Jonathan Lethem On Plagiarism 186
tmalone writes "This month's Harper's Magazine includes an excellent essay by the novelist Jonathan Lethem titled 'The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,' in which he discusses the public commons of ideas and the absurdity of restricting other peoples' right of second use. 'Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work.' Taking issue with the idea that any work is 'untainted' by others' ideas, he declares, 'Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony.' Later on he argues that 'Contemporary copyright, trademark, and patent law is presently corrupted. The case for perpetual copyright is a denial of the essential gift-aspect of the creative act.' Lethem finishes up with simple request: 'Don't pirate my editions; do plunder my visions.' The best part of the essay is at the end when he provides a key to all of the sources he stole his ideas from."
well (Score:5, Funny)
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The /. headline is typically bad. (Score:5, Informative)
The essay is "on" creative influence, not plagiarism.
Re:The /. headline is typically bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The /. headline is typically bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are surely gray areas, but your remark suggests there is nothing but gray areas, and I don't think that's true. Under the law, copyright protects the form of a work, not an idea [cornell.edu]. It comes right out and says that plainly, in a way that law doesn't always do. Just to make sure there is no confusion. As such, "creative influence" insofar as it is an "idea" is generally protected.
The author of the article seemed to speak at times as if he were arguing against things that are in fact not in play. It is considered fair use [stanford.edu] to quote one another in the course of public dialog. (The right of fair use happens to be implementationally threatened by coercive DRM [wikipedia.org] attempting to conform to the DMCA [wikipedia.org], but that's a slightly different problem. I have argued (but so far have not managed to convince any actual lawyers) that the legal concept of an easement [wikipedia.org] (from Real Estate law) needs to be injected into Intellectual Property law in order to address the present state of affairs in that regard. For rights to be meaningful, having some way to enforce them seems useful. There are a number of mechanisms for addressing infringement, but there needs to be a counterbalancing force to address fair use. That the US Government Copyright FAQ [copyright.gov] does not even mention "fair use" in the set of questions is perhaps telling in and of itself.)
It is trivially true that as you morph an idea from a single source, there is a point in which the idea is still so much the original that the new form carries with it no serious value and cannot legitimately be called its own work. So in this regard, your remark is technically correct.
However, another way of interpreting copyright might be not to regard it as a right of use, but a standard we hold ourselves to before we call something a contribution. That is, if I take a play you wrote, change a word or two, and then offer it back to the public, odds are the public will say "this wasn't a material contribution". Forget copyright issues, my obligation to say I have contributed something is higher. If I'm a writer, even a good one, and call a press conference every time I type a period or comma, eventually people will get tired. It's not a novel, or even a chapter, until a chunkier contribution has been made. And copyright just enforces that same notion, but between people instead of internally within them.
So maybe it is just a matter of degree after all. But maybe degree matters. Maybe the whole point is, as in Aristotle's Virtue Ethics [wikipedia.org] that at either end of the spectrum is an "unreasonable extreme", and that there really is no well-defined, uniquely determined midpoint, but that the goal is to seek a balance in spite of that fact, so that one doesn't slide to one of the endpoints. To say that any contribution, no matter how trivial, that includes another's work is ok is to create spam. To say that any contribution, no matter how large, that includes another's work, is infringing is to create a society that doesn't grow through interaction.
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I did not want to quote your whole post, but this comment applies in general to it.
We need to keep the concepts of plagarism and copyright seperate in our thinking.
I have been going back and forth with Dabido in this thread:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221042&cid =17920100 [slashdot.org]
and this has come up.
If someone tries to pass their wo
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Under normal circumstances, I'd agree. However, the article (and I admit I read about half of it in detail and then barely skimmed the rest) didn't seem to me to be about plagiarism, which is (I assume) why the subject line upthread is "The /. headline is typically bad." It really seems to be an article about information-sharing, not about plagiarism. He cites numerous well-known authors with apparent (but seemingly ill
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It would seem appropriate in the context of a discussion of citation and intellectual property
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One major problem with your hypothesis. Copyright does NOT protect the idea, it protects the expression of the idea. I am free to create a cartoon mouse but if I call him Mickey and substantialyl copy the look of the Disn
There is no bright line. (Score:2)
Define "substantially".
