Yesterday Nora Roberts and I presented a morning panel at the Washington Romance Writers May meeting and talked about plagiarism. The point of our discusion was simple: “If We Don’t Talk About It, It Won’t Go Away.”
If you attended the session on plagiarism at RWA in San Francisco, you might have a sense of the general themes of the discussion. As Jane said that afternoon in San Francisco, the attitude toward the topic itself, from discussing it to reporting it to dealing with the aftermath, needs to change, and it needs to change now. Within romance and within publishing in general, there is a lack of cohesive response to allegations of, followed by proof of, plagiarism. Whereas one publisher might deliberately seek to handle the matter internally, another may do something entirely different.
But the reaction never changes. Within the community of writers, some bring up the issue as a matter of educational opportunity; others wish we’d stop talking about it already. Aside from the predictable excuses Nora outlined in her discussion, ranging from, ‘I would never do such a thing’ to ‘It seems my research assistant…’ or ‘my undiagnosed mental illness’ made me do it, the lack of an effective reaction to the plagiarism itself is frustrating.
Newspapers are a slightly different animal, especially since the four-page retraction-o-rama in The New York Times that followed the firing of Jayson Blair for multiple counts of plagiarism in May of 2003.
Now that it’s May of 2009, and Maureen Dowd has been caught plagiarizing Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, I’m very curious to see what will happen to Dowd.
What drops my jaw is that just yesterday, I was saying that the connectivity and immense number of searchable texts available online means one thing: if you do plagiarize, you will get caught. And Nora’s point about blaming the research assistant or some other unnamed individual is played out here, only in this case Dowd is placing the blame on a comment made by a friend while she was writing the article. In her statement to the NYT-focused blog NYT Picker:
josh is right. I didn’t read his blog last week, and didn’t have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.
i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent—and I assumed spontaneous—way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.
but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we’re fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.
Good Lord, do we need to have a plagiarism drinking game? It wasn’t my fault (2 sips). It was unintentional (2 sips).
Fucking bullshit (please, someone get me a drink).
As one commenter, johnsonwax, pointed out at Daily Kos, Dowd’s friend made this point “so cogently that even the commas fall in the same places. That’s some seriously detailed conversation she has.”
The column at the NY Times site has been updated to include a mention of the original source of the line and states at the bottom:
An earlier version of this column failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Points Memo.
Failed? Yeah, you got that right, it failed on an epic fucking scale. Is this really such a difficult lesson to learn? It’s the internet, for heaven’s sake: don’t plagiarize. Not only does it make you a complete douchebag, but You Will Get Caught.
Readers of this site may have seen a kerfuffle or two played out in the romance world. But oh, Lordy, hell hath no kerfuffle like the seething torment of a left-wing or right-wing political blog. There is no equal.
I’m curious to see the response as this hits the news tonight and tomorrow. How many times will we see someone say, ‘Oh, it’s just a blogger,’ or ‘she fixed it and can we move on now?’ Or, ‘this isn’t the issue we need to talk about and it’s not important.’
Dowd’s column was about accountability when examining scandal and illegal behavior – in this particular instance, torture. And yes, we do need to examine the issue of torture like holy shit right goddam now. But if the individuals who are charged as journalists and newspaper columnists to raise and report the issue don’t have the integrity and sense of accountability to correctly attribute the sources of their ideas and arguments, then their lack of authenticity renders useless their contribution. Moreover, it reflects poorly on the journalism of every other person working to publish at a newspaper whose stock price per share a few months ago was less than the cost of the Sunday edition.
If accountability and ethical behavior are some of the issues at work within both of the situations at hand, I’ll be very curious to see how Dowd’s behavior is dealt with by the newspaper. If her point in that article is that ethical responsibility is important, let’s see how she walks that walk in the morning.
Oh, and when I say it’s about money, I don’t mean that their approach is working for them, either. What I mean is that that’s the way it’s always been done so that’s the way they’re doing it even though it’s a new media.
Hence the terms.
*headdesk* My students will be wanting to discuss this in class this week, I can see it now. They had a field day with the journalists using Wikipedia fuss last week! And while I am always glad for a chance to prove that what we learn in the classroom really does have real world applications, these cases always disappoint me.
Everyone should know better. No one should get away with it. Let’s keep banging that drum, my friends.
The headline over at Galley Cat is “NY Times Absolves Maureen Dowd”. Nothing further needs to be done, apparently.
I don’t know—is that NYT’s job? Have they actually investigated anything? Done anything other than give Dowd a pass?
