My personal definition of plagiarism is the idea that one party takes the work or findings of another party, and not crediting them for their work.
Plagiarism is somewhat different from copyright infringement because plagiarism follows a different drum beat. Plagiarism tends to trend through certain mediums such as books, newspapers, periodicals, and other things of that academic nature. Copyright goes through a medium of music, art, technology, and other multimedia concepts. When you break copyrighting rules you tend to accumulate more penalties and you often, in most cases will go to jail. Whereas plagiarism you (to be painfully honest) you might get an occasional expulsion, or simply a slap on the wrist.
An example of plagiarism that is not copyright, is when you read a book and you steal a paragraph from the second chapter and you do not cite the source
An example of copyright that is not plagiarism is when you might take the melody of a song when you are a recording artists and you do not at once, reference the artists from whom you take the music from.
Although it seems to be different, they often both walk along a fine line of mutual demands. It is often hard to differentiate from which one is which and it requires great skill because there lies a tricky little loophole that we as students and artists must avoid almost like its a convoluted conspiracy.
While you hear about plagiarism more in terms of books and academic stuff and copyright more in terms of music, art, & multimedia, they both apply in both places. It's just that academics (people who want you to think for yourself, to question everything you read, even question everything we tell you) care more about plagiarism than about copyright... And there's more money to be had in suing for copyright infringement in fields that make more money (like music)!
ReplyDeleteOn your example of copyright violation that is not plagiarism, I'm not sure I'm reading that right... So, if the artist uses a melody from another artist, if they either use a melody that everyone knows belongs to someone else (common in jazz to "sample" other musicians' work as a sort of "you're cool if you get where that came from, lame if you don't" kind of thing) or explicitly cite the source, then they are not plagiarizing... But if the song is under copyright and they did not get (or pay for) permission to use that melody, then they would be violating copyright, even if they cited the source. But if they play the melody as if it's their own, using a melody from a song their audience has never heard so that everyone is supposed to think they came up with the melody, that would be plagiarism.