A couple of years ago, one of my classmates at Our Sister Institution in a Masters Programme lifted, word for word, a substantial portion (including the section on ethics...) of a classmate's research proposal, and pasted it into his own. On the face of it a clear cut case - but the plagiarised student was left feeling like a criminal for having brough the matter to the course convenor's attention, and the recycler - who admitted to the misdeed - suffered no major consequence. In fact, a substantial promotion (here at UCT) followed. We might not tolerate plagiarism among our students, but the extramural hobbies of our staff are their own business.
Because we don't wish to contaminate ourselves by putting our hands on the stuff, a proposal was brought to the Senate to outsource that task to a machine. Well, to a piece of software and a database, whatever. After a succession of speakers from Humanities named David (either as first or second name) pointed out some of the limitations of this proposed solution to even the narrowest understanding of plagiarism, Senate almost unanimously blew its collective nose on the proposal. (There was a single vote in favour - the proposer. Not even the seconder supported it. Some kind of record, surely?) But Senate did support the debate being taken to Faculty Boreds with Real, Serious Proposals being brought back to Senate later in the year.
Sadly, someone (not named David) with a rather broader understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, was not at that meeting of Senate to share his views with the rest of us.