If I plagiarize Shakespeare on a piece of paper, claim that I wrote it (privately of course), and then promptly burn the paper and never speak of it again. It is certainly not plagiarism.

If I write it in my journal and keep it locked away for no one to ever read. And it is not read until after I am dead. Again, it cannot be considered plagiarism, at least not in a court of law.

What if I write it and I offer it to my friends to read, but they never do. It mustn't be plagiarism because no one read it.

What if I offer it to the world, and no one reads it? If a tree falls in the woods, of course it makes a sound, noise occurs independent of human consumption. But plagiarism needs 1) people to consume it, and 2) the people to be familiar with the original.

Boston globe columnist Mike Barnacle was fired/let-go for plagiarizing Georgle Carlin's, "Braindroppings", in one of his articles. After everyone discovered this (Mike made the mistake of plagiarizing material that was rather too new and familiar to pass by unnoticed), there was a frantic rush to sift through all of Barnacle's old columns to find other instances of plagiarism. Several rival columnists from other papers did just this and Barnacle's reputation was decimated.

I always wondered whether or not the obscure plagiarism that they found in his past articles actually existed before people started look for it. He wrote those articles, people read them and loved them--he built a fantastic reputation as a witty, wry, cynical columnist. And no one suspected him of plagarism. In fact some of his alleged abuses dated back twenty years. The evidence was incontrovertible, but the fact remains that through the span of twenty years, no plagiary existed.