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Lesson Note

Plagiarism is stealing someone else’s intellectual work (can be an idea, literary work or academic work
etc.) and representing it as your own work without giving credit to creator or without citing the source
of information.
Any of the following acts would be termed as Plagiarism:
• Using some other author’s work without giving credit to the author.
• Modifying/lifting someone’s production such as music-composition etc. without attributing it to
the creator of the work.
• Giving incorrect or incorrect source of information i.e., wrongful citation.
• Failure in giving credit or acknowledging the contribution of others in a collaborative effort, to
which you are also part of.

How not to Plagiarize?
To avoid plagiarism, must give credit whenever you are using:
• another person’s idea, opinion, or theory
• quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words
• paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words

Plagiarism is Offence
Plagiarism is copying ideas/ a substantial portion of a copyrighted work without attribution and without
permission.
It would amount to both copyright infringement and the violation of the ‘special right’ of the author to
be credited.
• Copyright infringement and the violation of an author’s right to be credited are both civil
wrongs and criminal offences.
• A civil suit may be instituted, and criminal charges may also be filed.
• Both civil suit and criminal charges are punishable offences and amount to fine and penalties.

Digital Property Rights
Digital property (or digital assets) refers to any information about a person or created by that person
that exists in digital form, either online or on an electronic storage device. All the digital property of a
person makes his/her digital estate.
Examples of digital property:
• any online personal accounts, such as email and communications accounts, social media
accounts, shopping accounts, photo and video sharing accounts, video gaming accounts, online
storage accounts, and websites and blogs that you may manage ;
• domain names registered in your name ;
• intellectual property, including copyrighted materials, trademarks, patents and any software or
code (such as software tools created by you or games or apps created by you) you may have
written and own etc.

Digital property rights lie with the owner (a person who has created it /payed for its creation).
Only the owner can use and decide who all and in what form can use his/her digital asset may be by
making payments or by buying it or by obtaining its license or usage rights etc.
But this is not the case generally; there are many threats to digital properties.

Threats to Digital Properties
• Digital software penetration tools. These are software tools (cracks, keygensetc) created by
hackers to penetrate software’s registration system and enable unauthorized users to freely
access a software without actually paying for it.