo and Eudoros, in the first century BCE. This battle dealt with paragraphs in books the two men had written about the Nile River and, though later historians seem to believe that Eudoros was in the wrong, there’s no solid evidence and both men did accuse each other.

But, while this is a very obvious “plagiarism” story, it was referred to as “Literary Aegisthus” or “Literary Usurpation.” It shows that, while Martial did seemingly coin the term “plagiarism,” (or at least its root) he didn’t invent the concept.

Authors, poets, and artists had been worried about plagiarism for some time, just under different names. However, these disputes were usually small and private. With no way to quickly print copies, most of the early disputes focused on limited-print writings, oral traditions and individual paintings.

It would be quite some time before that would change.

Enlightenment, Early Mass Media and Copyright Law

Johannes Gutenberg famously invented the printing press in Germany during the year 1440. However, its impact was not immediate. It would take time for the technology to spread and literacy rates were incredibly low, even in Europe.

At this point, the story of plagiarism becomes at least somewhat intertwined with the history of copyright law. That’s because the initial response to the printing press wasn’t to protect creators from exploitation, but to limit who could or could not use this potentially powerful technology. A copyright, during the 16th century largely meant the right to make copies, not any kind of ownership.

But, by the early 17th century, things had drastically changed. Though it’s unknown who was the first to use the word “plagiarism” in a modern context, one prominent theory focuses on 1601, when Ben Johnson described a literary thief as a “plagiary.”

It was also in the early 17th century when Miguel de Cervantes, the author of the Don Quixote books, targeted the author of an unauthorized sequel by mocking the “False Quixote” in the official sequel.

By this time, enlightenment ideals about authorship were beginning to take hold and, in 1710, England passed the Statute of Anne, the first modern copyright law. It granted creators up to 28 years of copyright protection and gave them control over how their work could be copied and distributed.

It’s also not a surprise that 1755 was the first time the word “plagiarism” appeared in a dictionary, furthering the role of the author and condemning those that would take credit for their effort.

Though the Age of Enlightenment ended before the 19th century, the ideals of authorship and individual creation carried on. In 1886, the Berne Convention became the first major international copyright treaty and focused entirely on protecting the rights of the creator from exploitation.

The Berne Convention, in most countries, is the basis for copyright law as we know it today.

Mass Media and Rapid Change

For the past few centuries, most plagiarism has been divided into two categories: academic and creative.

Academic plagiarism deals with students, researchers, and others in academia who are accused of plagiarism. These cases are typically handled within the schools or institutions and the consequences were more professional than legal. This was the same as it had been since the Age of Enlightenment.

But while academic plagiarism didn’t change a great deal over the centuries, creative plagiarism did. Through the late 19th and early 20th century, not only does book publishing and literacy continue to improve, but we develop methods for publishing music, movies and, eventually, computer software.

With modern copyright law, gone are the days of Martial writing a diss track or Cervantes mocking a fake Quixote. These plagiarism disputes are now, more often than not, legal disputes.

This became especially important in the music industry where authorship credit often meant a cut of royalties. The Beach Boys, George Harrison and Elton John all settled plagiarism disputes. However, none were more prolific in this space than Led Zeppelin. Still, they were hardly alone as Wikipedia lists 43 high-profile cases between 1965 and 1994.

Still, during this time, copyright and creative plagiarism were both issues that most people didn’t have to worry about. It was a problem for media companies and celebrities. Regular people simply didn’t have a large enough stage to be targeted over these issues.

That would change soon enough.

The Internet Age

By the mid-1990s, the internet was growing and becoming available to more and more people. This changed plagiarism in two key ways.

First, it made it easier than ever to reach a global audience. With nothing but an internet connection and some knowledge, you could publish nearly anything to the entire world. Second was that it made it easier to find things to plagiarize.

The latter point was felt very quickly in academia. In 2000, Turnitin launches similarity checking services. Initially, it was focused on the “frat file” issue, also known as assignment or essay sharing. However, it quickly pivoted to detecting content copied from the internet.

This began a cat-and-mouse game between plagiarist and plagiarism detectors that, in many ways, is continuing today. However, the time between a broadly accessible internet and the common usage of plagiarism detection tools is a period I refer to as the “Dark Ages of Academic Plagiarism.” It’s a time when plagiarism was very easy and likely rife, but the tools to detect it were simply unavailable.

However, it’s not just academia that faces new challenges. The internet creates new types of creativity. Social media, blogs, online video and so forth bring new challenges not just to copyright, but the attribution and citation.

For centuries, attribution and citation requirements depended on the media at issue. For example, a journalist never cited the same way as an academic researcher, who was different from a lawyer. However, with all of these new formats, citation standards aren’t settled and debates rage. Some sites like Twitter (now X) allow users to create a citation standard and then codified them. Others, such as Facebook, take a more top-down approach.

But the way those fights took place changed. Most plagiarism disputes don’t and can’t justify litigation. Though the DMCA, passed in 1998, creates a notice-and-takedown system that helps many cases, we see a return to naming and shaming. Social pressure returns as a common way of addressing plagiarism issues.

Still, thanks to the internet, plagiarism and copyright issues become daily concerns for many. Between avoiding automated tools such as Content ID, avoiding takedowns or just not wanting to be shamed by their community, people begin to think more actively about these issues.

The AI Era

The story ends with a new era that, most likely, is just beginning. Generative AI brings with it new questions about attribution, citation, and authorship.

First is how AI is trained. Large Language Models have been trained on, more or less, the totality of the human-created internet. What it does is only possible thanks to those works. However, AI doesn’t credit its sources, at least not all of them. It would be impossible to do so. Debates rage about both the legality and ethics of this training.

But, from a plagiarism standpoint, the bigger question is likely one of authorship. At what point is the human no longer the author of the piece?

Once again, authorship and copyright law intertwine. In the US, the legal system has long held that only humans can hold copyright in a work. That’s why the famous monkey selfie case ended with the photo entering the public domain. Similarly, both the courts and the US Copyright Office have held that works wholly created using AI don’t qualify for copyright protection either.

But there is a large gray area between “wholly human-created” and “wholly AI-created.” At what point does a human have enough input or involvement in a work to be considered an author of it? What creative decisions make someone the author?

These are major questions that impact both plagiarism, the ethical/authorship side, and copyright, the legal side. They are no longer pure hypotheticals best left to philosophers.

Though the internet has brought many challenges to the idea of authorship, none have been as big as AI.

AI could easily represent the largest reshaping of the role of the author since the Enlightenment. It will come down to what role AI plays moving forward and how accepted it becomes as a force for creativity.

Bottom Line

Looking back through the history, it’s an interesting mix of what has been in constant change and what has remained the same.

The idea that taking credit for work of someone else is wrong has remained unethical and wrong for over 2,000. It is easy to see why. At it’s core, plagiarism is a lie and lying has almost always been frowned upon. As such, though the act has been known by several names, there’s never really been a time when plagiarism was acceptable.

But what has changed is the specifics of those boundaries. General views on authorship, changes in technology and shifts in the law have all guided how we think about and enforce plagiarism norms.

That said, AI does appear poised to introduce another upheaval. It raises new questions about what makes a person the author or creator of a specific work. Though we already have some answers, those answers are both woefully complete and early in the process.

As the Enlightenment showed, it can take decades, even centuries for new norms to take hold. With the rapid introduction and advancement of AI, there’s a need to speed run this process both on the legal and social fronts.

However, I don’t even know if that’s possible. The only thing that takes longer than the law to catch up to new technology is social norms. It’s going to be a very interesting few decades and likely a pivotal one for both copyright and plagiarism.