Yes, SonomaLass, exactly. From that article:
More and more, though, people are realizing that in fact the reverse is more the truth. The very nature of blogging in terms of just how many there are out there looking over everyone else’s shoulder tends to provide a check and double-check on the flow of information. Is it perfect? No, but it’s a damn sight more perfect than nobody even looking or checking anything at all. Which appears to be the morass the old media, mainstream or so-called quailty publications are falling into.
And they wonder why they’re losing readerships.
I think part of the discussion about this should be scale. People will dismiss this as oh, she only lifted a paragraph or a line and she appologized, it’s over now. However, if we allow a paragraph, what about a chapter? What about half a book.
I’m glad Ms Dowd has corrected her site and has given credit but why not have done so in the first place? IMHO, she should have wanted to attribute the comment to the original author, b/c then she could have generated some traffic to the original author’s site. It would have done him good. Granted, she’s done the same thing by being caught, however, the intention was not there.
Here is the letter I sent to the editor of The New York Times:
Isn’t there some equivalent to a 50-game suspension for a columnist???
Just wanted to pop in and say there was a piece by Ed Pilkington in the UK’s Guardian newspaper this morning under the headline: “US columnist Maureen Dowd caught up in plagiarism row.”
Now, I have no clue who Ms Dowd is, but the piece was not too complementary, painting her excuses as implausible at best and pointing out that “if a columnist is to borrow a paragraph uncredited, at least they should ensure it doesn’t belong to Josh Marshall.” Pilkington lastly points out that Dowd was the one to ruin Joe Biden’s 1988 bid for the Presidency when she broke the story that he had been nicking his speeches from the then Labour leader in Britain Neil Kinnock. Quelle irony, eh?
We in the UK are currently mired in a major public out-cry about our MPs expenses claims – which have finally been published due to Freedom of Information legislation. Turns out our not-so-honourable parliamentarians have been getting the general public to pay for everything from their cat food to the maintenance on their swimming pools and even cleaning out their moats (yeah, that’s right, a moat!!). So if I hear one more person use the ‘I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong, so therefore I didn’t do anything wrong’ defense I think I’ll reach for my sick bag.
Personally, I’m with Nora on this (ooh, I’ve always wanted to say that). Dowd’s defence is completely implausible it would require her friend to quote Marshall verbatim without mentioning it to her and then for Dowd to write it down verbatim too during what was supposed to be a casual chat when she was just brainstorming ideas for her column. Um, I don’t think so. But even if Dowd’s excuse were true, and by some fluke she plagiarised third hand without realising it, it’s still plagiarism – and for her to have any credibility at all surely she should acknowledge it as such.
I don’t have the tune ti read all of the comments, so I’ll come back later after I have finished my paper (that I promise I won’t plagiarise) to read them. I just needed to comment that it is not all that surprising that students don’t think of plagiarising as being illegal or even bad when most of the time it is ignored or covered up like this. It really is such a sad state of affairs when a NYT columnist is guilty of plagiarism.
That whole “liberal media” crap is, well, crap. Who pointed out that Dowd had plagerized? Well, a DFH “liberal” from TPM. And if you’ve visited DailyKos, you can see that they were all over this. Maureen Dowd is NOT a liberal, and the idea that there is a “liberal media” is ridiculous.
I hope she figuratively burns in flames for this. But I doubt it. The right-leaning “corporate media” that controls a majority of our media all stick up and cover for themselves.
Oh, dear gods. Some tool on Huffingtonpost (and several of his commenters) don’t seem to even understand what plagiarism is.
It’s not the idea that she stole. It’s the words. The exact freaking words, down to the punctuation. You don’t own the concept, you own your materialization of the concept.
Dumb. People are dumb. Grrrrrrrr.
I’d like to add one point to my prior post and clarify what I have already said.
First, I’d like to applaud the authors of SBTB for bringing so many instances of plagiarism to our attention. By calling attention to the problem SBTB helps to educate authors and makes it harder to get away with copying. This is a real public service.
Now the clarification. The point I was trying to make is that copying is never innocent. Unfortunately, what I often see when there is a plagiarism scandal is that the discussion becomes one of dissecting the excuse. The excuse is almost always an explanation of how the copying occurred or wasn’t really copying and we spend a lot of energy talking about whether that explanation is true or not as though having a good story would somehow excuse the copying.
