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Often, there are solutions for Stack Overflow questions that can be found elsewhere on the internet (scary, I know, but hear me out).

As per the guidelines of a well formed solution, one must essentially copy/paste said solution as they are not allowed to simply provide a link as this contributes to link decay/death -- something which Stack Overflow itself is not immune to and yet still there are solutions that are link only with very little (if any) verbiage (example here).

However, there is another side to this. If a contributer is a good soldier and pastes code from a 3rd party site -- or even rewrites it using those concepts -- when does this become plagiarism, and who is liable in that case? Would Stack Overflow be liable because they pressure their members into making illicit contributions... or, would the member be liable because Stack Overflow can dismiss the content as the responsibility of the contributer?

Plagiarism comes in many forms, which this explains roughly the premise of infringing copyright by duplication of contents in any form: COPYING WEBSITES – HOW FAR CAN YOU LEGALLY GO?

In contrast to a site’s design, its contents – including texts, photos, graphics and data – quickly fall under copyright protection. A website’s terms and conditions can outline that it is protected as a platform for literary work, which means that, while from a legal perspective you’re allowed to be “inspired” by others’ design and layout, the same doesn’t apply to a site’s contents. If contents are copied without the owner’s consent, the copycat can face an injunction and will likely have to pay damages.

So, where is the line drawn? I do note there is a similar question regarding using another online poster's content, however I am speaking of the use of 3rd party content/pasted code (even slightly modified or rewritten). The similar question is really a completely different ball-park as content duplication once on a site is very different than taking from one site and putting it on a completely different site.

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  • Voting is one way to handle both question and answer. I seem to be the first that down voted the question (and close voted it for being an off-site resource request, but too broad would work as well). With enough down votes that question would have been roomba-ed.
    – rene
    Commented Nov 12, 2016 at 8:26
  • @rene I don't believe the question was the problem. The author was asking how to do something, the response was off-site resources. The author merely stated they had looked at some official resources (MSDN etc).
    – Kraang Prime
    Commented Nov 12, 2016 at 8:30
  • @SamuelJackson: The question is the problem, because it is much too broad for SO and therefore attracts answers that only consist of links to off-site resources.
    – honk
    Commented Nov 12, 2016 at 8:52
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    Plagiarism is willfully presenting somebody else's work as your own. Trivially avoided by quoting the source and the author. A copyright violation is an entirely different matter, can't be easily worked around since it requires the express consent of the owner.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Nov 12, 2016 at 9:46
  • @HansPassant - very true. what do you consider may be an acceptable way to resolve this ? perhaps a flag for invalid citation, or proof of copyright ? how exactly can this be resolved. SO is too valuable to lose it due to a couple civil suits, personal or against the business overall. Wikipedia had something crop up they had to deal with years after becoming a mainstream resource - usually the editors got hit. still unpleasant.
    – Kraang Prime
    Commented Nov 12, 2016 at 9:53
  • As noted, plagiarism is very easy to resolve. Moderators do not enforce somebody else's copyright, the owner can very easily get content removed with a DMCA takedown notice. No reason for any of this to get complicated or unpleasant as long as the lawyers stay out of it.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Nov 12, 2016 at 10:02
  • A sort of canonical is Answers entirely copied though properly attributed.
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Apr 28, 2022 at 11:46

2 Answers 2

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Plagiarism is the same no matter where the copied content originated. If you don't provide clear indication that the content is not your own along with attribution, you are implicitly passing the content off as your own. And the definition of plagiarism is just that: passing other people's work off as your own.

It's much more difficult to quantify copied code that contains remixes, since the vast majority of answers containing remixed code tend to be based on code from the question (hence the similar question that you refer to). The good news is, many code thieves don't even bother to modify the copied code to fit the question. In other words, they tend to copy the code from elsewhere, verbatim, and just dump it in an answer with no regard for the specific question's context. And not just the code sometimes, but also any accompanying prose. If you ever spot an answer that doesn't look like it could have been written by the one who posted it, the entire package was most likely stolen.

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Duplication of 3rd party content becomes plagiarism when you fail to mention the origin of the content.

Assuming you do mention/link to the origin, it's good practice to copy the relevant content so the answer's validity doesn't depend on whether the link goes down in the future.

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