Plagiarism: The Da Vinci Code and Plagiarism Essay

Submitted By Ahmed-Abuhajar
Words: 911
Pages: 4

Nowadays, some political figures attempt to steal words or ideas from other authors’ articles and ideas in order to create their work or to present speeches. If politicians didn’t cite the source that they get the information from on their articles or during their speeches, it would be considered plagiarism. In newspapers, in order to avoid plagiarism accusation, journalists should give credit to other authors when they indicate some of their ideas. There are several types of plagiarism; some have serious consequences and some don’t. The three main prospective consequences lie in academic penalties, ruining the reputation, and financial losses.
Willful plagiarism can cause sever consequences for students in the university. Zinie Chen Sampson in his article “Students expelled from U.Va. Shipboard program for plagiarism” reported that in the University of Virginia, students would suffer expulsion from the first time if they were found guilty of violating the university’s honor code. Allison Routman, a student in a global studies program at the University of Virginia, and another students were ejected from the university since they were accused of plagiarizing their class assignment (Sampson, 2008). Plagiarism in the university is considered as a serious issue because thinking critically and being independent are regarded as essential parts students should aspire to reap. Students are expected to learn how to develop their own views and how to speak their own mind. They are required to acknowledge all ideas that are not their own using quotation marks and explicitly citing the source. If they fail to do so, they will put themselves at risk of committing an Honor violation, and hence the expulsion from the university could be the prospective penalty. In addition, students who admitted to plagiarizing their assignments in the University of Virginia escaped from the honor code punishment; however, they received zeros on their work (Sampson, 2008). Since the academic penalty is inevitable for the students who were accused guilty of plagiarizing, even if it was unintentional plagiarism, the students often receive zeros on their works, and therefore their academic record will be affected in a negative way.
Financial loss is another effect of plagiarism. In the article “Harvard Novelist Says Copying Was Unintentional” Kaavya Viswanathan, a student in Harvard University, wrote her first book “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life” and signed a half-million-dollar contract with the publisher Little Brown. After the content had been found to resemble to Megan McCafferty’s novels, Ms.Viswanathan was accused of plagiarizing and copying ideas from two young-adult novel whose author is Ms. McCafferty (Fehrenthold, 2006). As a result of this case, the contract between Ms. Viswanathan and Little Brown was cancelled, and the books were rejected from being reissued. Ms. Viswanathan, therefore, lost the money she had from the deal. In the article “Court rejects Da Vinci copy claim” After the accusation of stealing the central idea of Mr. Baigent and Mr. Leigh’s book to contribute Dan Brown’s work in writing the book “Da Vinci Code”, which is considered plagiarism, the court rejected the claim and ruled against Mr. Baigent and Mr. Leigh. The two authors had to pay for the costs spent for the lawyers on behalf of Dan brown and the publisher. This case illustrates the financial consequences of accusing plagiarism. The consequences of accusing Dan Brown of plagiarizing could have been expensive since Dan Brown could have lost financially if his published book had been recalled and prevented to be reissued