On Irony

Plagiarism is defined as "an act of fraud" that "involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward," according to, well, me. Defined in a more detailed way, to plagiarise means:

• to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own;
• use (another's production) without crediting the source;
• to commit literary theft; and
• present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

Many people, including Christians, often downplay or minimise the weight of plagiarising. Some would say that they merely copied an idea, borrowed a concept, or perhaps tried to share something good as if it were theirs. But did you know that plagiarism is stealing, and God doesn't like that?

We should not desire to take for ourselves anything that doesn't belong to us. And when we do that without the owner's consent, it's called stealing, even if it's just intellectual property.

-R. Matthews (Atheist)