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Thus, if the intended audience's "untutored judgment" (328 F.3d 848 at 856) would confuse the two, the works are substantially similar.
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Thus, if the intended audience's "untutored judgment" (328 F.3d 848 at 856) would confuse the two, the works are substantially similar.
"The two works"? What happens in a case where the copying is subconscious, where the author of the allegedly infringing work had forgotten the existence of the other work? Take Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976) [columbia.edu]. If you were in Harrison's position, in what way would you have handled it differently?
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There is no bright line. (Score:2)
In the case of music, for instance, where is the line between idea and form [wikipedia.org]? George Harrison got sued and lost for subconsciously copying two motifs totaling 9 notes from "He's So Fine" by Ronald Mack into his own "My Sweet Lord" and adding different lyrics.
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This is a fair example to raise for discussion, and I'm happy to engage it.
Here is how I break down that situation:
First, there are certainly always "edge issues" for anythin
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That's an interesting point. However, I'd argue that the guy isn't talking about plagiarism; he calls the essay "a plagiarism" with (IMO) tongue planted in cheek. It's not correct to say that it's ab
So _that's_ the sound of points being missed. (Score:3, Informative)
He's making his point by putting together other people's words (and ideas) to craft his message. Very clever, in a meta sort of way, IMO.
Perhaps Shaw said it best (Score:3, Funny)
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. - George Bernard Shaw
Leading to this accepting attitude adjustment:
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. - GBS [quotationspage.com]
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Right but that doesn't fall in line with Disney's (Score:2, Insightful)
bunch of talking mice and their _ligitation_ department _will_ open fire on you.
Plunder my vision.. indeed.
It's actually worse than you think (Score:2, Informative)
The linked story points out that Disney is trying to trademark characters from the Grimm Bros. in New Zealand.
Wow, great article. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Slashdot headline is a bit misleading as it isn't only about plagiarism, but more about the influence of external factors/one's environment on the output of an artist:
Whereas the author cites a few real cases of famous writers of the past literally copying other people's work, he makes a good case that most of that has unknowingly been used: The author's quote
seems to be very true.
From my personal experience I can say that the previous quote, and the article's explanation of how one gets influenced by his/her environment to produce an artwork, is very true (in my case, that is).
For me my big inspirations were architecture and games, which both formed me into my hobby/work I do nowadays (leveldesigner).
Other influences (of particular my gaming-past) only became apparent when the other day, I finished a gamedesign document (of a GPL-ed game I am working on) and showed it to some co-developers, who almost immedeately recognised and pointed out the various game elements/style from my most beloved games of the past, which I'd unknowingly woven into the total design. (to name a few; Lazy Jones, Jumpman, various NES/SNES classics)
Whereas I didn't anticipate on creating clones of those games, I'd somehow formed my idea around it (and -enhanced- it), by the external imprints of the past.
It's a shame that nowadays people/companies are becoming overeager to try to squash any sort of infringement on their work (I'm not talking about blatant copyright infringements), whereas most of the times the artists only builds on the existing intellectual property, thus imo enhancing it for people who are interested in views from third-parties (one could compare it to Mods for games).
To point out the computer-art bit some more; I'd like to think that the GPL is a prime example of how proper 'plagiarism' can take place, and create several new/enhanced products, as GPL-ed code is still attributing the initial authors/source, and on top of that there is the obligation to release the source too; Making the whole art-foodchain bigger and better.
Now if only the big media conglomerates would start to see that, for example, Dangermouse's "Grey"-album (which mixed the Jay-Z's "open-sourced" beats of his "Black"-album, with the Beatle's "White"-album) was an excellent example of how different age-groups can get exposed to the oldies: Thus, in the end, making more sales.
Copyright pollution anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been thinking lately about "copyright pollution" where the copyrighted works of others gets in our heads and pollutes them to to point where what then comes out of us is "tainted" as it were.
