That's a very interesting point and one that I've been thinking about myself. In Anthropology as in any other scholarly field, citing is very important and plagiarism extremely frowned upon and even sanctioned. When citing, not only you acknowledge the other person's work, but you create a conversation between different agents.
On the other hand, with the growth of internet and the copyright issues, sometimes this pops up in my head: what if we accepted that we are all one, and that copyrights should simply not be a thing? What if? Copyright is an egotistical idea, a philosophy, where you decide to own an idea or an artwork. Imagine a place where everyone would accept that once something is created from your mind, it belongs to the world, not you. If you think of yourself as one individual that is a part of the world and you have the conceptual mind of unity with everyone else, then it won't matter to you, nor anyone, that your content is shared. Heck, it might even make you happy and glad.
This isn't the case now because money comes into place and people wish to get all the rewards possible for what they've created. But with internet, I can see a new horizon...
Very well put.