"Something Borrowed"

I personally agree with Malcolm Gladwell's opinion of plagiarism he presents in the article "Something Borrowed". Specifically, he says that "it's not the fact that something has been copied, it’s what has been copied and how much of it has been copied". If I entirely rip off another student’s research for an important project, then that should probably be constituted as plagiarism. Alternately, if I ask him what he named his graph on excel, and I use the same title, that really should not be something punishable under plagiarism rules and/or the honor code. Also, when Gladwell mentions how the girl Dorothy received no credit for the play in which she modeled after herself, this is an instance where almost 100% of the play was copied from the girls life and there really should be something done about what Lavery took. It really angers me when people may plagiarize all the time and large amounts of material with no repercussions. However, such as in the instance of music, if an artist were to use a beat from an old song and nothing else, there really should be no tribute paid or serious repercussions for his actions. Recycling beats and music can really only refine it and improve the industry. It happens all the time and especially in the hip hop industry. So this is really the one changing circumstance where plagiarism is really entirely throughout the situation with nothing really restrained or regulated. On the other hand, I feel that there is a big “gray area” on the topic of plagiarism. If two people work together to research a topic but write separate papers how plagiaristic are their actions? If they use the same quotes from the same research but have different topics wouldn’t that be called plagiarism by certain teachers? I feel that teachers merely try to scare students into not working together because of the fear of being caught “plagiarizing” when working together can get assignments or even important research papers done faster and more efficiently.