Is Plagiarism In Literature Just Sampling? 449
ardent99 writes "According to the NY Times today, Helene Hegemann's first book has been moving up the best-seller list in Germany and is a finalist for a major book prize. While originally this was notable because Hegemann is only 17 and this is her first book, and so earned praise as a prodigy, what's interesting now about this story is that she has been caught plagiarizing many passages in the book. Amazingly, she has not denied it, but instead claims there is nothing wrong with it. She claims that she is part of a new generation that has grown up with mixing and sampling in all media, including music and art, and this is legitimate in modern culture. Have we entered a new era where plagiarism is not just tolerated, but seen as normal? Is this the ultimate in cynicism, or is it simply a brash attempt to get away with something now that she's been caught? Is her claim to legitimacy compromised by the fact that she only admitted it after it was discovered by someone else? And finally, if 'sampling' is not acceptable in literature, is this reason to rethink the legitimacy of musical sampling?"
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a very good point. Sampling would be taking a short section of text and putting using in quotes, or otherwise acknowledging in your work that you are using something that someone else wrote.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
People usually add some music/lyrics of their own over sampled sounds, too. Does the book have layered text on top of each page? ;)
Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
She claims that she is part of a new generation that has grown up with mixing and sampling in all media, including music and art, and this is legitimate in modern culture
If she said that upfront - before all this blew up... then perhaps she might have a legitimate point. But after the fact is smacks of ignorance, laziness and a protozoan intellect pretending to be great.
Plagiarism and copyright violation (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who is only slightly older than she is. Yes, this is plagiarism. I'm TAing now and if a student handed in something like this we'd fail her. No question. They might even go in front of a disciplinary committee and certainly would if this were not the first time.
This is also a gross abuse of copyright. I'm not talking about the evil "oh this has been copyrighted for 70s years" copyright, or even using copyright for non-commercial uses. This is classic copyright violation for her own commercial use. That's precisely what sensible copyrights prevent you from copying. And it isn't like these are short enough passages that there's even any real remixing but rather long sections and the like.
The fact that she didn't acknowledge the sources makes the whole thing all the more egregious and shows that she really probably knew what she was doing was wrong. If not, she was so ignorant that it didn't occur to her that this might be a problem. Either way, it is deeply unimpressive.
From the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Entire pages verbatim? She is the Vanilla Ice of literature sampling then.
Re:I Just Can't Agree With This (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree entirely that she should have sought permission from the authors whose work she was cribbing. The article indicates she lifted an entire page from someone's else's work with only minor changes. The authors whose works were use without permission ought to sue, and if Hegemann's half as smart as the article makes her out to be, she ought to settle up. The whole "this is what my generation does" schtick is not a new excuse for artistic laziness, but it does seem to be gaining some unfortunate traction here. I'm amazed the book prize committee even gave her a second look, much less a finalist spot, with full knowledge that she'd failed to attribute her sources.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I Just Can't Agree With This (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I guess I am not from her Generation but sampling started when I was in my early 20s. If done correctly in music it is like a collage and it is a new piece of art.
When done wrong it is theft.
I am thinking of Ice Ice Baby as a good example of done wrong.
In this books case I would say it is theft from the story "In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes."
Dude that isn't sampling that is a cover!
Or to put another way. Every generation at 17 thinks that the world is a totally different place from the one their parents lived in. By the time we hit 35 we all start to think man it probably really wasn't. And at 40 we all start saying What the hell where we thinking when we where 17. What idiots we where but it sure was fun.
So no she is just another dumb 17 year old that thinks the rules don't apply anymore because things are so different.
Re:No. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you write a novel where you sample from many other books, quoting prominently would be distracting. I'd be ok with a list of sources in the back that points out which snippets came from where. In an electronic version of the book, the reader could configure how to display text fragments that were sampled.
I'm all for creative use of earlier works. Copyright law should not be an artificial obstacle that limits the texts an artist can write. Like in music, sampling significant pieces of text might require monetary compensation.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed: in writing, one commonly samples other people's work using a moderately well-known process called "quoting". I'm mildly surprised she hasn't heard of it.
In quoting, one marks the material quoted with either in-line or block quotes, and lists the source, usually at the bottom of the page in something called a "footnote" (;-))
--dave
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between bands like Girl Talk who sample music to create new pieces, and someone copying someone else's words into a paper they're writing, is that Girl Talk doesn't claim to have made the samples. One of the aspects of why plagiarism is seen as wrong is because you're taking credit for someone else's work. When you're sampling music, you're crediting them.
Agreed. Often, sampled sounds are clearly recognizable as they are intended to bring an association from the original material: take something everyone knows, twist it, shuffle with other sounds, and make something new. The artists are not trying to hide the origin of their samples, but paying homage to them. Indeed, there is a long-standing history of one artist performing works by another, adding their own touch to the music. Furthermore, when that happens and the second artist makes money at it (sometimes even when they don't), they have to pay royalties to the first artist.
