Introduction

Plagiarism - the attempt to pass off the ideas, research, theories or words of
others as one's own - is a serious academic offence. A new study by the
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority warns that exam boards appear to be failing
to spot cheating, even though the number of cases of fraud is increasing. Last year,
3,600 teenagers were caught breaching the rules - a 9% rise on the previous year.
There are lots of cases were plagiarism involves, like in speech, thesis Report,
journalizing, and even the lectures of professors to their students. Plagiarism
within academia, is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud, and
offenders are subject to academic censure, up to and including expulsion while
in journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of journalistic ethics, and reporters
caught plagiarizing typically face disciplinary measures ranging from suspension to
termination of employment. Some individuals caught plagiarizing in academic or
journalistic contexts claim that they plagiarized unintentionally, by failing to
include quotations or give the appropriate citation. While plagiarism in scholarship
and journalism has a centuries-old history, the development of the Internet, where
articles appear as electronic text, has made the physical act of copying the work of
others much easier and internet is the reason of growing cases of plagiarism by
students especially in their Reporting and Projects.

For professors and researchers, plagiarism is punished by sanctions ranging

from suspension to termination, along with the loss of credibility and integrity.
Charges of plagiarism against students and professors are typically heard by internal
disciplinary committees, which students and professors have agreed to be bound by.
Plagiarism is hard to justify whether it is really intentional to plagiarized, that’s the
reason why there are cases that are not being solve by the court.
 History

In ancient and medieval Europe, there was something of a double standard about
plagiarism. Many authorless genres like religious texts were freely copied and
incorporated into later works; "good writing" usually meant slavishly imitating a small
number of respected authors (Cicero being the most important).

The use of the Latin word plagiarius (literally kidnapper), to denote someone stealing
someone else's work, was pioneered by Roman poet Martial, who complained that
another poet had "kidnapped his verses." This use of the word was introduced into
English in 1601 by dramatist Ben Jonson, to describe as a plagiary someone guilt of
literary theft.

This began to change during the Renaissance when original scholarship became more
respected and individual accomplishment was recognized in many more fields that it
had been previously (for example, this is when painters began signing their works). The
point here is that, by the mid 1600s, accusations of plagiarism and stealing ideas were
common in every creative field including the sciences. An accusation of stealing
someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as your own was one of the worst
insults imaginable and grounds for lawsuits and duels.

The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal, emerged in

Europe only in the 18th century. For centuries before, not only literature was considered
"publica materies," a common property from which anybody could borrow at will, but the
encouragement for authors and artists was actually to "copy the masters as closely as
possible," for which the closer the copy the finer was considered the work. This was the
same in literature, music, painting and sculpture. In some cases, for a writer to invent
his own plots was reproached as presumptuous.

Just as a sidebar, the word "plagiarism," in the sense we use it today, first appeared in
English in the various battles among Shakespeare and his peers.
Despite the 18th century new morals, and their current enforcement in the ethical codes
of academia and journalism, the arts, by contrast, have resisted in their long-established
tradition of copying as a fundamental practice of the creative process, and in the 21st
century plagiarism is still tolerated by artists.
School/Academic

The Manny Pangilinan plagiarized Speech at Ateneo’s graduation Rites

School of Humanities & School of Social Sciences
Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City
4:00 p.m., Saturday, 27th March 2010

Pangilinan was actually invited to speak at two graduation ceremonies for the Ateneo de
Manila University, one for the School of Science & Engineering and the School of
Management, and another for the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.

The PLDT chairman’s address at the second occasion drew controversy after analyses
on Facebook showed that the several lines were lifted from commencement speeches
by personalities such as Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, and Barack Obama. (The speech
from the first occasion stole a joke from Conan O’Brien’s famous Harvard address – still
the funniest commencement speech of all time.)

Amid the furor, the Ateneo website took down the controversial speech, and a few hours
later, published an exchange between Pangilinan and Ateneo president Fr. Bienvenido
Niebres. Pangilinan, who chairs the university’s board of trustees, took full responsibility
for the issue and called it “a deep source of personal embarrassment,” before offering
his resignation from Ateneo. Niebres, in his reply, refused to accept Pangilinan’s
resignation immediately, preferring to take it up first with the university’s officials and
other board members.

