As the debate on the Harvard undergrad's discovered plagiarism continues, I find it compelling that so much time has been spent arguing that she should not be punished for her actions, when we spend so much time pursuing pirates. While I'm not a fan of punishing the small time music downloading college kid, I do believe that those engaged in commercial software and movie piracy, among other things, should be punished pretty heavily, as do most Americans.

So I find it compellingly odd that they would take an opposing view regarding plagiarism, which is, in fact, far worse than piracy.

You see, when someone pirates software or a movie, the credits are usually left intact. While there may be a few yoyos out there who try to alter the credits for vanity purposes, it's probably fair to say this is a crime that does not often occur. Thus, while they are stealing property, they are not stealing the credit.

Plagiarists, on the other hand, steal both. Presenting a piece as an original work when it, in fact, belongs to someone else, especially for profit, is a theft of the property as well as the credit. The individual(s) who authored the original work spent a lot of time and effort in doing so, and they deserve certain protections from theft.

While it is entirely possible that someone could matriculate into Podunk Community College without a working knowledge of plagiarism, it is virtually impossible for them to matriculate into Harvard with a similar level of ignorance. Ignorance of the law is, of course, no excuse, but it could be reasonably argued as a mitigating factor if indeed it existed. Harvard's policies are pretty clear on plagiarism, and I have no doubt that if I received the plagiarism lecture at Phillips University in 1992, Ms. Viswanathan received it at Harvard in 2004.

Much has been made of the proposal to expel Ms. Viswanathan from Harvard, with her apologists likening such an action to "the death sentence" (an analogy I, frankly, find laughable). Ms. Viswanathan not only committed a high crime in the academic community, but she in fact, profited off of that crime, and therefore should not be a representative of Harvard. She can certainly continue her academic career elsewhere, where she will no doubt succeed, but she does not deserve to continue on at Harvard, in light of the offense she has committed.