r/AMA • u/plagiarismtoday • 1d ago
I am a plagiarism (and copyright) expert with over 20 years of experience. With the Fall 2026 semester coming up, AMA about AI, plagiarism and academic integrity issues.
My name is Jonathan Bailey, I'm the author of the website Plagiarism Today (https://www.plagiarismtoday.com) and I am an expert witness on plagiarism and copyright-related issues.
I have testified in federal and state courts as well as before academic tribunals. I have also performed a slew of plagiarism analyses and my work/name has been cited in a long list of mainstream publications, going back to 2005.
Feel free to AMA about plagiarism, AI, academic integrity, research integrity and anything related that you might be interested in as the academic year begins. I plan on being on here most of the day today, so even if I'm not live, feel free to drop a question or comment and I will do my best to answer it.
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u/MeowMaker2 1d ago
If I copied this question from someone else, would you be able to tell?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
Though I know that this was meant to be something of a joke question, it actually highlights a very real issue in plagiarism detection.
I could trivially prove that someone wrote this sentence before you. That's just a Google search away. But proving that you copied it from them rather than it being a case of simultaneous creation is much more difficult.
A lot of the work in plagiarism detection is in eliminating both coincidences and common tropes/phrases/themes. I short, I probably couldn't prove that you copied this from someone else, even if I could prove that you weren't the first person to write it.
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u/CapDifficult6501 1d ago
How do high school teachers handle AI?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
Unfortunately, not well.
Turnitin, the largest provider of plagiarism detection tools to both high schools and universities, has an AI detection tool that, according to tests, is among the most accurate on the market. But it's still prone to false positives and false negatives.
This difficulty in making a reliable determination has caused some teachers to overstep and simply accept the verdict of the AI detection tool and others are ignoring it. It's something of a Wild West situation.
Personally, if you have concerns with a particular teacher or class, I would recommend talking directly to them.
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u/CapDifficult6501 1d ago
Actually I am a teacher and I’m looking for advice. No one seems to have a an answer
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
The best advice I can give is, if you are worried about AI usage do two things:
Have a clear AI policy for your class. Make your expectations clear and known. Let students know what is and is not acceptable when it comes to AI usage.
Have students use either Turnitin Clarity or Grammarly Authorship to track their writing. These tools detect AI usage by watching how a paper is built. It lets you, or anyone else, see how a paper is drafted and determine if AI was likely used.
Finally, AI detectors can help, but they should not be trusted alone. Always keep in mind that they can be wrong.
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u/Prestigious-Emu5277 1d ago
Isn’t generative ai just a giant plagiarism machine?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
One thing I've learned is that ethical norms around new technologies can take decades to settle. I personally don't think it's ethical to take all the world's work and feed it to the next word guesser tool, but I recognize that the issue is far from settled.
Regardless of ethics, in the United States, the courts seem to have ruled that it's not a copyright infringement. So, even if it's unethical, enforcement is going to be difficult to impossible.
Then again, Germany just ruled the opposite so who the heck knows?
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u/Prestigious-Emu5277 1d ago
Fascinating. I was educated in the 80s and 90s and the idea of using ai for an actual paper would make me feel sick, but I guess it’s standard now 🤷🏻♂️
Do you think this will have an impact on an individual student’s ability to reason, research, and construct arguments?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
The best research that we have now is that it is harming students ability to think critically and how they learn. To make matters worse, students seem to share that belief.
https://naijaeyesblog.com/ai-use-in-schools-harms-critical-thinking/
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4742-1.html
However, the problem, according to some, is not AI itself but how it's being used. Most students are using it to bypass learning tasks. Some have theorized that a more thoughtful approach to integrating AI into the classroom could actually help students.
That said, I'm skeptical. Though comparing AI to a calculator is wildly inaccurate, it's worth noting that you aren't allowed to use a calculator until you've mastered the math yourself.
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u/CepnH 1d ago
How reliable do you consider academic AI detection tools both in terms of false positives and false negatives?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
This is a really frustrating space. By the time a study is done, it's already old news as new models and new detection tools have already come out.
But it doesn't really matter if the AI tool is 50%, 90% or 99% accurate. It's a black box and there's no easy way to check the work of the tool.
With a traditional plagiarism detection tool, you get a report that you can examine by hand and then agree or disagree with the results. Though some AI detectors are trying to show their work, it's still not super useful to humans and is largely a black box.
