Business insider AU:For me, the most interesting thing about plagiarism is that even though its legal, companies and people who do it get into real trouble for it.Even without a law, doing something that is so universally reviled has genuine, lasting consequences. Theres a lesson in there for people looking to find the right balance for internet copyright: a law without public support will be widely flouted, but things that the social consensus rejects out of hand be automatically, widely enforced.

Plagiarism on rise at Australian universities as academics face pressure to pass international students

WEAK students are being awarded nursing degrees by Australias top universities, putting the lives of patients at risk, an investigation has revealed.There are students that are falling through the cracks, and yes, they could end up being unsafe practitioners, one academic, who worked for the University of Western Sydney and the Australian Catholic University told the ABCs Four Corners.There are a group of students who I honestly believe ... should not be graduating.

Academics told the ABC the pressure to pass underperforming full-fee paying international students, with one lecturer saying she was staggered by the increase in plagiarism.The report also shed light on the murky world of the offshore agents used by Australian universities to recruit hundreds of thousands of students, mainly from China.

At Sydney University, international students make up a quarter of all enrolments while at RMIT in Melbourne they make up 50 per cent.

Im staggered by the increase in plagiarism. To start with, in my experience, it was a very small proportion, you know, maybe two, three, four per cent. I would peg it now at being much, much higher, well over 50 per cent. And some of the cases of extreme plagiarism where a student has plagiarised at least 80 per cent if not up to 100 per cent of their paper, that proportion is growing, and that level of extreme plagiarism I didnt see five or ten years ago.

--Dr Oconnor