Now this should not really be that much of an issue in a sensible legal environment, but I think we may not be in such an environment now and I also think that those forces causing that environment to deteriorate for a good whil
Tainted like George Harrison (Score:2)
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I have been thinking lately about "copyright pollution" where the copyrighted works of others gets in our heads and pollutes them to to point where what then comes out of us is "tainted" as it were.
You're not the only one. George Harrison and Michael Bolton got burned by this too. Look up Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton.
Yes, well, I knew about George but not about Michael. Thanks for the info.
all the best,
drew
not just copyright (Score:2)
I have same fealing about laws in general in so called "modern free-market driven democracies": I think it is alredy a fact that growing up in such a country to the age of 18 means you are for sure a criminal - breaking multiple laws in the past 18 years thus beaing under constant threat of being jailed (if not
Getting paid (Score:4, Interesting)
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Thought you didn't mind?
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Cryptomnesia (Score:2)
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Thought you didn't mind?
Copyright wise, couldn't you take a Shakespeare sonnet and claim it as your own and sell copies?
all the best,
drew
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Which license do you use? Links to your work?
Speaking of things like that...
I have ponderd only granting interviews under a copyleft type license, say something like Creative Commons BY-SA.
That might be interesting.
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search [youtube.com]
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I use
I use BY-SA for a lot of my stuff as well... What do you think of the idea of granting interviews under copyleft terms?
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search [youtube.com]
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I'm for it but whether Journalist would agree to it would be another point.
To be honest i'd dont really trust journalists. If you need a writer with a english degree to tell you 'THIS IS NEWS' and a man called Rupert Murdoch to approve it then theres more to news than that.
I would imagine it would come down to who wanted what more. Do you want to be interviewed, or does the person want to interview you?
all the best,
drew
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The article (Score:3, Insightful)
Language as art is a wonderful thing; trying to couch it as something that it isn't in a really wordy...wordy...wordy...essay isn't art, and you lose the point of your essay in the process, which is another way of saying you talk too much without saying anything new or interesting or anything of value.
Really, this article applies to writing doctorates (snicker) and people overseeing those efforts. The rest of the world won't care...or worse yet, hope a well written version of the bullshit will appear in Reader's Digest.
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You could have shortened your post to "This article sux0rz!!!oneeleven!!"
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Gladwell on "Plagiarism" (Score:4, Informative)
The Harper's article really isn't that much about plagiarism, and it also doesn't really address the questions of copyright very thoroughly-- he dismisses it as "rapacious" and makes some aside references to Jefferson.
A few years ago, in "Something Borrowed [gladwell.com]", Malcolm Gladwell looks at the personal story of a psychiatrist whose personal memoir is "plagiarized" by a playwright who writes a semi-successful play about the psychiatrist and her clients-- without consulting the psychiatrist or clients. Gladwell looks into issues about copyright, intellectual property, and the creative commons, but he also looks at the public and emotional effects in the lives of the psychiatrist (who feels "violated" by this appropriation of her life), and the playwright (who feels heartbroken, confused--devastated by the stigma and bad press). It's an awesome article.
Copyright Originally Covered 14 Years, Unless... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then came the 'corporate authors', publishers if you will, and Disney has lots of money to spread around to PACs and other politically influencial uses such that they simply purchased a change in U.S. law allowing them to "keep" something they were not entitled to have at the time various copyrighted items were created.
That was changing the law 'after the fact'. But the political monies were acceptable as we have established proper procedures for use in Washington D.C. when we need to go to get laws changed, so it is no longer a crime, as long as we "follow the laws".
The laws don't allow bribes to be given directly to lawmakers, so we give them to ex-lawmakers who are now middlemen who accept the monies (& their former staff who often seem to move with them), who then go to 'seek favor' from the current lawmakers which will in turn some day become ex-lawmaker/lobbyists.
So bribery is not a crime once you institutionalize it by giving it a new name "lobbying", but plagarism is still plagarism and you can get kicked out of school or a job because of it?
