After this year’s RWA national conference, a new Code of Ethics was posted on the RWA Web site.

Of the nine numbered items included in the code, numbers 2 through 5  and 8 (more than half) list offenses involving plagiarism, copyright infringement, and/or theft of intellectual property.

It’s clear that this is a major issue in the publishing world, and yet the majority of readers and writers don’t seem to understand (or, more to the point, to care) what proper behavior is, how to avoid these offenses, or why it’s such a big deal.

::sigh::