Under copyright law, intent is not an issue. Some would argue that intent is an issue in plagiarism (see, for example, the RWA Code of ethics which makes intentional copying a violation while remaining silent on inadvertent copying). My personal opinion is that it shouldn’t matter why or how the copying occurred. Copying—or passing off another author’s work as your own—is wrong. Period.
Why then am I satisfied that justice is served in Dowd’s case? Forget whether you believe the friend story or not. What was the result? Dowd admitted that the words were not her own. She credited the original author of the words and made appropriate changes in the piece online and a printed correction with the proper credit in the print version. In my opinion this sets things right. The original author is getting credit for his words and Dowd has admitted the copying. We can argue til the cows come home about whether her apology was sufficient or whether she is being honest. I just don’t think that matters.
In an appropriate case, it would also make sense to pay damages for harm caused, or lost profits from the use of the intellectual property. In this case I’m not seeing monetary damages and I can think of no further punishment or consequences to Dowd or the NYT that would be helpful. There is an element of public humiliation to Dowd and the Times because Dowd was caught. As I said at the beginning the public revelation of the copying is a public service. Humiliation is an appropriate consequence. It should make all authors more careful to check their work and avoid intentional as well as careless copying. Not only is it the morally right thing to do, but we must be aware that the consequences could include the public humiliation of being caught.
Why is humiliation and public scorn the answer? Or should I say, why is that enough? Can I jump on the bandwagon of the poster who brought up the example of professional sports figures?
Why isn’t she being suspended without pay? Made to produce a blog proclaiming the ins and outs of what she did wrong? “Oh public censure is enough” … paraphrasing. Losing buckeroos speaks volumes too! Especially since she was all over Biden with her Sex in the City style hobnail boots.
Hear, hear, Janet W! While I agree w/Teresa that the “outing” is important, I don’t think the shame (if there really is any) is an adequate response, any more than Manny Ramirez being on the cover of Sports Illustrated under the headline “Caught Taking Illegal Substances” would be adequate. Some suspension, some loss of income, is called for when a professional violates the rules of her or his profession.
Otherwise, it’s as Liz said:
When a student in my class plagiarizes, he or she gets busted. It affects his or her grade, because it matters. I will continue to be a hard-ass about this, but it sure would be nice if writing and publishing professionals were more so. Many are, of course (thank you Nora! I quote you in my classes!), but so far not The New York Times.
There needs to be a big enough penalty that people will see it as serious. Probably a statutory penalty rather than suing for punitive damages.
Trava said:
There is a statutory penalty under the Copyright Act. Unfortunately, it applies only when the work is registered with the Copyright office. So—had Dowd copied a line from a book registered with the Copyright Office, the author could sue for statutory damages. Attorney fees are also provided, so it would be possible to get an attorney to take the case even though little money is at stake.
However, my assumption is that most blog articles are not registered with the copyright office. I’d have to look at the statute to find out if it is possible at this point for him to register this article, sue and get damages.
In any case—to have some sort of legal penalty applied we are talking about a court process. There are no Copyright police who can issue a ticket and collect a fine. This is why the idea of penalizing someone seems impractical to me in this situation. I’m a lawyer—I can’t help it. I like process. I don’t like the idea of a presumption that every instance of alleged copying automatically means fines, suspension from jobs or casting out of the publishing world.
BTW, I do think that some instances of copying should require all of those things after the copying is proven in court or has been admitted. I’m appalled to see writers who have been proven guilty of repeatedly copying and who continue to have their books published on a regular basis.
@Ebony, re: your remark about inadvertent memory providing you with phrases. It shouldn’t have passed uncommented upon, IMO, but apparently I’m the first to say: good on ya for going the distance. I’ve wondered about this, too, since I read so much and have done since I was knee-high. Whose brilliant prose did I take so far into my mind that I think it’s mine now? You’ve taken it one step further, and appropriately so. I will now plagiarize (?) your method and take it upon myself to do the same when my prose looks too brilliant to be mine alone.
Also, in the OP there was a question: why isn’t there more attention paid in the larger publishing world? I keep expecting this also, naif that I am. But I still see Cassie Edwards’ novels out there, so that publisher is not taking it seriously enough.
Ebony, you have now increased my personal pantheon of writing savants to 10 names.
Nothing to investigate, nothing to raise an outcry over. Modo has a horde of interns/assistants preparing column material for her and pulled something off TPM written by Josh Marshall and the final product did not get attributed. Somebody plagiarized him and Modo wasn’t paying attention. A sharp-eyed TPM blogger caught it and emailed them, and Modo corrected it by adding an attribution. It was fair use, if attributed, but it hadn’t been attributed.
