Perverse incentives for plagiarism from " jail time reduction " for publishing program?

IPBiz notes the peculiar plagiarism issue presented in the post Romania’s prison literature: Local businessman investigated for plagiarism.

Apparently, in Romania, prison inmates can get reductions in sentences for writing books or publications while in prison. One might suspect that this might offer inmates an incentive to plagiarize.

A recent "scandal" involved an inmate [named Copos] accused of plagiarizing a thesis [of a student Parfene]. The details are a bit curious:


The scandal started when a young Romanian historian, Catalin Parfene, said that Copos had plagiarized his dissertation, which he had presented at Bucharest University’s History Faculty in 2005. Moreover, the professor who helped Parfene with his paper also wrote the preface to Copos’ book.



Hmmm, in the past IPBiz has discussed students accusing their advisors of stealing patent rights, but therein the professor was directly appropriating the work of the student. A twist would be the professor transferring the work to a third party.

Of a Stanford student complaining, see the IPBiz post
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/06/stanford-phd-student-sues-stanford.html

And, of a patent application from prison, recall the Jonathan Nyce matter:


Patent applications from prison?
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/08/patent-applications-from-prison.html