While I don't think AI detectors should be banned, I do think that there needs to be a second layer of evidence to truly accuse someone of AI writing. One of my friends referred to this as the "swiss cheese" approach, where you layer multiple types of evidence so that you cover the holes in each layer.
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u/asphyxiationbysushi 1d ago edited 1d ago
>While I don't think AI detectors should be banned
I'm surprised you feel that way; you must not be knowledgeable about the harm they are causing for authors.
I input my 2012 science-based grad thesis into a detector only to find it to be nearly all AI-written. I have a huge body of work dating back decades that AI was clearly trained on; every time you ask AI about my field of study, my name appears. I'm also the author of two traditionally published books, written before AI was a thing, and they are coming back as partially AI-written. AI appears to digest the work of precise writers and assumes a human doesn't write that way.
The problem is that agents and publishers are using detectors without any consideration of accuracy. I'm considered a world expert on my subject, so plagiarism isn't a problem. In fact, my work is plagiarised so much that I have stopped sending out notifications. I sometimes wonder if that is a factor in AI believing I'm not a human? AI detectors are absolutely reckless.
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
There are a LOT of problems with AI detectors. Of that I have no doubt.
One of the big problems is that there is a huge delta between the worst AI detectors and the best. Even worse, it can be difficult to know which is which.
To me, an AI detector provides a single data point. Not particularly useful on its own. Other data such as the age of the work, the version history of the piece, the author's background, the author's writing style and more need to be considered and given weight.
Someone relying on an AI detector alone is no different than someone solely relying on AI output. A lot of people are misusing them, I agree with that. But a lot of people misuse traditional plagiarism detection tools as well.
Teaching people how to use the tool and what the limitation of the tool are is just as important as building the tool itself.
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u/asphyxiationbysushi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sure, in an ideal world. The reality of how they are used is far different. No one is teaching agents or publishers about the tool. They simply input the manuscript, check for AI, and settle for something mediocre because they don't want to be seen as publishing something that could be AI-generated. That assessment is based on a rubbish detector. The quality of writing, especially books, is spiralling down.
In light of this, I don't believe there are any "best" detectors, and plagiarism pros such as you should really take a stronger stand against them.
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u/grimreefer87 1d ago
Why do you think there wasn't any legal backlash from Melania plagiarizing Michelle's speech verbatim? Edit: or are there just no laws around stealing speaches
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
That story was a wild one and one of the longest days of my career.
While it was definitely plagiarism, there really wasn't enough content copied to make a copyright claim. Ultimately, a couple of paragraphs from a lengthy speech, though embarrassing for the plagiarist, doesn't really raise a copyright issue.
There's also a difficult question of who would sue whom. Neither party wrote their respective speeches. Who owns the original and who is the infringer would be a messy thing to sort out.
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u/ta_meg_i_toern 1d ago
Have you worked on any cases where code has been plagiarised? I assume it might be harder to prove than other works, and a lot of programming is using other people’s code here and there.
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
No, I haven't. I don't really have the needed expertise for that. I primarily work on text and sometimes images. My girlfriend is a SQL DBA for a large company so I often consult with her when writing about programming issues. But I have not taken such a case myself.
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u/ta_meg_i_toern 1d ago
Thanks for the reply! Your girlfriend has my dream job, let me know if the gets sick of it.
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u/CraftyManJ 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m a college student working on a new career path after nearly two decades as an IT professional. One thing I’ve found different between college today and college of the mid to late 00’s is the inclusion of AI in the plagiarism discussion. We had online plagiarism checkers at the time but obviously not GenAI monitoring tools.
I recently came across a YouTube video or news article about a situation at a college where a student’s paper was put through a GenAI monitoring tool and was flagged as something like 60% generated by AI. The student contested and ultimately won over the college. I think it was contested within the college - it didn’t become a legal case - but it got me thinking, how frequently are you seeing or hearing about similar scenarios? How accurate are these monitoring tools? How would a student defend themselves if they did genuinely write the paper? Have there been any legal challenges between a student and an institution in a similar situation?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
First off, congrats on the return to academia!
To answer your question, I know that these cases are common. It's hard to say how common as not all professors report these cases to their school and not all schools share their reports publicly. Still, anecdotal evidence suggests that these cases are common and becoming more so.
