What Is Complete Plagiarism?

Complete plagiarism often has severe consequences. It makes sense, considering that with complete plagiarism, someone is taking the entirety of another’s work and calling it their own.

Explore complete plagiarism. Learn about what it is, what it looks like, where artificial intelligence (AI) fits in, and how to avoid complete plagiarism in your work.

Key Points (TL;DR)

• Complete plagiarism occurs when someone copies another author’s entire work and tries to pass it off as their own.
• It can happen in academic writing, professional settings, and across online content.
• The policies around AI-generated content and plagiarism vary, although according to current United States laws, AI-generated content can’t be copyrighted.
• Complete plagiarism can result in academic sanctions, reputation damage, search engine penalties, and legal issues.
• The best way to avoid complete plagiarism is to use a plagiarism checker and write original content.

What Is Complete Plagiarism?

Complete plagiarism, or global plagiarism, occurs when someone attempts to pass off another person’s entire original work as theirs. It’s like if someone were to copy-and-paste and paste a full blog post onto their website and replace the original author’s name with theirs. 

Not only are they not crediting the original author’s work, but they’re also not bringing anything new to the table (no — changing a couple of words here and there doesn’t count!). 

In contrast, other types of plagiarism, like mosaic plagiarism, blend in sections of another person’s work to try to disguise it.

Examples of Complete Plagiarism

Copying a blog post from a website is just one global plagiarism example. It can also pop up in other places, including:

• Academic writing: If a person asks someone to write an entire paper and then puts their name on it, it’s an example of complete plagiarism and academic dishonesty. This doesn’t just apply to students — it can happen to faculty as well if professors copy academic papers, lectures, or other teaching materials without proper attribution.

• Professional settings: Companies may plagiarize when they use near-identical marketing materials and product descriptions from rivals. It can also happen if employees use their colleagues' presentations, speeches, and reports without crediting them.

• Other online content: It’s not just about copying text. Creating YouTube videos that copy video styles, formats, and dialogue or sharing original social media content like infographics and images without credit can also count as plagiarism.

So, you can find examples of complete plagiarism just about anywhere. While it’s clear when a human tries to pass off another human’s work as their own, things become a little more complicated when machines and AI are involved.

Is Using AI-Generated Content Considered Complete Plagiarism?

So, is it plagiarism if an AI writes it instead of a human? Well, it depends on who you ask.

Even academic settings don’t seem to agree. Generally, they consider submitting an AI-generated paper as original work, a form of cheating. However, some call it plagiarism, while others say it's closer to ghostwriting.

It may seem as if AI tools have been around forever, but it’s still a very new technology. Therefore, the ethical issues surrounding plagiarism and AI have yet to be established. 

Note: No one owns generative AI text according to current United States law. Still, as AI development continues to advance it’s important to stay up to date on guidelines for the transparent use of AI text.

What Are the Consequences of Complete Plagiarism?

Let’s review some of the most common issues that arise with complete plagiarism.

• Academic integrity violations: Plagiarism violates the academic integrity policies of many schools. The consequences could range from redoing an assignment to a failing grade, probation, or suspension.

• Damage to professional reputation: If someone copies and submits another person’s work as their own, what are they really bringing to the table? Colleagues and clients will have difficulty viewing them as an expert if they can’t do the work themselves. This could result in job loss or the loss of other professional opportunities.

• Search engine penalties: Google doesn’t have an official duplicate content penalty. However, if it thinks a page was scraped to duplicate someone else’s content and manipulate search engine results — it may take action. The content could end up with lower rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) or not rank at all.

• Legal consequences: Plagiarism may not be against the law, but copyright infringement is. If someone plagiarizes another person’s copyrighted material, it could result in legal action. 

How to Avoid Complete Plagiarism

There are many ways to avoid plagiarism. For example, you could use a plagiarism checker on your content to identify and fix any duplicate text before submitting it to school, work, or publishing it online. 

However, with complete plagiarism, it really comes down to this — don’t copy someone else’s entire work.

Focus on creating original content with your unique perspective and research to add value and create high-quality content for your audience, assignment, or work project.

The Bottom Line

Complete plagiarism may be one of the most severe forms of plagiarism, but it’s also one of the easiest to avoid. By knowing what it is and focusing on creating original content, you can avoid the consequences of complete plagiarism in academia and professional settings.