Jonathan Lethem's Harper article "'The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism" was thought provoking in many ways.
when acknowledged, it's not stealing, dammit (Score:2)
But outside academia? (Score:2)
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You acknowledge them to the extent that you know them. And you make whatever effort you need to, to remember where you got things, which is probably the same thing you'd hope other people would do for you. If it's so minor, or so pervasive that you can't identify it, well, isn't that the whole point to creativity being a social value?
All I was trying to say was that it might be an idea for the rest of the world, and I include RIAA and MPAA even though they think they're a different order of being, to se
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You acknowledge them to the extent that you know them. And you make whatever effort you need to, to remember where you got things, which is probably the same thing you'd hope other people would do for you.
Unless "other people" happen to include the counsel representing the publisher of the one source that you could not remember. This is how George Harrison got burned: look up Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music. Is there a way to write music and prevent another "My Sweet Lord" case from happening to me?
An Idea Is Not A Possession (Score:3, Insightful)
However, it's obvious we can claim ownership of books, or any other object that records language, whether that language is spoken, sung, mathematical, algorithmic, or musical. In every instance, someone will possess the very first, original, version of such a work. That person -- barring prior legal arrangements -- owns that work and possess all rights inherent in it. That means no one has the right to copy any portion of it without permission, and that permission comes from the work's creator. (Fair use, etc., are elements of the prior legal arrangement that the creator must accept by virture of living in a country with copyright laws.)
If the work's creator sells a publisher the right to make copies in return for royalties, then anyone who purchases a copy from the publisher only acquires those rights sold to him by the work's creator via the publisher.
None of this is to argue that a work's creator has any ownership of or rights to the ideas in his or her work. A work is specifically intended to create and manipulate the thoughts and emotions of others.
Nor is it an argument to support the current abuses of copyright. The effective way to deal with abuse of an equitable law is to constrain the abusers and eliminate the abuse, not to challenge them with another kind of abuse. (Two can always play at that game, so success today mght be replaced by defeat tomorrow.) If you don't think the copyright law is equitable (assuming you've read it) then it's fair game for change, too.
But, let's try to keep things grounded appropriately. Copyright law isn't there to keep you from stealing ideas. It's there to keep you from stealing and misusing actual physical things. And, no one would deny that all creative, academic, scientific, journalistic, etc., draws on the ideas and effortrs of others. That's called culture. But, copying chunks of something that you did not create and claiming them as your own is always that particular kind of theft called plagiarism.
Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, and this is so as long as they keep it private or secret as it were.
I think your theory breaks down when you get to publishing as we do it today.
Now, if at every step in the chain, transfers were made with negotiated contracts, the original author might be able to retain those rights except as released via contract. Sort of like trade secrets are handled these days perhaps.
Other than that, once published and in the hands of the public, while the author might still have control over that original physical copy, the work itself is now out in the public domain in the absence of copyright law.
Copyright law is the government stepping into the free market and granting monopolies to the authors. I think this is thought to make the market better as it takes away the need to have a contract with every person you sell a book to for instance.
Now, to go back to your views and ask a question:
If it shouldn't be like I write but should be like you write, wouldn't that mean that something like the joke police at the office water cooler would be warranted? That people would have no legal right to tell jokes they heard on the radio last night? (Or are jokes one of those things that we do not grant copyright monopolies on?)
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzb
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The transfer to a publisher is a matter of contract. The publisher cannot transfer to you any rights it did not acquire from the work's creator. That means a purchaser does not have the right, for example, to make and distribute multiple copies of a work unless the work's creator transferred those rights, via the publisher.
There is no place for anyone to acquire those rights other than by transfer from the work's creator.
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Yes.
"The publisher cannot transfer to you any rights it did not acquire from the work's creator."
In the absence of copyright law, it is not the publisher who would grant me any rights exactly. It is the act of publishing. And since you gave him the right to publish...
If you didn;t like that outcome, you would be free to insist that a printer get a signed contract with each book transfer that would bind the purchaser or some such.
"The purpose of copyright
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Nope. I sold him -- not you -- limited rights to publish and market the book. You don't acquire that right when you buy the book.
>>"It is not a grant of monoploy."