Plagiarism is not fair use. Since Josh Marshall has issued a statement that the correction was prompt and he is satisfied, then why aren’t the rest of you satisfied? This is not the Carrie Edwards situation where she plagiarized works of non-fiction and fiction, unattributed, going back decades. This was a single sentence paragraph, promptly attributed the following day.
If you want to help stamp out plagiarism, it would help to make the proper distinctions and put things in perspective.
That having been said, if the alert TPM’ers find two, three, four more examples of exactly the same thing in past columns by MoDo or anyone else writing op-eds a the NYT, then it’s a problem of a different magnitude. But in this case it’s firmly in the “error” category.
Right out of Star Wars (paraphrasing) … “Nothing to see here folks, move along” … gee, so now it’s “MoDo has an arsenal of assistants and they f’ck’ed up” … that’s what you’re saying? It’s gross, imo, whatever direction it moves in (friend on the phone, out of the ether yadda yadda)—because, call me naive, it’s her name but it’s not her words? I have no problem with assistants/editors/whomevers providing topic ideas, talking points, research help but somehow you’re saying a clear and comprehensive apology wipes her slate clean for lifting someone else’s words? Passing them off as her own? Yeah she took responsibility but this spin on how it’s no biggie. Hmmmm.
It’s the lack of consequences that is annoying me and being told that this is a non-story is even more annoying. You’re saying, “if it’s a pattern, then it’s time to be concerned” (again, paraphrasing) … excuse me, but isn’t that up to the public, that great unwashed, no one ever went broke underestimating them public that we’re talking about?
Bottom line, if it had been a commentator who wasn’t quite as popular or heaven forfend, a politician, would you be suggesting we just let this story die?
@Janet W: I think you missed my point. Copyright is a limited monopoly right granted (in the US) by the Constitution. Plagiarism is a breach of that right, and it is in essence, a breach of contract. As with other breaches of contract, there are remedies available. In this case, the breach (not attributing a quote) was remedied to the satisfaction of the author by attributing the quote. That is all the author felt was necessary and to HIM, there is no more issue. Since he is the only injured party here, yes, the issue does go away. Unless, as I say, there are other instances. You can bet that other dedicated readers at TPM blog (of which I am one) are presently looking for other instances.
Does this mean I don’t think plagiarism is wrong? No. It means in this case, it was easily and promptly remedied. Does it give MoDo a black eye? Sure. Read the Guardian. Read bloggers swarming all over TPM calling her a cheat. No consequences? Not hardly. It is very likely she’ll be known as “The Times Plagiarist” from now until doomsday. Her Pulitzer has gotten some tarnish on it. But no, the law does not require further consequences than the prompt attribution and apology, and neither does the injured party. So – why should anyone else? It is not, ultimately, our business. It’s the business of the NYT and anyone their employees quote without attribution.
Talk about tossing down the gauntlet. Sigh. See what I mean about the mindset and cluelessness involved here? Does anyone honestly believe most people suspected that you gals would find as many “problems” within the Edwards books before you found them using technology now available?
@BevBB – it’s the limits of fair use. Dowd used a sentence without attribution, and with proper attribution it’s fair use, which is why she was compelled to correct it. To the satisfaction of the original author (that is also important.) The difference between this and the Carrie Edwards thing is that EVEN IF ATTRIBUTED, it was excessive use of copyrighted material and could not be used regardless. Edwards could not have corrected it because she had borrowed too much. And if you think that is hair-splitting, those are the hairs on which copyright cases are made or broken every day. There is a fair-use right to quote others in newspapers – she erred in not attributing the quote, she corrected it – which is all that the law and the injured party required.
Okay, accepting that everything you say is correct, then answer this because I honestly haven’t gone back to check the NYT site – when they made the correction, did they actually link to the blog post or simply reference it in text?
Because I’m sort confused on how naming a blog/site but not actually linking to the specific url for the post/article is proper attribution of the source.
Of course, if they have included links, then I’m with you. Absolutely.