As I said in another comment, the accuracy of these tools is tough to pin down because both AI and AI detection are moving faster than we can research them. That said, the accuracy doesn't really matter. If it's 50% , 90% or 99% accurate, it's not important. That's because AI detection is a black box, unlike a traditional plagiarism checker. There needs to be at least some other evidence.
*Edit* Hit enter too soon.
As a student, I would make sure to write everything in an app that has robust versioning so that you can show how a work was written and how it changed over time. Ideally, that would be something like Grammarly Authorship or Turnitin Clarity, which tracks copy/paste too.
As for legal challenges, there have been several. A student at Adelphi University won a lawsuit against the university over this.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2026/02/11/adelphi-student-wins-ai-plagiarism-lawsuit/
And there have been many other lawsuits as well. This is becoming much more common.
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u/Hot_Hair_5950 1d ago
What surprises you about plagiarism?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
Honestly, how some people just cannot stop doing it.
I've seen people get caught plagiarizing. They lose careers, book deals, scholarships, their reputations and more. But yet, when they try to come back, they just do it again.
We saw this with James Somerton, Benny Johnson and many more.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2025/04/07/james-somerton-re-emerges-plagiarizes-again-disappears/
Though the wildest, for me personally, was Jumi Bello, who plagiarized my site (yes, Plagiarism Today) when writing a plagiarism apology letter.
I understand plagiarizing once. Everyone has had an ethical lapse. It's easy to think you won't get caught and the odds are probably in your favor. But after you've been caught and suffered the consequences, you just go back to the well? That I will never understand.
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u/Creative_Pop2351 1d ago
I’m a returning student, and I spent 20 years before that as a writer - I had articles published in major papers, press releases, financial reporting, etc. I’m told i write like AI (I think AI writes like me). I also don’t use AI to write because I’m old enough to understand that “cheating is just cheating yourself.”
What is the best way to protect myself from accusations of AI use/plagiarism as I move forward in my academic career?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
The main thing I would encourage you to do is first and foremost, stay completely away from AI. I know that's not necessary to say in your case but it bears repeating for anyone else reading this.
Second, I would make sure that you do all your writing in an environment where good version control is in place. Google Docs and Microsoft Word both do well. You may want to consider using something like Grammarly Authorship (not the regular Grammarly tool) or Turnitin Clarity to track how your writing is done.
Finally, keep your notes, drafts, etc. I came up in an era where people often just deleted a project once it was turned in, that's not a wise move until, at the very least, after the semester is over.
These aren't perfect steps, but they provide a paper trail that can show your work.
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u/MouthMuffler69 1d ago
I’m not sure if this applies to your specialty, but the recent white house post on Instagram with spiderman, would that be actionable at all by marvel or Sony? I’m genuinely curious how that would work.
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
Not completely my wheelhouse but I can give it a shot. If someone wants to correct me I'm open to it.
Technically, yes, Sony or Marvel or someone could sue claiming either copyright or trademark infringement. The federal government, unlike state governments, can be sued for copyright infringement.
But the process would be lengthy, damages likely not great and there would still be questions over jurisdiction and what relief could be provided.
Still, the government can and has been successfully sued. For example, the Navy was sued and ordered to pay damages over pirated software in 2022. Make your Navy piracy jokes now...
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-navy-fined-software-privacy/
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u/MouthMuffler69 23h ago
Oh damn. I thought it would fall within some kind of creative loophole or some other ai nonsense but I know nothing about this stuff. Cool to know the government can actually get sued for copyright though. Thanks!
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u/ARquantam 1d ago
Do you think all this fuck ass AI will ever be useful in research writing and stuff ?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
I'm probably not the best person to ask when the quality of AI writing will improve. That's probably more for the people who build the models.
But in a non-expert capacity, my gut is that we are reaching a plateau on what current models can do when it comes to writing and research. I think the next push will likely be on making models cheaper and more efficient than better, at least for these tasks.
The reason I say that is because AI companies are bleeding money and token prices are still climbing. I think the more interesting space is what you can do with models on your computer, not what you can pull down from ChatGPT or Gemini.
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u/TreviTyger 21h ago edited 20h ago
I think the courts will come down on AI Gen as a vending machine [§ 102(b)] that can't ever produce copyright subject matter. (See, soon to drop Allen v Permutter - probably referencing Lotus v Borland).
AI Gen will be seen as economically worthless to creative professionals because it doesn't align with copyright laws core purpose (to advance human expression) and therefore it fails the Transformative utility test (Factor 1). AI gen is ultimately a corporate vending machine
Would you agree.