The law can't grant what already exists.
>>"It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something."
This is not so and most of human history bears this out."
I can't imagine how you could dispute my statement. How is it poss
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"Nope. I sold him -- not you -- limited rights to publish and market the book. You don't acquire that right when you buy the book."
Sorry, you are right, you sold him the right to publish, you did not give him the right to publish. But please, let's try not to nitpick if it is obvious we are in agreement and speaking loosely. Asking to tighten up on the language is not a problem.
However, you are wrong in the next part. In the absence of copyright law, if you publish your own work, the pubic has
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1. No. I'm saying that copyright law has nothing to do with the creation of rights. All rights in a work emanate from the work's creator. Whatever rights anyone else has regarding that work must come from the work's creator. No other source exists. The rights do not exist until the work is created.
2. In other words, a monopoly -- posession of all rights inherent in a
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You also argue against my points about how things would work in the absence of copyright by sometimes explaining how they work with copyright.
I appreciate your responses though and perhaps we will finally come to some better understanding if we keep going.
"1. No. I'm saying that copyright law has nothing to do with the creation of rights. All rights in a work emanate from the work's creator."
No, this is not so.
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We are indeed in fundamental disagreement.
I find your position very radical and over the top. I imagine you might feel the same way with respect to what I have written.
"I see no way for anyone else to acquire any rights to any created work unless those rights pass to them from the work's creator."
How do you imagine a person has the right to control what another does with information that is in his memory no matter how it came to be there>
"That doesn't exist. Individual
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I don't imagine that. Information -- or ideas in someone's head -- is, as I've said several times, impossible to copy. So, the entire discussion centered on copying ideas is moot, because it is talking about something that cannot be done. Ideas are completely free, always.
I've been addressing something else: Who has rights to the physical property creat
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First, physical property usually isn't created by encoding (representations of) ideas into it. All the physical
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If I create a manuscript on a stack of paper that I own, then I own the manuscript and exclusively possess all rights to that manuscript. Unless you propose that other individuals
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(Obviously.)
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Whatever I decide. I hae the exclusive right to decide what anyone can do with that manuscript or with any copies that I may authorize. If you buy my book, you have only those rights I say you do, plus those outlined in copyright law. E.g., unless I say you have the right to make multiple copies, or republish the book with your name as author, you don't.
>>"The right to merely observe the manuscript is implicit in both publication and purchase, and suffic
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If I get his right, I think he is saying that if he p
Copying from memory is still copying (Score:2)
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Experienced or not, if you produce a record that copies someone else's melody, it seems to me that your only possible defense in a lawsuit is that you did not do so deliberately and that you were unware that the melody was duplicated. That might be easier for an inexperienced musician to argue. If I was on the other side, however, I'd argue that inexperience as a performing musician does not necessarily have any bearing on how much music someone has listened to. It only takes hearing a song on
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Who knows?
I've lost your point.
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The purpose of copyright law is to encourage the production of creative works by guaranteeing that a work's creator has a chance to derive financial benefit from his work, and to protect that work from alteration and distortion. ... It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something.
I love to hear your substantiation of the assertion that there is a natural right to control one's intellectual creations. Before copyright, the very idea would have been considered ridiculous. Imagine a tribe of stone-age folks: Thag tells a story around the campfire about the moon god. He mostly just makes it up as he goes along. It's a good story. A couple weeks later, Grod is delivering obsidian arrow heads to the tribe in the next valley and stays overnight. At the campfire, Grod tells Thag's moon god
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If Thag carves his story on a boulder, then Thag owns that physcial representation of his story. Not the story. If Grod starts making duplicate boulders without Thag's permission, Thag has the right to bop him on the head with a big stick. Thag doesn't need copyright law to understand that.
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You're intermingling copyright and plagiarism. If Thag carves his story on the rock, and it is seen by Grod, and then Grod starts carving it on other boulders, then no, Thag has no rights whatsoever to stop him in the ab
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Getting away from silly rock analogies, if I write a book, publish it, and you buy it, you have those rights I transferred to you via the publisher plus whatever rights copyright law says you have. No more. This is not hard to understand.
