Kathi wrote > I think that would be copyright violation not > plagiarism. Plagiarism defintion: Plagiarism is using > others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging > the source of that information. Which is, I think true enough > You have to credit > someone for using their idea, opinion or theory, > quotations of their actual words or for paraphrasing > their spoken or written words. its certainly good manners to cite someone whose ideas you utilized. its probably professionally needful to do so, if you want to retain standing > Copying exactly word-for-word any part of a book, and > trying to make it appear you wrote it, would be a > copyright violation not plagiarism. taking credit for something someone else wrote is the essence of plagiarism. It may also be a copyright violation depending on the specific sources used > If you rewrote a > paragraph of Harry Potter using your own words, but > clearly the meaning and intent of the original book > then I think that would be plagiarism. Probably not a good choice as an example. It might be both, or neither in the case of some other examples You can certainly quote passages from copyrighted work under fair use, though you have to cite your source And people do write summaries of passages in this (and other) work(s) for purposes of discussion of the original work. But if you rewrote "Harry Potter" and tried to pass it off as your own, it would certainly be both plagerism AND copyright violation. However, if you extract information from something that someone else wrote, present it in your own words, then its an original expression, and would not violate I think anyone's copyright. Its the creative presentation that's protected under copyright. Now, if you decided to write a new story about Harry Potter, based on no existing work by Rowling, then you'd probably not be violating her copyright, nor plagerizing her---but you'd probably be subject to trademark infringement laws. Bill