Plagiarism. What is our role as Catholics to respect intellectual property by acknowledging the work of others in the academic community

One can approach a moral position on plagiarism in the
Catholic morality from one of two ways.  One can view it as an act of stealing in that
plagiarism is taking something which does not belong to you (credit for a specific work)
and claiming it as your own in order to receive some good, or one can view it as an act
of theft.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church
paragraph 2508, lying is

readability="5">

Lying consists in
saying what is false with the intention of deceiving one's
neighbor

Certainly this is
what one is doing in plagiarism.  Therefore according to paragraph
2485

By its
very nature, lying is to be condemned. It is a profanation of speech, whereas the
purpose of speech is to communicate known truth to
others.

Paragraph 1753 also
defines lying as instrinsically disordered and as such it is a mortal
sin.

When viewed from the perspective as a lie, plagiarism
can not be contanensed by Catholic morality.

To look at it
as stealing we see that paragraph 2408 defines theft
as

The seventh
commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another's property
against the reasonable will of the
owner

Therefore if we
consider the definition of "property" to include what is universally considered
"intellectual property", then we would have to accept that plagiarism is theft.  The
Seventh Commandment forbids theft of this nature and to knowingly break a Commandment is
a mortal sin.  Again, it can not be sanctioned within Catholic
morality.

The only question left is whether one would
intervene when they sees someone else committing plagiarism.  If we can answer that we
would intervene if we saw someone stealing or lying to cheat someone out of what is
rightfully theirs, then we must agree that the Catholic is required not only to avoid
plagiarism themselves but must also intervene when they see it happening with
other.