Having actually graded other people's work (one of the many crappy things about being editor in chief) I can honestly say to you that it IS obvious when someone plagarizes.
In Example: One of the girls who wrote for the newspaper (she didn't turn in much of anything, and what little she did turn in looked like she had copied it out of an AIM chat window and pasted it into a document) was threatened by the teacher that if she didn't turn in an article for the last issue of the paper, would recieve a failing grade.
The article she turned in was something simple, just a review of a bunch of summer movies, with her opinion on each one. It was beautifully written, it was articulate, and aside from the same grammar and spelling problems at the beginning and end of the piece, it was flawless.
It was honestly too good to be hers. So we did a little checking, and she had gone to different websites (yahoo for this movie, MSN for this other one) and directly copied the reviews into her article.
There is a high difference in quality between those people who plagarize, and the things they plagarize. It shows when they turn things in.
/rant