… (“Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and
nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made
me lose weight.” –J.K.Rowling)

For all of you, these challenges are felt now in more immediate and personal terms. You
will soon be looking for a job – struggling to figure out which career makes sense in this
economy of ours. Maybe you have loans, and are worried how you‘ll pay them down.
Maybe you‘ve got a family to help. Maybe you‘re asking how your siblings can have an
Ateneo education like you had.

(“For many of you, these challenges are also felt in more personal terms. Perhaps
you’re still looking for a job — or struggling to figure out what career path makes sense
in this disrupted economy. Maybe you’ve got student loans — no, you definitely have
student loans — (applause) — or credit card debts, and you’re wondering how you’ll
ever pay them off. Maybe you’ve got a family to raise, and you’re wondering how you’ll
ensure that your children have the same opportunities you’ve had to get an education
and pursue their dreams.” –President Obama)

Let me tell you, money‘s pretty cool. I‘m not going to stand here and tell you that‘s it‘s
not about money, because money is sweet. I like money. It‘s good for buying companies
and things – and for putting up a few buildings here and there for Ateneo. But having a
lot of money does not totally make you a successful person. What you want is both
money and meaning. You want your life and your career to be meaningful. Because
meaning is what brings real richness to your life, to be surrounded by people you can
truly work with – because you trust and treasure them, and they cherish you in return.
That‘s when you‘re really rich, that‘s when you really succeed.

(“Let me tell you, money’s pretty nice. I’m not going to stand up here and tell you
that it’s not about money, ’cause money is very nice. I like money. It’s good for
buying things. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a
successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to
be meaningful. Because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life.
What you really want is to be surround by people you trust and treasure and by
people who cherish you. That’s when you’re really rich.” — Oprah Winfrey in her
June 2008 commencement address at Stanford University)

Now I cannot tell you that failure is fun. Periods of failure in my life were dark ones. I‘ve
had a lot of success. But I‘ve had a lot of failures. I‘ve looked good. I‘ve looked bad. I‘ve
been praised and criticized. And it hurt like hell. But my mistakes have been necessary.

(I‘ve looked good. I‘ve looked bad. I‘ve been praised and criticized. And it hurt like hell.
But my mistakes have been necessary. —- Conan O’brian)

I had no idea how far the tunnel of failure extended. And any light at the end of it
seemed more hope than reality.

(“I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the
end of it was a hope rather than a reality. — JK Rowling)

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that
you can be secure in your ability to survive.

(“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that
you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. — Rowling)
 Ex-Ateneo professor behind plagiarized Student Council Rulings

Decision’s clues and sources from legal circle point to Michelle Ann Juan

A former law professor at the Ateneo de Manila Law School who placed 4th in the 2002
bar exams was the legal researcher who drafted the controversial Supreme Court
decision that is now at the center of a plagiarism scandal that has damaged the
credibility and integrity of the high court.

Michelle Ann U. Juan, who taught — ironically enough — legal research in Ateneo,
among other subjects, is the court-employed attorney with the office of Justice Mariano
del Castillo who put together the court’s decision on Vinuya et al. v. Romulo et al. The
decision dismissed the plea by 70 Filipino “comfort women” to compel the Philippine
government to demand an apology from Japan for making them sex slaves during
World War II.

Michelle Ann U. Juan, del Castillo's legal researcher. That decision, according to the
lawyers of the “comfort women,” had passages that were lifted from at least three other
papers by different legal experts on the subject. Worse, the del Castillo ponencia took
the opposite position of the experts it plagiarized. (Read Newsbreak’s package of
stories on this scandal.)
The Supreme Court, in an en banc decision last week, exonerated Del Castillo and his
staff, describing their failure to attribute the passages an “accidental decapitation” of the
draft Juan prepared.

The decision didn’t identify Juan as the responsible legal researcher, but it provided
enough clues to her identity:

* That she graduated from a leading law school — Ateneo.

* That she graduated third in her class — in 2002, when she also received the Ateneo’s
St. Thomas More Award and special commendation for her thesis.

* That she was editor in chief of the law school’s journal — Ateneo Law Journal.

* That she placed fourth in the bar exams — 4th in 2002.

* That she has a master’s degree in International Law and Human Rights from a
prestigious American university under the “Global-Hauser program” — Juan’s profile
posted on the Ateneo website or elsewhere don’t make any reference to a Hauser
scholarship, but she is listed as one of the “graduate editors” of the New York
University law schools’ Journal of International Law and Politics for 2007-2008, the
same year she was a Hugo Grotius scholar there.

