While plagiarism may not be a federal offense, or even a crime at any lesser level, it remains a violation of the ethics of all professional disciplines involved with the communication of ideas, including genealogy. But it is my observation that plagiarism is not well understood by the general public. Even if they understood what plagiarism was, many of them would be hard-pressed to figure out how they could best avoid committing it.
Genealogists are no different.
The same World Wide Web and e-mail system that has dramatically transformed the way we communicate our thoughts in the genealogical community has had an equally dramatic effect on the frequency with which plagiarism can and has been committed by genealogists. The ability to copy and paste text, combined with the ease of creating e-mail and Web pages, has resulted in a situation where we all need to be especially vigilant to the ethics of what we are doing. The concept of plagiarism is too large to cover adequately in a single column, but I believe I can bring to light a few significant points. An example of common knowledge would be the idea that George Washington's wife was named Martha. Beyond such examples, we have an expectation that genealogists will honestly document the sources for their assertions.