Plagiarism. I know, it's boring. Bear with me.

I’d like to find out your thoughts on plagiarism. It’s been a bit of an issue lately, and what really astounds me is how people defend their actions when caught out. I’d hate for someone else to just lift my writing word for word and publish it on their own site with no recognition, yet some people think it’s perfectly fine because “it’s just a blog”, "everybody does it" or because “the copying can be interpreted as a degree of flattery towards the artist”. Sure, it can be interpreted as flattery. It's still nice to ask first, or at least show some recognition. It’s not hard to write something along the lines of “I found this and thought it was really cool, you can find the original over at this site”. Unless of course writing something like that will cheapen the post because your readers will find out you didn’t write it – it’s just something that required the keys CTRL C and V. If that’s the case, perhaps people should consider writing their own material.

So once again, what are your thoughts?