Welcome to Source Notes, a Future Tense column about the internet’s information ecosystem. Wikipedia describes plagiarism as “the representation of another person’s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one’s own original work.” The basic principle is that authors should give credit for something that they did not themselves produce. Sounds simple, right? Not something that could trigger a slew of angry op-ed pieces and inflame the social media discourse, right? Wrong. Across the business and academic worlds, plagiarism is the “gotcha” issue of the age. Although it’s worth reading the full play-by-play from Slate’s own Nitish Pahwa, here is a...