http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism There it is. Plagiarism simply means copying material from others and claiming you're the author of the material. As a content creator, you should avoid it by not copying from anyone else. As a content owner, you can avoid it by... well... this is a topic in itself, sorry.
Yes that is correct, duplicate content may also lead your page go into Google's supplemental index. Supplemental Indexing is a problem to search engine marketers though there are ways to escape on it. Pages trapped in this index is rarely included in regular search results. Thats why it is best to always create unique copy.
Keep in mind that plagiarism does not only apply to copying text and claiming you are the author. Plagiarism is also copying ideas. For instance, if you create text that is not word for word but applies the same idea, you have plagiarized someone's work. Check out plagiarism.org for more detailed information. Hope this helps!
Beyond the traditional definition, there are plenty of things to learn about plagiarism. Things that you might not even expect to be considered plagiarism can often times be considered "stealing" of ideas.
It's not that you can't use other people's ideas, but mix them with your own creative thoughts and ideas, or you can take two different people's ideas and combine them into a brand new one if you're fresh out of ideas.
As a blogger, I don't care if someone takes my posts, as long as they link back to my material. It's like writing a paper. You can use an author's material, but you better attribute it to that author.
The point I was going to make exactly. Especially doing projects heavy in research I have seen someone say something exactly as I had wished to say it. With proper citations almost anything can avoid being plagiarized.
Someone (I don't remember who), once said that: copying one source is considered plagiarism, copying many is considered research. Keep in mind that the concept of copyright is modern. The ability of technical reproduction (see Gutenberg) raised the need for copyrights laws. I would say, don't worry about plagiarism. In cyberspace things are (until now, at least) loose.
I agree on that. I believe that as long as you recognize its source there's nothing to worry about. Just always remember not to copy the whole thing, as in word per word because this may affect your page's indexing.
Although always a good idea to attribute a source, it's still an infringement of copyright to reproduce large parts of someone else's work - even when attributed - without their permission. The concept of 'fair use' allows for things like single paragraphs, quotations etc to be used and attributed. What constitutes fair use is a point for much discussion though as thye definition can be seen to be subjective. When someone submits an article to a free reprint article directly, one of the conditions of submission is that you give permission for the article to be reproduced if the new publishers meets certain criteria - usually the activation of backlinks.
Hi, I am always concerned when we hire someone to do writing for us or outsource it that they will copy other's work and get us sued. Does Copyscape really help?
Avoid it as much as possible, once you have realized what it is. Copyscape helps to a limit, but I wouldn't worry as long as you have the source to back up.
As a writer, I don't usually accept work from clients who just insist on "Copyscape passed" articles instead of quality material. Copyscape is a set of algorithms; it simply checks for sets of matching words. While it can probably identify a blatant copy-job, it really isn't the best of copy-protection solutions if you ask me.
What do you recommend as the best form of copy protection? I normally just copy and paste a random snippet from an article written for me and see if google comes up with duplicates.