In Wiebe's essay 'Plagiarism and Promiscuity', he discusses the various types (or degrees) of plagiarism that have arisen in the digital age. Due to the rise of the internet, instances of student plagiarism have become more and more abundant. But what constitutes plagiarism? According to Wiebe, while many people still subscribe to the notion that plagiarism is the act of using someone else's words as your own without accreditation, other kinds of plagiarism, like patchwriting, collaborative writing, and idea-borrowing, are also worthy of scrutiny.
In Ridolfo's case study of rhetorical velocity, the concept of ownership is also brought up.
In our multimodal world, it has become the norm to assume that any content you create can and will be picked up and interpreted or even reused in ways that you did not imagine. This concept of rhetorical velocity calls for a consciousness of the 21st centuries attitude towards copyright law and 'fair use'. The real question has developed, not as to whether plagiarism is right or wrong, but as to what constitutes plagiarism in this decade?
Debates about what makes up the 'creative commons' and where the line from referencing a work becomes outright stealing are blurred by different voices and different notions about what constitutes 'stealing'. As technology progresses, notions about plagiarism and 'idea-stealing' will surely morph and change, just as they have done in the last two decades alone.
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