All the unversities emphasize the penality policies for the students who plagiarize other people's work.   It is striaght forward when we talk about academic work.  As the technology moves to the 20th centry, people start to pay attention about the plagiarism on the net.  From time to time, we can see that one site "borrow" somebody else's background or graphics without noticing the original author and without citing information. As the internet copyright polices are getting mature, authors may be able to avoid these problems.