This article examines the concepts of plagiarism and its approach by a prestigious Brazilian university - USP. 42% of its institutes do not provide any information about plagiarism and citations in academic papers in their websites. They emphasized the citation rules (56.2%) more than the definition of plagiarism (43.8%). Plagiarism was defined as a dishonest act but without guidelines for its prevention or punitive measures. The article argues for a change of view on the issue: it has to be conceived as a problem of academic writing instruction rather than only as a legal issue.