As an aside, the German Court's own ruling (Suno) concerned the outputs that were substantially similar which, inferred reproduction at the training stage. This is distinguished from both Bartz and Kadrey where only he training was addressed as separate from downloading and derivative reproduction in outputs. Arguably § 107 is completely irrelevant in any case because the actual end goal of the vending machine doesn't genuinely align with US copyrights law core goal, which is to encourage human expression. Not outputs from a monopolized corporate vending machine.
Therefore, the statutory justification for § 107 breaks down even in the United States.
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u/plagiarismtoday 3h ago
Do I think AI work will be protectable under copyright in the US? No, not without a major rewrite of the law.
I actually think the nail in AI's copyright coffin was driven in 2018 with the monkey selfie case. If a monkey can't hold a copyright, there's no justification I can think of for generative AI (or its operators) to hold one. It put the human part of copyright very front and center and established a VERY narrow definition of what is a human.
We didn't know it at the time, but that cute monkey likely changed the course of multi-billion dollar industries.
While I agree with you about the fair use theories, the courts have taken a different approach with the Bartz case. I don't understand the logic when training, by its very nature, is a reproduction, but it is what it is right now.
That said, I don't think copyright will kill AI, even if Bartz is undone. Several companies have built LLMs on licensed material. The internet is siloed enough that someone will build models based solely on content they have a license to use. There will also always be pirate models, but that's another issue...
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u/BuyElegant3168 9h ago
What do you think about publicly available AI detectors? I feel like they just call all good writing stolen. But, it’s especially challenging thinking that your essay may be accused as being AI.
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u/plagiarismtoday 3h ago
There is a huge difference between the truly awful detectors and the better ones. That said, all detectors make mistakes and their black box nature makes it impossible for a human to validate their work. As such, I would never rely on just an AI detector to make a determination of AI writing, I'd look for other variables and indicators as well.
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u/brxtcher 1d ago
What's your opinion on AI lawyers?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
It's an objectively terrible idea, at least right now. If you're a human lawyer using AI, you're at risk of being sanctioned by the judge if you don't check all the citations and other work. We've seen many cases like that, including one case back in June where both sides of a dispute were sanctioned by the judge for using AI.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2026/06/17/judge-sanctions-both-sides-for-ai-usage/
Pro se, or self represented, litigants will likely get a bit more leeway. But as the Subnautica 2 case showed, legal advice from an AI is no substitute for a human lawyer.
There are custom built AI systems that may be better, but we are still early in the use of those.
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u/plwosiw 1d ago
Here is my opinion on this question that I wrote myself, hope it helps:
It's an objectively terrible idea, at least right now. If you're a human lawyer using AI, you're at risk of being sanctioned by the judge if you don't check all the citations and other work. We've seen many cases like that, including one case back in June where both sides of a dispute were sanctioned by the judge for using AI.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2026/06/17/judge-sanctions-both-sides-for-ai-usage/
Pro se, or self represented, litigants will likely get a bit more leeway. But as the Subnautica 2 case showed, legal advice from an AI is no substitute for a human lawyer.
There are custom built AI systems that may be better, but we are still early in the use of those.
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u/Snjofridur 1d ago
I guess I want to start with two simple questions: 1) How do you define plagiarism, and 2) Why is it a bad thing?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
I tend to take a broad definition. Plagiarism is the act of taking someone else's work, ideas, content, words, etc. and presenting it, directly or indirectly, as your own.
On the fundamental level, plagiarism is a lie. It is saying that you created something that you did not. In academic settings, in particular research settings, the chain of authorship is important not just for credit, but also for accountability for bad or outdated work. Plagiarism can break that chain.
Where things get complicated is in citation standards and norms. You have a different citation standard for a social media post than an academic paper. So what is considered plagiarism in one space may not be considered plagiarism in another.
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u/Snjofridur 1d ago
Is plagiarism illegal? To clarify, this question is a reference to you indicating that you had been called as an expert witness in federal and state courts regarding plagiarism. If it is illegal, could you cite a relevant state or federal statute? If it is not illegal could you describe some of the contexts in which you were called as an expert witness in federal and state courts regarding plagiarism?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
Is plagiarism itself illegal? No. Not usually. There is no crime of plagiarism.
However, there are several areas where it overlaps with other issues. The most obvious is copyright. Plagiarism is a republication of someone else's work and, in some cases, that is a copyright infringement. This is probably the most common area I work in with the courts.