This is actually a very interesting topic for me because I just failed a student for the semester because she plagiarized not one but twice! The first instance she failed the assignment and received a warning, and the second instance resulted in an automatic failure for the course. Now, to be fair, I have noticed a rather disturbing trend where students do no know the difference between plagiarism and paraphrase. Many of my students think they have written something “in their own words” when all they have done is substitute and rearrange. So, I usually have to have a lesson or two in my Composition courses on paraphrasing and citation. However, in this case, the student knew exactly what she did, and the complete apathy she expressed worries me for the future in that she seemed more miffed that she was caught than that what she did was a serious breach of my college’s honor code as well as a basic, human ethical code. And, “my friend screwed me over” reflects a similar apathy and unwillingness to admit wrongdoing. Just because you have a “good” reputation does not mean that we have to believe everything you say or that we cannot check up on you – no one is above the law.
Indeed, I always tell my students: How would you like it if someone stole your essay, submitted it to a scholarship committee, and is now enjoying a full ride to Harvard or Yale – all thanks to you? Meanwhile, you are here, at a state college – albeit receiving a good, but certainly not ivy league, education – with a full time job, a full course load and ever mounting debt? I watch them squirm uncomfortably for a time, and then I tell them that plagiarism is never free. It always costs somebody, somewhere something, and with technology being what it is today, you will get caught. You will have to pay. And it is nobody’s fault but your own.
@BevBB:
The text was corrected to read:
In addition, an appended note was added to the op-ed:
Marshall writes:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/05/very_briefly_on_dowd.php
Why is this story bringing out the cliche in me? The more I read that Marshall is cool, move on, she apologized and corrected, move on, the more my hackles start to rise. I read yesterday as I was blog crawling that drunk drivers, before they’re finally pulled over, have literally driven tipsy a gazillion times. Nice analogy. Or the guy saying to a gal (or let’s be PC), the gal saying to the guy, Would you sleep with me for a $1M? Sure he/she says. How about $1,000? What do you think I am?
I liked the story from the prof—in fact, I wish Smart Bitches would find that plagiarism quiz that was floating around at the heyday of Cassie Edwards: it is not easy to know the rules but hey, you are a columnist at the top of your game, you should know (or your assistant(s) should.
@Teresa:
The statutory penalty for infringement of copyright is actually quite steep, $100,000 per incident. But besides needing to have a registered copyright, the injured party (the copyright holder) has to actually sue. It is a civil, not a criminal, matter and not automatic. It is expensive since it is a highly-specialized area of law, and there are four applicable standards that need to be applied in order to win a copyright infringement case, not all of which are cut and dried. One of these is the demonstration of financial damage by the infringing party.
So, is that a “proper” attribution or not?
Notice I’m not saying it was plagarism. I’m just asking about how it was attributed even after it was corrected.
What I’m getting at is this – people would still have to search for the specific post when a link would take them directly to it. Heck, they’d have to search for his blog first. There is no extra information there to aid in that search if they were curious. So, I am curious if this is seen as truly proper by the literary types here. Seeing as how this is a new medium and all, what are the rules that should be followed? What do you teach your students?
@BevBB:
To my knowledge, the NYT online never embeds URL links in its op ed columns, so citing the full name of the blogger and the full name of his blog would cover just about everything. And she attributed him in the same way as other attributions she has made over time. That’s all I know.
@Louise van Hine:
As far as I’ve seen and heard, quite a few of the major print publications not to mention video networks that now have online sites don’t either, which why I’m asking the academics if it’s considered proper.
This isn’t idle curiosity. Just because that’s the way things have always been done doesn’t mean that’s the way they should always be done when one is dealing with new technology. Even respected dinosaurs have to adjust or they become extinct. So, yeah, I am curious. What rules are being taught about linking and attribution with the advent of this new media and technology?
I’m puzzled as to why people keep bringing up copyright violation—whether or not anyone’s copyright was violated *isn’t the point*.
I could take an obscure late 18th century gothic novel and lift entire pages of it wholesale for a historical romance novel and it would violate no copyright whatsoever, because the work I would be copying from would be public domain. It would, however, still be plagarism. And it would be just as wrong as doing the same thing to a currently under copyright book.
Plagarism has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with lying and fraud—the crime isn’t the copying of the words themselves, but the passing off of another’s work off as your own. You could violate copyright left, right, and center and completely avoid plagarism so long as you stuck quotation marks around the borrowed text and clearly stated that it was written by author X and not by you. Someone can commit both copyright violation and plagarism at the same time, but they’re *not the same thing*.
Copyright violation is only an offence against the copyright holder. Plagarism is an offense not only against the original author, but against every reader to whom the plagarist is misrepresenting themselves, and every other writer who actually does their own work and doesn’t cheat, the same way that a student submitting a term paper they got off the internet is an offense against both the teacher and the rest of the class.
