Plagiarism: Intellectual Theft
Posted: Saturday, December 31, 2011
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
Plagiarism has been with us ever since a less talented person liked someone else's idea so much that they tried to claim it as their own. This was possible in early civilizations, particularly if you traveled. Ideas, like rumors, are difficult to pin down. In very early times, plagiarism probably didn't carry a lot of weight -- a stolen recipe, a stolen story, maybe a learned science from somewhere else. Not a lot of money was involved and it could probably be claimed as research. As civilization grew and ideas got better, ownership of intellectual property could mean the founding of a business, dynasty, a continent or a conspiracy.
Maybe it's human nature to search for the easy way, always looking for that short cut not only in travel but in life. Up until computers and the internet, it was relatively easy to steal obscure intellectual works. Now with instant communications, it's next to impossible to get away with swiping ideas. People still try it.
I have never tried to pass anything off as mine, but I think it's because I have such a lot to say that I just haven't run out of ideas, so I don't need it. I have quoted sources and will readily give credit, when possible, where something came from. I don't mind research, it's the stealing that really punches holes in anything further that someone will produce. Sometimes, I have repeated myself. That's either because I'm getting older and can't remember if I said it before, or it was just so good that it bears repeating. Either way, I win.
In this day and age, it's stupid to think you'll get away with anything as simple as plagiarism. Considering the number of search engines on the web and all the information out there, what ever is used or stolen, can be found. I had a very smart music producer for my first album (of which I wrote, sang and played everything myself) and his word of warning and advice: don't steal anything from anybody. Someone, somewhere, will know where it came from.
I love obscure music. I have a collection like no other -- full of songs and music. I have a twenty second snippet of a song from a film from the other side of the world almost a hundred years old, and a song from Shakespeare in three part harmony, even some songs from friends playing in sleazy bars. Because I tend to listen outside the mainstream, there are many times I have heard someone play or sing something, and I know from whence it came. I am the person who knows what they did. Beware.
For your security, following this same line of thought: don't throw anything out into public without copywriting it for yourself. EVERYONE has a recording device in their pocket now. When I was a member of songwriting clubs, I would emphasize this to every new member and try to reinforce it periodically for the old hands. It was a lot easier in the forties and fifties to steal a title, a line, a guitar solo or an entire song, make it their own and someone else reap the profits from a song that everyone knew. Now, it's even easier to steal but it's also easier to identify and prosecute. I'm waiting for the day someone steals one of my ideas, then I can take them to court and get my millions without even going through all the trouble of working and promoting my stuff myself. What a country!
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Bravo to this. Plagiarism is deplorable and an especially inexcusable practice by people who fancy themselves as writers. There is a gradient of plagiarism, from the unconscious and unaware (George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord", and he was successfully sued, by the way, as other novelists and journalists have been sued or fired in recent years), to the barely concealable and blatant rip offs from other sources, and has occurred in this very community, and which still boils my blood when I think about it.
It is worse when the writer gets accolades from other readers for an idea created by some other genius, whose identity they are deliberately burying. Shame on you!
Great job. If someone has plagiarized you, they will have a hard time in Court - actually writing and sounding like you. Remind me to tell you the story about a Jewish scholar friend of mine who sent this screenplay into certain parties, who, read this strange tale about a archaeologist who was kind of an adventurer and his search for the Ark of the Covenant. Good job!
How true. I'm finding some fault with schools too. An assignment is given to the kids to research a current events story. They are able to take bits and pieces of it for the assignment. Well, I told my granddaughter that she could not just copy the sentences. At the very least she had to completely paraphrase or rewrite the facts she was selecting. She grudgingly did it. The others just copied apparently. Wrong! Your article gets right to the heart of the matter. Well done.
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