Copied from Wikipedia

But not long after the SC cleared Juan of any wrongdoing, lawyers from the University
of the Philippines College of Law have come across possible evidence that Justice Del
Castillo and Juan plagiarized in drafting another ponencia.

As first reported by the blog pinoymoneytalk.com on Tuesday, a Supreme

Court decision reversing the Commission on Elections’ non-accreditation of the gay
political party Ang Ladlad contained passages that were lifted from other sources
without attribution. This decision was promulgated by the court on April 8, 2010 — 20
days before the Vinuya ruling was handed down.

From another source, Newsbreak got hold of a matrix (download PDF file here)
comparing the Ang Ladlad decision apparently put together by Juan for Del Castillo. It
shows parts lifted from nine sources, including Wikipedia.

According to a lawyer researching this particular plagiarism case, the Ang

Ladladponencia has passages that were apparently lifted from an Oxford Law
Journalarticle by Michael O’Flaherty and John Fisher titled “Sexual Orientation, Gender
Identity and International Human Rights Law: Contextualising the Yogyakarta
Principles,” among other source
CONTEST

Pilipinas Kay Ganda Logo Plagiarized from Poland’s

The "Pilipinas Kay Ganda" logo was lifted from Poland's own tourism campaign, Polska.
It was Spanky Hizon Enriquez a blogger posted in his blog. He also demands that
someone in the department of Tourism must be responsible over the alleged plagiarism
and resigns immediately.

In the official travel Site of Poland it showed indeed that their logo and the Pilipinas kay
Ganda has a conspicuous similarity from its font, the color and even the use of a tree
(well, granted, that of the Philippines is a coconut tree, while that of Poland is, well, a
generic tree). But Mr. Lim countered that although there were similarities with Poland’s
tourism motif, there were differences too. He quoted

“First of all, Poland doesn’t have a copyright on the font. What looks very much alike is
the font, but if you look at the colors, they used one color, we used several colors.” We
have a coconut tree, they don’t. We have a tarsier, they don’t. We have ‘Kay Ganda,’
they don’t,” he pointed out. Lim also told that the tarsier and the smiling coconut tree
were inputs provided by President Aquino when his team presented it to him. This case
is at a halt working in Progress so the Logo for Philippines tourism is still the old one,
The WOW Philippines.
Government

Aquino, Santiago back UP Profs vs. SC plagiarism

By Norman Bordadora, Christian V. Esguerra, Nikko Dizon

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:59:00 11/21/2010

President Benigno Aquino has again placed himself in opposition to the Supreme Court,
declaring himself an enemy of plagiarism and standing squarely behind the 37 faculty
members of the UP College of Law being threatened with disciplinary action for
criticizing a high court justice accused of plagiarism.

Mr. Aquino said authorities shouldn’t threaten persons who are exposing the truth in
order to cover up for those who are at fault.

“One should not lie, one should not copy and one should not steal or use analysis
without permission or proper attribution,” he added.

The Supreme Court recently ordered the 37 members of UP law school faculty to
explain why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for unethical conduct when they released a
joint statement accusing Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo of plagiarizing parts of a
decision he wrote on the case of Filipino “comfort women.”

Aquino also said that those in high positions shouldn’t intimidate or threaten persons
who only want to freely express their own opinion and come out with the truth.

Bad precedent

From the Senate came support for the 37 from Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, herself
a UP law school alumna.

The senator said the 37 faculty members should in fact be “commended for being so
vigilant that they can catch certain plagiarized quotations in Supreme Court decisions.”

“That is an extraordinary skill. I don’t think they should be faulted for doing what they
did. So I support the case of the UP faculty,” she told reporters.

Santiago said the high tribunal’s decision that ruled Del Castillo innocent would set a
bad precedent in terms of handling plagiarism cases in the future.

The ruling said the plagiarism was the result of an accident, when Del Castillo’s
researcher mistakenly deleted the footnotes attributing portions of the decision to the
works of four international legal luminaries.

“The accidental decapitation of attributions to sources of research materials is not

remote,” the high court said, placing the blame on “the Microsoft program in use by the
Court.”