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Then we have an astoundingly different idea of right and wrong regarding ideas made public. In fact, you seem to disagree with the founders of the US who created copyright law. They didn't believe there was any natural law granting anyone ownership of their ideas or the expressions of those ideas. They thought that such a right, granted for a limited time, would serve the public interest, and so c
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No, we don't. I'm not talking about ideas.
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Yes, you are. Just because you write an idea down, it doesn't suddenly become something more than an idea. Only copyright law gives it any greater status.
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You cannot "write an idea down". The only thing you can write are words and numbers. Those are not ideas.
You cannot own an idea. Nor can you share an idea. Ideas are thoughts in our heads. We can use language and other symbols in an attempt to cause other people to have similar thoughts, but no ideas pass from one person to the next (unless you believe in telepathy.)
Structuring an argument around notions of copying,
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Then we have an astoundingly different idea of right and wrong regarding ideas made public. In fact, you seem to disagree with the founders of the US who created copyright law.
While I also find him to have an astoundingly different idea of right and wrong regarding ideas made public when compared to myself, I think you may just be incorrect on the founders of the US creating copyright law.
However, if the two of you are both living in the Us / US citizens, the Us constitution is the governing document for you both when it comes to copyright.
all the best,
drew
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If I make something and you copy it without my permission, that's wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with it.
Getting away from silly rock analogies, if I write a book, publish it, and you buy it, you have those rights I transferred to you via the publisher plus whatever rights copyright law says you have. No more. This is not hard to understand.
It is not hard to understand what you are saying. It is just hard to believe that you say it with conviction considering how wrong it is.
So, is it your contention that copyright laws remove rights from authors that they would otherwose have in the absence of copyright laws?
If so, why is it that authors are not calling for copyright law to be done away with? If they would have more rights without it that is.
You yourself have said that there would not be as many making works without copyright laws. How do yo
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I'm not talking about " something as insubstantial as a story." As I've said, ideas cannot be possessed.
Once again, this is wild. Probably because it seems so inconsistent.
A story is a sequence of words. Unless you have some other definition as to what a story is. Do you instead mean a plot?
If Thag carves his story on a boulder, then Thag owns that physcial representation of his story. Not the story. If Grod starts making duplicate boulders without Thag's permission, Thag has the right to bop him on the head with a big stick. Thag doesn't need copyright law to understand that.
Why? You cannot seem to explain this. Thag only owns his boulder with some words on it according to you. If not, what else does he own? If Thag does not own the story and if Grod makes the copies on his own boulders and not boulders to which Thag has any claim, how can Thag have any rights to Grod's boulders? You yoursel
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As I've said repeatedly, I'm talking about symbols (language, etc.) affixed to or encoded in some sort of medium. It can be gibberish for all I care. The combination of symbols and medium is property.
Thag owns the border with the words. He also has exclusive rights in that rock. Other people acquire rights in that rock only be transfer from Thag, who is their sole original source. Whether the marks Thag put on the rock constitute a story, represent ideas, or are just idle doodling
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Yes indeed. And even reallocate would seem to from what I can gather of his writing in this thread, and until I read your post, he wasthe most over the top person I had ever encountered when it comes to copyright.
Reallocate would say that you can tell the story, you just can't make physical copies.
However, I do consider your proposition that caveman Bob would ask for permission to retell a story amusing.
Please. Give us examples from history where the world functioned as you propose
Lethem (offtopic) (Score:2)
What plagiarism is NOT! (Score:2)
The author knows this full well (even if he can't express it), as shown by the very extensive citations!
IOW -- knowledge is a network (Score:2)
Fiction vs Non-Fiction Schism (Score:2)
Non-fiction is intented for enlightenment. Form is entirely secondary, the ideas/content/plot is primary. The origin/web of those ideas must be preserved.
RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Lethem, meet Sokal, meet Brockman meet Lehem... (Score:2)
With Sokal, he used the language of post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas in order to demonstrate how ludicrous post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas really is.
