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I have a suspicion that the reason universities crack down on plagiarism this hard (to the point of outright making up offenses like ‘self plagiarism’), is that it’s the only form scientific misconduct that is easy to prove and investigate.
If you are wondering if it’s true, just look at how long it took for Hendrik Schon to get caught. And even then, the smoking gun was reusing (fake) graphs in a publication.
They crack down on plagerism because they're trying to teach and assess you, not whoever you copied from. If they wanted copied answers, they could just photocopy the answers for you and save everyone a lot of effort.
The real world may be different, but the idea is to get the knowledge and, more importantly, the way of thinking about your particular subject, into your head. Once you know that, you know what to copy.
I was trying to make a larger point about the concept of plagiarism as a form of scientific misconduct. In a teaching setting you are just perpetrating exam fraud and should get nailed to the wall.
Ah, fair enough, I think I misunderstood your point.
Yes, plagiarism as scientific rather than academic misconduct is cracked down on hard. As you said, it's easy to prove, and, I suspect they don't like the idea of having their own work copied without attribution.