But Santiago, an international law expert and a former trial court judge, did not buy the
argument.
Unforgivable crime

“You can make all kinds of excuses of why there is no attribution, but if you are the
signed author of a document, let’s say a decision of the Supreme Court, you are the last
person to read the document so you will be able to catch all imperfections in that
document,” she said.

Santiago noted that campus administrations are more strict in handling cases of
plagiarism.

“In colleges and universities, without reaching the level of responsibility of a Supreme
Court justice, a student caught plagiarizing is immediately flunked or kicked out of
school,” she said.

“In the intellectual world, plagiarism should be considered, in effect, an unforgivable

crime,” Santiago said.

“The Supreme Court’s latest decisions show that it is more than willing to meddle in
government initiatives. It becomes a political thing in the sense that it is trying to define
the limits of the powers of the President. This is a grave issue,” Casiple said.

Courting impeachment

Casiple warned that the high tribunal was “courting a political response” with actions
that slighted the executive and legislative departments.

“They (the justices) might be the ones who could be impeached,” he said.

On the plagiarism issue, Casiple said the high court appears to be “self-destructing.”

“The Supreme Court is standing its ground. They don’t want to listen. In this plagiarism
case, the most that they can do is to be graceful about its exit. Instead, it is putting up
fortresses. I wonder what got into the heads of the 10 justices? They seem to be
working as a bloc,” Casiple said.
 Supreme Court scored for using ‘Microsoft defense’ in plagiarism case

By Melvin G. Calimag

The legal community, particularly the Supreme Court (SC) and the UP College of Law,
is in a tussle over the tribunal’s use of technology in dismissing a plagiarism case filed
against Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo.

In 25-page decision last October 15, the high court shot down the petition of lawyers
Harry Roque and Romel Bagares who charged that Del Castillo copied the works of
foreign authors in a decision he penned for the case Vinuya v. Executive Secretary
Romulo. In its decision, the SC said Del Castillo “did not pass off (author) Tam’s work
as his own” and that if his citations were imprecise, it would just be a case of bad
footnoting rather than one of theft or deceit.

The SC found credible the explanation of one of Del Castillo’s researchers, a court-
employed attorney, that she accidentally deleted the attributions in the course of editing
her draft using the Microsoft Word program.

“Given the operational properties of the Microsoft program in use by the Court, the
accidental decapitation of attributions to sources of research materials is not remote,” it
said.

The court held that the Microsoft Word program does not have a function that raises an
alarm when original materials are cut or pruned.
In the majority were Chief Justice Renato Corona and Justices Presbitero Velasco Jr,
Antonio Eduardo B. Nachura, Teresita J. Leonardo-De Castro, Arturo D. Brion, Lucas P.
Bersamin, Roberto A. Abad, Martin S. Villarama Jr, Jose Portugal Perez, and Jose
Mendoza.

In her dissenting opinion, Sereno said the SC made “malicious intent” an indispensable
element of plagiarism and computer-keying errors an exculpatory fact in charges of
plagiarism.

“UP should start revising its rules for plagiarism to account for technological mishaps
like Microsoft. Or maybe we should sue Microsoft for manufacturing a lemon of a
product like Microsoft Word, which has been making footnoting difficult, even for top-
notch researchers of the Supreme Court…,” wrote Bagares.

The controversy has pitted the SC against UP College of Law, which earlier issued a
statement criticizing the “reprehensible act of dishonesty and misrepresentation by the
Highest Court of the land” and for its “act of intellectual fraud by copying works in order
to mislead and deceive.” Roque and Bagares, who are law firm partners, graduated
from UP Law. Roque and also teachers at the law school.

In response, the SC issued a seven-page resolution on Tuesday directing the UP Law

Faculty led by Dean Marvic Leonen to show cause within 10 days why they should not
be sanctioned administratively for issuing an “accusing statement” against the court on
the plagiarism issue.

The SC has also ordered the acquisition the necessary software to prevent future
lapses in citations and attributions.
Literature

Karlo Espiritu

Freethinking, Objectivism, and Plagiarism.

