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Plagiarism is unethical. It is taking someone elses words and ideas and claiming them as your own. In a classroom you would get a failing grade. Somehow in print literature a person is supposed to be rewarded and praised? No. Lacking ethics is not on honorable trait. Intellectual integrity should be of the utmost importance in publishing!
Taking someone elses words and ideas that have been published on the web and publishing them in a book as your ideas is not ethical. If I found someones writing on the internet and said to myself hey thats good I think I will chnage a couple of words here and there and send it in to a publisher and be a published author; would anybody be definding my integrity? There are a lot of good stories published right here on MR and if anyone were to take those and get them published as their own work, is that defendable as creating thier own work? "But it was on the web and I liked what it said and I didn't think I could say it any better and I agreed with what they were saying so I just put it in my book." No, that is Plagiarism. It is not intelletually honest or ethical.
I find that a lot people on web are willing to ignore or try to justify unexceptible behavior disheartning. "I dont like that rule I can ignore it." It can be equated to a lot of things that people do on the internet.
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