[bkirwi]

That's one purpose of a thesis. The more significant purpose -- at least at a graduate level -- is to contribute to the sum of human knowledge. When academics are rewarded based on how many papers they've published in which journals, that's an attempt to quantify the value they've added to the system. Allowing plagiarism prevents assigning proper credit for original work, as well as lowering the total output of the system. Likewise, I think a lot of the outrage comes from the perception that the small developer is providing most of the value, but Zynga is getting most of the profit; not only is this unfair, but it discourages small companies from trying innovative new ideas, and the industry is poorer as a result.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the concept and design of these games is totally interchangeable, and the real value is in the marketing and analytics that Zynga does so well, which shoots that analogy right in the foot.