Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World

This book offers a wealth of thinking about the complex and often contradictory definitions surrounding the concepts of plagiarism and intellectual property. The authors show that plagiarism is not nearly as simple and clear-cut a phenomenon as we may think. Contributors offer many definitions and facets of plagiarism and intellectual property, demonstrating that if defining a supposedly "simple" concept is difficult, then applying multiple definitions is even harder, creating practical problems in many realms. This volume exposes the range and breadth of these overlapping and complex issues, reflecting a postmodern sensibility of fragmentation, and clarifies some of the confusion, not by reducing plagiarism to ever simpler definitions and providing new or better rules to apply, but by complicating the issue, examining what plagiarism and intellectual property are (and are not) in our more or less postmodern world.

This book offers and explains various definitions of plagiarism. Issues covered include copyright law and plagiarism; imitation and originality in classical rhetoric; sociohistorical perspectives; and late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century notions of authorship in student publications and textbooks. The authors also offer different applications of these plagiarism definitions in specific arenas including university writing centers, administrative settings, peer-writing groups, textbook publishing, and the wider marketplace.