Here, Lethem is using/abusing the pr
Lethem's test (Score:2)
Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, "we" don't always know originality when we see it. Many need to have it explained to us. This is why people like you take lit-crit classes and learn words like "structuralism". Trust me, it's my business to recognize y'all. I get paid well to read your papers and give you grades so you can go about spending your parents' money thinking you're smart.
Jonathan Lethem (please learn to spell the man's name before you mention him in the context of "crit-lit") isn't trying to say our ancestors speak through us, he's saying that we can only give back what we've taken in. Some of us can do it in original ways.
As someone who's actually read Lethem's novels, I'd highly recommend them to any of you who like to read. And don't worry too much about originality or influences. Just love what you love.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you don't actually know what you're talking about, then?
For that matter, it doesn't even sound like you read the essay; he's not saying anything of the kind. It's more of an on-the-shoulders-of-giants position that a there-are-really-only-3-stories position.
(Funny quip about everything is regurgitated. Though having giggled at it, I can't help wondering if you're actually mixing the author up with Jonathan Safran Foer.)
Re: (Score:2)
I understand that geek philistinism is largely a product of a kind of inferiority complex, but that's no excuse for bluster.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable (Score:5, Insightful)
Or we know originality when we dont hear and see the sources.
As the patent office has been so apt at demonstrating, a failure to find the sources and an unfamiliarity with the subject is easily mistaken for originality.
It's not really eveb a question of derivatives or plagiarism, it's merely the fact that when you have five billion monkeys banging along from more or less the same starting point, quite a lot of them are bound to hit the same keys by pure chance. And the human mind combines and extrapolates much less randomly than pure chance.
Great minds may think alike, and these days we have a lot of great minds, and a far more level starting point with the rapid and free flow of information.
Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent poster said:
Absurd it may be, but that doesn't stop people from suing one another over such 'taints.' I direct your attention to the case of Alice Randall. In 2001 she published a novel "The Wind Done Gone," a parodic re-telling of "Gone With the Wind." Margaret Mitchell's estate sued Randall, alleging plagiarism. Her book was too similar to Mitchell's; it was, in fact, "tainted." The case was eventually settled out of court.
And again, consider Kaavya Viswanathan. Last year she published a romance novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life." Then it was alleged that substantial portions of the novel had been adapted from Megan McCafferty's novels "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings." The publisher recalled "Opal Mehta" and canceled Viswanathan's contract. Viswanathan claimed she had internalized McCafferty's work so thoroughly that she reproduced the passages unconsciously and unintentionally. Regardless of whether the "plagiarism" was intentional or not, Viswanathan's gained a reputation as a plagiarist that's going to follow her for years. You might say she's "tainted."
And finally, may I point out that Shakespeare ripped off basically everything he ever wrote? He plundered everything he could lay his hands on. Macbeth came straight out of Holinshed's "Chronicles." In Midsummer Night's Dream, the play that the rustics put on mid-way through derives from Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Romeo and Juliet was taken from a contemporary poem, "The Tragical Historie of Romeus and Juliet" by Arthur Brookes. Yup - all "tainted."
This is what Lethem is talking about: our greatest artists routinely rip off their predecessors. That's just how it works. Or rather, how it always has. These days, we're more likely to see a corporate lawyer drive a copyright through the heart of the next Shakespeare. Lovely.
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So your argument isn't even against the points that Lethem raises in his essay (which you have at least read, haven't you?). The nub of your argument seems to be that everything that is a copy, but out of the huge number of possible works only a few are
Any laws against Plagiarism where you live? (Score:2)
Which country are you from? Would people from other countries please chime in here?
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzb
Bright Tunes is dangerous. (Score:2)
The idea that there nobody ever makes anything new or exciting is, I think, an insult to everyone who is an artist; sure, art isn't developed in a bubble, but it does have (at the least) some originality in it. If art doesn't have originality in it of any sort, we call it plagiarism; or at the very best, a hack.
But how can an author distinguish originality from subconscious copying before publishing the work and opening oneself up to a lawsuit that could be the next Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs?
In a word, no (Score:2)
The first sort is despe