Unattributed lifting without manipulation is not the same. Didn't we just have an article earlier today about cheating in CS classes at Stanford? It's not just illegal, it's unethical.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Did She Create Something New? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that it's possible for a book composed entirely of excerpts to be an excellent, creative, and original work. The key question for me is whether the author stole someone's novel and changed some bits, or genuinely pasted together pieces from a body of work in order to create something new.
Having not read the book, and seen no real analysis of its content, I can't comment on whether this was achieved, but if it was I don't think it flies in the face of copyright (especially as applied to literature).
You copyright a work, not a portion of a work (though of course portions are also protected), and the purpose of that copyright is to prevent mis-attribution of praise (whether monetary or otherwise) for the creative output generated. If her book uses the words of another author in parts in order to support her unique overarching theme, I don't think the spirit of copyright has really been violated.
Re:No, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you sample a female actress and you are a male singer, it's pretty obvious. (and vice versa)
Or if it is from a very recognizable song.
Past there it gets increasingly muddy.
Plagiarism is bad because it's been ruled to be bad in the past. Why is it bad per se if the result is informative or entertaining?
Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book (Score:4, Insightful)
Still waiting for copyright enforcement advocates to realize that copyright infringement isn't always a bad thing.
Nothing that is against the law or otherwise a violation of a property right is always a "bad thing".
No form of stealing is always bad. Trespassing isn't always bad. Neither is copyright infringement. Neither is outright theft. But in each instance, you impinge on someone's inherent and exclusive rights (otherwise known at law as "property"), and the adult thing to do is to face the consequences of that action and pay the price.
Take trespassing, for example. Unless you're stomping on some prized and rare flowers, it causes no harm to anyone and permanently deprives the owner of the land of nothing. And yet, it remains unlawful because the owner of the land has the sole right to authorize admission onto it, whether it would be reasonable to deny entry or not, or whether he charges for admission at a reasonable rate or not. If you trespass, you are liable for damages should the owner wish to pursue them.
Now maybe you were injured and had a reasonable justification to trespass in order to get timely medical assistance. That's something that can be considered in the weighing of damages, but it doesn't change the fact that what you did was unlawful. It doesn't have to be reasonable, and the trespass might have been economically efficient or otherwise better than the alternative.
Taking food without paying when you're about to starve isn't a bad thing. But then turning and claiming you did nothing wrong is. You did what you had to do, and that will be considered in sentencing. You'll pay for the food that you took (restoring the tangible), and you will pay for the injury you caused to the food's owner by taking it without permission.
With copyright infringement, you pay for the injury, your depriving the owner of his exclusive property rights. That can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars (less than damages for trespassing) to many thousands, depending on the seriousness of your violation and the value of the work. Yes, there should be a cap on damages for private citizens infringing without commercial gain, but no, there should be no exception for arguing that your breach of law was a net positive. It often is with property crimes and impingement.
The law protects the rights of owners to maintain the freedom to make determinations on the use of their property. When an owner decides to sell some of those property rights, he has the right to determine at what price and under what conditions to do so, constrained only by other laws limiting his choice.
People are never required to do what's best with what they own. They're free to be as stupid, generous, savvy, greedy, or unreasonable as they wish, within the confines of the law.
Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like saying that if a thug violently raped a woman, and impregnated her, and then their offspring grew up to be a great author, that it sorta makes rape ok.
Anyway, what I find surprising about this story is that Axolotl Roadkill's publisher's have continued to print/distribute the book after knowing that it violates copyright.
Re:Yes (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Some thoughts on this (Score:3, Insightful)
Have we entered a new era where plagiarism is not just tolerated, but seen as normal?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;
It was a dark and stormy night.
Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, this is plagiarism. I'm TAing now and if a student handed in something like this we'd fail her. No question.
Irrelevant. Student honor codes quite rightly require originality (though it's less common that we'd wish), but the world isn't school.
This is also a gross abuse of copyright. I'm not talking about the evil "oh this has been copyrighted for 70s years" copyright, or even using copyright for non-commercial uses. This is classic copyright violation for her own commercial use.
That would be the case if the new work was merely exploiting the old, lacking the creativity to make something worthwhile. But that doesn't appear to be the case here. Instead, it appears that the new work is substantially better and more valuable than the old, and also that a key part of the innovative ideas in the new work is related exactly to the mixing of old materials, without permission or apology, to create new value.
Further, from a purely economic standpoint, it appears that the success of "Axolotl Roadkill" may actually be driving sales of "Strobo". I think you'd better wait to see if the original author -- the only person who has legal standing to sue for infringement -- actually feels damaged. It may well be that his ego is flattered and his wallet is fattened and that he has no objections whatsoever.
The fact that she didn't acknowledge the sources makes the whole thing all the more egregious and shows that she really probably knew what she was doing was wrong.
Perhaps. Or perhaps she was just making her book an example of the mashup culture she was writing about, and recognized that calling attention to it would remove her work from that culture -- because that's not the norm there.
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the Verve did license that sample [in Bittersweet Symphony,] but lost in court anyway
Fortunately, nothing of value was lost.
