{"id":2043,"date":"2024-11-13T12:52:24","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T06:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/?p=2043"},"modified":"2025-01-22T12:31:54","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T06:31:54","slug":"when-does-fair-use-become-plagiarism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/when-does-fair-use-become-plagiarism\/","title":{"rendered":"When Does Fair Use Become Plagiarism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The term \u201cfair use\u201d refers to the legal, ethical, and limited use of copyrighted material, with no requirement for the permission of the copyright holder. In fact,\u00a0fair use \u00a0represents a considerable limitation on the otherwise exclusive rights of the holder of a copyright. With increasing access to advanced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/plagiarism-checker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plagiarism detectors<\/a>, ensuring compliance with fair use principles has become more achievable, helping users avoid crossing ethical and legal boundaries.<\/p>\n<p>Fair use is regarded as a legal gray area since there is limited guidance or legal precedence beyond four broad factors:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><strong>Purpose and Character of Use<\/strong><\/em>\u2013 was the material copied for educational purposes or commercial use for a profit venture?<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>The nature of the copyrighted work<\/strong><\/em>\u2013 the closer the work relates to the original creativity of the author, the less likely it will be considered fair use.<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The amount and substantiality<\/em><\/strong><em>of the work used in relation to the whole<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 the shorter the amount, the more likely it will be treated as fair use.<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>The effect of the use on the potential market for the work<\/strong><\/em>\u2013 are you taking food from the author\u2019s plate?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Critical Role of Attribution<\/h2>\n<p>Any attempted defense against plagiarism or direct copyright infringement will live or die on the presence of clear attribution. If the questionable use of copyrighted material was clearly attributed to the holder, then the debate moves on to the four factors. If there is no attribution, as in a case of\u00a0alleged plagiarism, there is no fair use option \u2013 you copied someone else\u2019s work and, deliberately or otherwise, presented it as your own. One can adopt self-checking their plagiarized content with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/plagiarism-checker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plagiarism detector<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/plagiarism-checker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/900x200.png\" alt=\"When Does Fair Use Become Plagiarism?\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 900px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 900\/384;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>The Growing Prevalence of Plagiarism<\/h2>\n<p>According to a 2013 survey conducted by\u00a0PlagiarismAdvice.org, 92% of teachers said that their students plagiarized work, and nearly 30% thought that incidents of plagiarism were on the rise. There are possible reasons for this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Ease of use<\/em>\u2013 a large block of text can be cut and pasted with one swipe of your mouse.<\/li>\n<li><em>Insufficient preparation<\/em>\u2013 under an assignment deadline, it\u2019s easier to cut and paste someone else\u2019s work and take the gamble that the instructor won\u2019t run your paper through\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/turnitin.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"broken_link\">turnitin<\/a>\u00a0or any other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/plagiarism-checker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plagiarism detector<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><em>Lack of developed academic skills<\/em>\u2013 do students really understand what plagiarism is and what the consequences are?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Confusion of Terminology<\/h2>\n<p>Copyright litigation against infringement of a copyright holder\u2019s exclusive rights is a complex, combative, and extremely lucrative area of legal work. The prevalence of cases and case studies on the web has resulted in considerable confusion over the terms plagiarism and fair use. How often have students defended including a short paragraph of unattributed text as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/duplicate-publication-plagiarism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">inadvertent plagiarism<\/a>\u201d because they thought the act constituted fair use of the material?<\/p>\n<p>We can only hope that the lack of developed\u00a0academic skills\u00a0on this issue is addressed prior to undergraduate studies. In the likely event that it doesn\u2019t,\u00a0it falls to professors and research supervisors to ensure that\u00a0rules of appropriate attribution and proper use of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/plagiarism-checker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">plagiarism detectors<\/a> are given the attention they deserve.<\/p>\n<div style=\"display:flex; gap:10px;justify-content:\" class=\"wps-pgfw-pdf-generate-icon__wrapper-frontend\">\n\t\t<a  href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043?action=genpdf&amp;id=2043\" class=\"pgfw-single-pdf-download-button\" ><img data-src=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-generator-for-wp\/admin\/src\/images\/PDF_Tray.svg\" title=\"Generate PDF\" style=\"width:auto; height:45px;\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The term \u201cfair use\u201d refers to the legal, ethical, and limited use of copyrighted material,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":50162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[747,2],"tags":[1442],"ppma_author":[1895],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content-structure","category-academic-writing","tag-all-about-plagiarism"],"better_featured_image":{"id":50162,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":910,"height":340,"file":"2024\/11\/FeatureImages3.png","filesize":512766,"sizes":{},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":2043,"source_url":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/FeatureImages3.png"},"acf":{"faq_main_heading":"","faq_heading_one":"","faq_heading_two":"","faq_heading_three":"","faq_heading_four":"","faq_heading_five":"","faq_heading_six":"","faq_description_one":"","faq_description_two":"","faq_description_three":"","faq_description_four":"","faq_description_five":"","faq_description_six":""},"views":2778,"single_webinar_page_date":null,"single_webinar_page_time":null,"session_agenda":null,"who_should_attend_this_session":null,"about_the_speaker_field":null,"co-webinar-sec":null,"co_webinar_sec_one":null,"speaker-name":null,"webinar-date":null,"webinar-time":null,"webinar-s-image":null,"custum_webinar_category":null,"authors":[{"term_id":1895,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"editor","display_name":"Enago Academy","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ef4bc47f3ceaa56f5eb3b26f9520fad298ba36ede4f86315997ffb45db37a1f?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Academy","first_name":"Editor","job_title":"","description":"Enago Academy, the knowledge arm of Enago, offers comprehensive and up-to-date resources on academic research and scholarly publishing to all levels of scholarly professionals: students, researchers, editors, publishers, and academic societies. It is also a popular platform for networking, allowing researchers to learn, share, and discuss their experiences within their network and community. The team, which comprises subject matter experts, academicians, trainers, and technical project managers, are passionate about helping researchers at all levels establish a successful career, both within and outside academia."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50163,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions\/50163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}