Plagiarism = Stealing
What you should know about plagiarism and copyright law
What is plagiarism?
Check out the following site to learn more about what plagiarism is. See that picture in the upper right? It's a tiny piece of that website. I'm giving the site credit for that picture right here, *photo from kidshealth.org,* I'm using only a small portion, and I'm using it for educational purposes, which means it qualifies for me to use under the Fair Use aspect of copyright law.
How do you know you are plagiarizing?
When it comes to written ideas, you have to give credit where credit is due. Even when you put bits of information into your own words, you HAVE to give credit to the original source, because the information you used in your work came from its author, not you.
BUT wait? What about pictures, videos and music?
Videos
Photographs and other images
Music
Wait.. you said something about Fair Use, what's that?
A Fair-y Use Tale
So, what are the rules under Fair Use that allow me to use copyrighted work?
First, the reason you are using the work is important when considering fair use. The following are usually acceptable reasons for using copyrighted content; criticism and commentary, education, news reporting, academic research, and parody. When using content for these purposes, however, you have to also take into consideration the amount of the content you use. You can still only use small portions of the work, and you still usually need to cite it.
Another thing to think about is how you are using the content. Are you just copying the content, or are you using that content to create something new and original, like with the video above? How you use the content can affect how it fits into fair use.
The last thing to consider is whether or not what you are doing with the content competes with the original creator for profit. You can't take someone else's work and sell it. If you use it to create something completely new though, and then sell it, and what you have created does not keep people from buying the original work, then that is usually pretty safe too.
Sources
All used by Fair Use or licensing, by the way...
plagiarism picture: www.kidshealth.orgvideo box: http://kaddigart.deviantart.com/art/Videos-Box-1-Icon-334213377
woman: http://www.pexels.com/photo/2326/
music: http://pixabay.com/en/music-notes-abstract-159870/
justice/books: http://pixabay.com/en/scale-weigh-judge-books-equial-310471/
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-rule-copyright-material-30100.html