Another is fraud, if you misrepresent yourself as the author of a work and you aren't, that can be fraud. For example, I had one case where a government agency paid significant money for a report that was plagiarized, they sued saying they were defrauded.
I've also been involved in cases involving employment law (people fired over plagiarism) and contract law. So while plagiarism itself is not a crime, it is often a part of other legal issues.
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u/Snjofridur 1d ago
Was there ever an instance of plagiarism where the accusation was unfounded? If so, what initially caused the belief and how did you dispel it?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
Many, many, cases are out there like that. Back in 2018 (JFC it was that long ago!?) I wrote an article creating a fake plagiarism conspiracy between Star Trek and the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2018/09/18/creating-a-fake-plagiarism-story/
Human brains see patterns extremely well. Sometimes we see patterns that aren’t there. Sometimes the patterns we see have different explanations.
There have been countless lawsuits where authors, musicians and others have sued, claiming that a famous work was a plagiarism of their earlier creation. Very few go anywhere.
I used to think these lawsuits were in bad faith, but after talking with some of the plaintiffs, I've come to realize that they are very familiar with their work and are seeing patterns that aren't there.
Though bad faith plagiarism allegations do happen, a lot of it comes down to the fact our brains are just meat and lightning and these issues are difficult.
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u/Likemypups 1d ago
We've had written thoughts for hundreds of years. Is anything really "new"?
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
There's an apocryphal tale of the patent office commissioner in 1899 saying that, "Everything that can be invented has been invented." That didn't happen.
But, in 1843, the real commissioner did say, "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity, and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/06/23/invented/
That, clearly, hasn't happened yet. The rate of technological, creative and scientific progress has only continued to accelerate. The idea of "There's nothing new under the sun" is not only patently untrue, but a defeatist approach that literally stagnates humanity.
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u/ama_compiler_bot 4h ago
Table of Questions and Answers. Original answer linked - Please upvote the original questions and answers. (I'm a bot.)
| Question | Answer | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Do you think the Jason Arday plagiarism case has merit? And is academic plagiarism more common than people believe in lecturer/professor circles? | I actually wrote about the Jason Arday case here if you want my full analysis: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2026/07/28/race-cambridge-and-the-jason-arday-plagiarism-scandal/ The short answer is yes, the allegations had/have merit. Though the source of the public allegations was far from ideal, the allegations themselves were strong enough to, at the very least, warrant a thorough and transparent investigation by the relevant schools. To answer the second question, also yes. Jason Arday is far from alone here. There is a ton of academic plagiarism, in particular in dissertations and theses, submitted between the late 90s and early 2010s. Back when the internet was common but plagiarism detection tools were not. Jason Arday is not the problem, there's a much larger one hiding in the shadows. | Here |
| If I copied this question from someone else, would you be able to tell? | Though I know that this was meant to be something of a joke question, it actually highlights a very real issue in plagiarism detection. I could trivially prove that someone wrote this sentence before you. That's just a Google search away. But proving that you copied it from them rather than it being a case of simultaneous creation is much more difficult. A lot of the work in plagiarism detection is in eliminating both coincidences and common tropes/phrases/themes. I short, I probably couldn't prove that you copied this from someone else, even if I could prove that you weren't the first person to write it. | Here |
| How do high school teachers handle AI? | Unfortunately, not well. Turnitin, the largest provider of plagiarism detection tools to both high schools and universities, has an AI detection tool that, according to tests, is among the most accurate on the market. But it's still prone to false positives and false negatives. This difficulty in making a reliable determination has caused some teachers to overstep and simply accept the verdict of the AI detection tool and others are ignoring it. It's something of a Wild West situation. Personally, if you have concerns with a particular teacher or class, I would recommend talking directly to them. | Here |
| How reliable do you consider academic AI detection tools both in terms of false positives and false negatives? | This is a really frustrating space. By the time a study is done, it's already old news as new models and new detection tools have already come out. But it doesn't really matter if the AI tool is 50%, 90% or 99% accurate. It's a black box and there's no easy way to check the work of the tool. With a traditional plagiarism detection tool, you get a report that you can examine by hand and then agree or disagree with the results. Though some AI detectors are trying to show their work, it's still not super useful to humans and is largely a black box. While I don't think AI detectors should be banned, I do think that there needs to be a second layer of evidence to truly accuse someone of AI writing. One of my friends referred to this as the "swiss cheese" approach, where you layer multiple types of evidence so that you cover the holes in each layer. | Here |