This issue stems from my expose on April 12 about the highly appalling plagiarism of
one of the writers of the Filipino Freethinkers, an atheistic collective I passionately call
Free-farters. A Freethinkers’ writer, Espiritu, produced a well-written and highly
applauded blog posted on the group’s website on March 27 entitled What’s So Wrong
With Objectivism. Some ecstatic, brainless members of the Freethinkers were fooled
into believing that Mr. Espiritu really authored his article, but their knee-jerk fanfare was
only short-lived until someone posted his blog detailing how their most-commented
blogger creatively copied the works of some professional writers and bloggers online.
Since it would be highly impossible for Mr. Espiritu to deny the plagiarism allegation, he
posted a statement on the Freethinkers’ Facebook group on April 13, wherein he
claimed he “honestly wrote the essay hurriedly and published it without
rewriting/revising it very well.” However, Mr. Espiritu did not apologize for his plagiarism
but for his “being too careless.”
 J.K. Rowling Plagiarism

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is facing plagiarism charges. Her name has
been added as a defendant in a lawsuit against her publishers. The case involves
detailed allegations by the Estate of Adrian Jacobs that Rowling unlawfully lifted a
substantial amount of material from his 16-page book and used it in “Harry Potter: The
Goblet of Fire,” which was published thirteen years after Jacobs’s fantasy book.

Both books tell the tale of a Wizard who discovers his true nature whilst a boy.
Both books revolve around an International Wizards contest. In each book, the wizard
only discovers his central task in a special bathroom, in both books the wizard must
rescue artificially held hostages, from half-human creatures, acting as contest agents, to
earn points and win,” Max Markson, a representative for Jacobs’s estate told Pop Tarts.
“Adrian Jacobs created a fantasy world intertwined with the real world in which there are
Wizard Schools, Villages of Wizard Brewers, Gambling Wizards, Wizard Chess played
on Wizard Trains, special Wizard Hospitals, Wizard Travel by magic powder, apparently
headless creatures, Elves as Wizard Helpers, International Gatherings of Wizards,
Human Memory Erasers, etc. The Estate claims that all of these Jacobs’ concepts are
echoed in Harry Potter and familiar now to Potter readers.”

The lawsuit was originally brought against Rowling's publisher, Bloomsbury

Publishing, and her agent, Christopher Little (who was also Jacobs's agent). The
Jacobs estate apparently had thought it was too late to sue Rowling, as "Harry Potter
and The Goblet of Fire" was published in 2000. But now, they say, they have discovered
"legal cause of action against [Rowling] within the last six years."
The Jacobs estate is calling the lawsuit "a billion-dollar case."

It's not the first time that Rowling, estimated to be the world's wealthiest author,
has had to defend herself against charges of plagiarism. One prominent case involved a
2002 suit brought by American author Nancy Stouffer who claimed that her character
"Larry Potter" bore a striking resemblance to Rowling's "Harry Potter." Stouffer lost her
case and an appeal three years later.

Library Journal writer Lauren Barack called it right while discussing plagiarism
charges against Rowling last year. "Given the success of Rowling’s Potter series it
seems unlikely that she’ll stop being a lightning rod for suits of this nature," Barack
wrote.
Other Country

Joe Rogan

Comedian Joe Rogan has claimed that Cook performed a bit on an episode of Premium
Blend that Rogan had developed on I'm Gonna Be Dead Someday (sketch titled "Tigers
Fucking"), and claimed to have performed the routine earlier in clubs with Cook present.
Other comedians have also accused Cook of stealing their material. A 2007 article in
Radar magazine about joke theft included not only Rogan's allegations, but also those
of a different anonymous "veteran comic" who accused Cook of appropriating one of
that comic's "very physical routines", despite a direct request by the comedian that Cook
stop using the routine in question.
 Gabrielle Napolitano

In January 1982, Gabrielle Napolitano, then in her senior year at Princeton

University, plagiarized the majority of her 12-page term paper in a Spanish class
from a book in the library. While she did cite the book in five footnotes, she did
not include citations in the text for some paraphrased material and she did not
include the indicia of quotations for "numerous" verbatim quotations. The
professor was familiar with the book and immediately recognized the plagiarism.
The Princeton University Committee on Discipline in February 1982 unanimously
found Napolitano had plagiarized and recommended punishment of delaying her
bachelor's degree for one year. Napolitano sued and the judge recommended
that Princeton give her a rehearing. The Committee on Discipline gave her a
rehearing in May 1982 and again unanimously found her guilty of plagiarism and
– with one abstention among the eight votes – again recommended that her
degree be withheld for one year. The trial court held that the evidence supported
Princeton's finding that Napolitano had plagiarized, and the appellate court
affirmed. Napolitano v. Princeton Univ.