In the Times, Stanley Fish argues that plagiarism is not a moral or philosophical issue, just a professional one.

Plagiarism is…an insider’s obsession. If you’re a professional journalist, or an academic historian, or a philosopher, or a social scientist or a scientist, the game you play for a living is underwritten by the assumed value of originality and failure properly to credit the work of others is a big and obvious no-no. But if you’re a musician or a novelist, the boundary lines are less clear

And if you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale (who cares?); for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel, knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless you end up becoming a member of the profession yourself.

This strikes me as morally reductionist and downright silly. It doesn’t take years to learn the rules of plagiarism; it takes about as long as it takes to learn that it’s wrong to steal or lie, both of which are inherent in the act of plagiarism.

Fish patronizes today’s students: Though they may have more and easier access to materials that could be appropriated, they know what they’re doing; they’re cheating.

Now, they may figure everyone does it, so…so what? Or they may figure that their chances of getting caught are so low, the rewards justify the risk.

But they know that cutting and pasting another person’s work and presenting it as their own is wrong—both morally and professionally.

Moreover, the principles underlying plagiarism are closely related to intellectual property, and that body of theory and law applies across many different industries—indeed, it’s arguably the foundation of capitalism—beyond academia and other forms of media.

Even in the examples Fish cites, he’s wrong; plagiarism in music is a hotly debated issue that comes up a lot. So do intellectual property debates; the Beach Boys, for example, are currently threatening to sue Katy Perry for including the line, “I wish they all could be California Girls,” in her song “California Gurls.”

(Actually, Snoop Dogg rapps it.)

As usual, Fish writes at such length and with such a lack of clarity that he winds up confusing an issue that is really not that complicated….