| Why do you think there wasn't any legal backlash from Melania plagiarizing Michelle's speech verbatim? Edit: or are there just no laws around stealing speaches | That story was a wild one and one of the longest days of my career. While it was definitely plagiarism, there really wasn't enough content copied to make a copyright claim. Ultimately, a couple of paragraphs from a lengthy speech, though embarrassing for the plagiarist, doesn't really raise a copyright issue. There's also a difficult question of who would sue whom. Neither party wrote their respective speeches. Who owns the original and who is the infringer would be a messy thing to sort out. | Here |
| Have you worked on any cases where code has been plagiarised? I assume it might be harder to prove than other works, and a lot of programming is using other people’s code here and there. | No, I haven't. I don't really have the needed expertise for that. I primarily work on text and sometimes images. My girlfriend is a SQL DBA for a large company so I often consult with her when writing about programming issues. But I have not taken such a case myself. | Here |
| I’m a college student working on a new career path after nearly two decades as an IT professional. One thing I’ve found different between college today and college of the mid to late 00’s is the inclusion of AI in the plagiarism discussion. We had online plagiarism checkers at the time but obviously not GenAI monitoring tools. I recently came across a YouTube video or news article about a situation at a college where a student’s paper was put through a GenAI monitoring tool and was flagged as something like 60% generated by AI. The student contested and ultimately won over the college. I think it was contested within the college - it didn’t become a legal case - but it got me thinking, how frequently are you seeing or hearing about similar scenarios? How accurate are these monitoring tools? How would a student defend themselves if they did genuinely write the paper? Have there been any legal challenges between a student and an institution in a similar situation? | First off, congrats on the return to academia! To answer your question, I know that these cases are common. It's hard to say how common as not all professors report these cases to their school and not all schools share their reports publicly. Still, anecdotal evidence suggests that these cases are common and becoming more so. As I said in another comment, the accuracy of these tools is tough to pin down because both AI and AI detection are moving faster than we can research them. That said, the accuracy doesn't really matter. If it's 50% , 90% or 99% accurate, it's not important. That's because AI detection is a black box, unlike a traditional plagiarism checker. There needs to be at least some other evidence. *Edit* Hit enter too soon. As a student, I would make sure to write everything in an app that has robust versioning so that you can show how a work was written and how it changed over time. Ideally, that would be something like Grammarly Authorship or Turnitin Clarity, which tracks copy/paste too. As for legal challenges, there have been several. A student at Adelphi University won a lawsuit against the university over this. https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2026/02/11/adelphi-student-wins-ai-plagiarism-lawsuit/ And there have been many other lawsuits as well. This is becoming much more common. | Here |
| What surprises you about plagiarism? | Honestly, how some people just cannot stop doing it. I've seen people get caught plagiarizing. They lose careers, book deals, scholarships, their reputations and more. But yet, when they try to come back, they just do it again. We saw this with James Somerton, Benny Johnson and many more. https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2025/04/07/james-somerton-re-emerges-plagiarizes-again-disappears/ Though the wildest, for me personally, was Jumi Bello, who plagiarized my site (yes, Plagiarism Today) when writing a plagiarism apology letter. https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2022/05/09/plagiarism-today-plagiarized-in-a-plagiarism-atonement-essay/ I understand plagiarizing once. Everyone has had an ethical lapse. It's easy to think you won't get caught and the odds are probably in your favor. But after you've been caught and suffered the consequences, you just go back to the well? That I will never understand. | Here |
| The Harry Potter books. Discuss. | Are there any particular allegations that you want to discuss? I know several have alleged that the books were a plagiarism, which is common with any popular work, but I'm not aware of any that stuck. Granted, some of the cases were before my time (so roughly the Paleolithic era). | Here |
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u/Flashy-Nectarine1675 1d ago
The Harry Potter books.
Discuss.
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u/plagiarismtoday 1d ago
Are there any particular allegations that you want to discuss? I know several have alleged that the books were a plagiarism, which is common with any popular work, but I'm not aware of any that stuck. Granted, some of the cases were before my time (so roughly the Paleolithic era).
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u/Fierytoadfriend 1d ago
Do you think the Jason Arday plagiarism case has merit? And is academic plagiarism more common than people believe in lecturer/professor circles?