Acts of plagiarism are being branded with society~s new scarlet letter

As we know from news accounts and Google searches, the intentional or accidental theft of words has occurred in many subjects, in many fields, including academia. Authors of literary works and music have fallen victim to plagiarism just as easily as authors of research and technical scholar ship. While the practice of plagiarism has always been discouraged, efforts to combat it have become more pronounced in recent years as the world of researchers and writers is increasingly compromised by the relatively recent development of one lone instrument: the Internet