this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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Sure, but if they can be demonstrated to ever plagiarize without attribution, and the default user behavior is to pencil-whip the output, which it is, then it becomes statistically certain that users are unwittingly plagiarizing other works.
Its like using a tool that usually bakes cookies, but every once in a great while, it knocks over the building its in. It almost never does that, though.
Plagiarism and copyright violation are two different things, one is ethical and the other is legal.
Copyright has a body of case law which helps determine when a work significantly infringes on the copyrighted work of another. Plagiarism has no body of law at all, it is an ethical construct and not a legal one.
You can plagiarize something that has no copyright protection and you can infringe on copyright protection without plagiarizing. They're not interchangeable concepts.
In your example, some institutions would not allow such a device to operate on their property but it would not be illegal to operate and the liability would be on the person and not on the oven.
To further strain the metaphor, Linus is saying that you can use (possibly) exploding ovens, because he isn't taking a moral stance on the topic, but you are responsible for the damages if they cause any because the legal systems require that this be the case.