Originally Posted by Mutt

I don't consider borrowing a 'plot synopsis' of a movie or book from a website to be serious plagiarism, the 'writers/editors' of Wikipedia aren't even attributed. If I'm a public speaker preparing a speech and a movie, book, a historical event comes to mind to illustrate a thought I want to communicate, of course I'm going to do a little research and consult an encyclopedia/wikipedia/website/newspaper archives - I'm sure not going to just trust my memory off the top of my head. His only mistake and it's not a big mistake was copying the movie description word for word, rather than describing the exact same movie synopsis in his own words.

Serious plagiarism in my opinion is stealing somebody else's original thoughts and the words used to convey them. I don't consider a movie synopsis to be anybody's orginal thoughts.

Lazy yes, unethical no.