@Elspeth:
The reason why I associated plagiarism with copyright law is because outside of the application of copyright law, plagiarism only has consequences within academic communities, i.e. students, and, though it is not often brought up, academicians writing and publishing articles. The consequences of plagiarism in these environments is generally academic failure, as the professor above pointed out.
Otherwise, the only “consequences” for plagiarism are those meted out in civil copyright cases, or by the ethics standards of employers who catch their employees plagiarizing, which is purely a personal matter.
As frustrating as it might seem, there is actually no law against plagiarism, except as defined within copyright law.
No, there is no law against plagiarism, which is why I believe the writing/publishing profession should police itself more carefully. There should be clear ethical rules, and those who violate those rules should pay a price. I stand by my analogy regarding professional athletes: taking hCG isn’t against the law either, but it IS against the rules of major league baseball, so getting caught means getting a penalty.
Even my students don’t get away with simply correcting an “attribution error”—they lose points on the assignment, and if there’s a pattern, the penalties get more severe. Sometimes they really don’t understand the rules, but they still have to play by them. Ms Dowd SHOULD know the rules, as a professional, and IMO should be penalized for not following them.
If sentence was not original, then it needed attribution. How could she NOT KNOW that she didn’t write that?? If she had mis-attributed it, that would be a simple mistake, but she didn’t attribute it at all. And she’s not claiming that she intended to, either—she didn’t know where the words came from (although she must have known they weren’t hers), and she obviously didn’t care enough to find out.
I agree that the only possible consequences here would be those enforced by her employer; I’m disappointed that one of the country’s premiere news publications has lower standards than my community college.
Yes. This. I expected better from the New York Times. And while plagarism isn’t illegal, it is unethical, and many professions have internal consequences—sometimes severe—for doing things that, while perfectly legal (taking hCG, for example), violate ethical standards, because they damage the credability of the profession as a whole. Journalism, I feel, ought to operate the same way. One journalist caught plagarising, falsifying information, or otherwise violating journalistic ethics tarnishes the reputation of both the paper they write for and the profession as a whole.
“As frustrating as it might seem, there is actually no law against plagiarism, except as defined within copyright law.”
What I am finding frustrating is the circling back to the limitations of the law—that, to me, is so not the point. Many things are not, on the face of it, actually illegal, but they are surely dishonourable and unacceptable. What is so troublesome to me is that the New York Times is reacting the way that they have. One might have expected—hoped—that they would set a higher standard.
This story has disappeared on Huff Post, doesn’t seem to have been mentioned on The Daily Beast and well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Thank goodness for writers like Nora Roberts … and so many others … who call a spade a spade and don’t seek to dilute or trivialize what happened by pointing to the legal non-consequences.
@Janet W: I was replying to Elspeth’s comment regarding why I associated a discussion of plagiarism with copyright law, not for the purpose of “diluting” or “trivializing”, but to point out that the only “consequences” that exist right now in a real way exist through copyright law. Those laws can be strengthened in order to provide more penalties, but not without political action to strengthen them.
I think that with the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there has been some strengthening with respect to online plagiarism, because online providers WILL remove content that is plagiarized upon presentation of prima facie evidence without having to go to the trouble of suing. The only alternatives are, as Elspeth and some others have pointed out, strengthening the teeth of ethics guidelines in publishing and related professions that will effectively blacklist those who plagiarize. There is a Livejournal community that published a list of LJ users who had provably plagiarized others: stop_plagiarism.livejournal.com is the community name, and a plethora of sites that are now offering step by step instructions on how to file DMCA reports against those who plagiarize others’ online content. So there are things being done… but to date I have not heard of any serious political action being considered to actually pass a law against plagiarism.
Louise—
I think strengthening copryright law any further than it already has been strengthened would be a mistake, with consequences far worse than not punishing plagarism adequately. The DMCA has already expanded IP law far beyond anything it’s ever covered before, occasionally at the expense of consumers (it makes some things that were previously fair use for non-digital material explicitly illegal for digital objects), and its provisions for electronic archives, preservation metadata, and the creation of preservation copies for back up are God-awful (only three copies for preservation purposes? *Three*? That’s three migrations to another platform and then the file is legally required to stagnate in an obselete format forever).
Sorry—bitter DCMA hating records manager here. The DCMA was wildly unpopular with my electronic records professors when I was getting my MLS, though Windows Vista and its compatibility problems have replaced it as public enemy number one these days, I think.