Re:No, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, as many others pointed and will point out, the plagiarist is taking credit on originality that belongs to somebody else.
It's not bad just because it's been ruled to be bad. It's bad because plagiarism allows anyone to do a quick search in "obscure" literature, pick up some particularly interesting piece and resell it as being his own original work. It's great for the plagiarist, may be good to the public, but not so for the original creator.
You can be informative and entertaining over other people's work, as long as you give them credit.
You don't need to claim authorship to be entertaining.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
2 rules of copying (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Be transparent. If it's not obvious where you are copying from, ad a "thanks to" or "credits" page or bibliography.
2a) Respect social norms or be up front if you are deliberately disrespecting them, say, as a protest.
2b) Respect the law, in this case, copyright law.
Alex Haley of Roots fame learned this the hard way, see Wikipedia: Harold_Courlander#Roots and the issue of plagiarism [wikipedia.org] and its references for more details.
Re:The most interesting sentence in the article (Score:5, Insightful)
She didn't fess up until she got busted, didn't she? And that's the only reason why the other book is being bought, ain't it?
Was she saying she planned to get busted all along? The lying twit.
Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation (Score:4, Insightful)
First, in regard to your last sentence, you can't do something illegal and then say "it's art" and expect to get away with it. That is a specious argument. Second, that argument -- valid or not -- might have drawn some sympathy if she had simply said up front that she was deliberately doing a mashup. But she didn't. Rather than saying "Here, this is part of what my art is all about", she used it as an excuse after she was caught.
Mashup (or "mixing") or not, there is a limit to how much you can "borrow" from the art or talent of another, without doing something that is morally and ethically wrong. Simple common sense should tell you that. Otherwise you have some kind of problem recognizing what is ethical.
"Further, from a purely economic standpoint, it appears that the success of "Axolotl Roadkill" may actually be driving sales of "Strobo". I think you'd better wait to see if the original author -- the only person who has legal standing to sue for infringement -- actually feels damaged. It may well be that his ego is flattered and his wallet is fattened and that he has no objections whatsoever."
I don't think so. If she didn't have permission in advance, she still did something wrong, even if the original authors (plural... apparently there were more than one plagiarized) later decide that it is okay.
"Perhaps. Or perhaps she was just making her book an example of the mashup culture she was writing about, and recognized that calling attention to it would remove her work from that culture -- because that's not the norm there."
See... people keep referring to this "mashup culture" as though that were some kind of valid excuse for infringement or plagiarism. It is not. I realize that these are not the same things, but it also wouldn't be a valid excuse for theft or assault. You can't just sit there and say "my generation grew up doing shitty things to people, so it's okay", unless you want the rest of society to laugh at you... and maybe put you in jail.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a very good point. Sampling would be taking a short section of text and putting using in quotes, or otherwise acknowledging in your work that you are using something that someone else wrote.
I don't think that there always has to to be a citation. I can think of a couple of situations in which it wouldn't be necessary, at least not morally (I won't touch legal issues).
There's no need to credit a "sample" is brief and of something sufficiently well-known to the intended audience. This is extremely common in poetry and has been since antiquity. For example, if I begin my poem about a romance between two pine borer beetles with the line "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood", I don't need to mention Robert Frost because everyone likely to read it sees what I'm doing. Obviously the line between obvious and not-obvious is a fuzzy one and depends on the audience, but it's a good general guideline.
I also think that a work that is very obviously built of "samples" needn't expressly say what is what. I'm thinking here of The Adventures of Mao on the Long March [wikipedia.org] by Frederic Tuten, which consists in part of passages lifted directly from a wide variety of sources (it's the first place I'd ever seen Nathaniel Hawthorne on the art of sculpture used to discuss Mao). I don't remember if Tuten credits his "samples" or not, so it might be a bad example, but in a work like that, which is clearly and expressly made up in large part of words not originally written by the author, part of the game is in trying to figure out who originally wrote what, and what part is pastiche or parody instead of quotation.
The key is that in neither of the above cases is the author trying to pass of someone else's work as his own. Hegemann pretty clearly was, and now is just making stuff up to try and get away with it.
Re:The most interesting sentence in the article (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact is that plagiarism does not exist. Only in the academic world does the concept exist. In the real world, plagiarism itself is perfectly legal, and at worst is a moral/ethical failing.
Copyright infringement is what matters in the real world, and is orthogonal to plagarism. For example, it is not actually plagiarism to publish somebody else's work in its entiretly as the majority of a new work, as long as the original atuhor is credited. (One may still be failed in a class for doing so, as the assignment would quite likely fail the requirements, but that is a separate issue). But it very well may be copyright infringement to do so. On the other extreme, it is plagiarism to use somebody else's arguments, even if you completely rewrote them. However that would not be copyright infringement, since copyright only covers the expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
Perhaps definitions would help show this: Plagiarism is "using somebody else's ideas without acknowledging the source.
Copyright infringement is "using somebody else's expression of an idea without permission and in excess of the fair use or equivalent exceptions".
Now this book in questions sounds like it has plagiarism if the source of borrowed ideas was not mentioned on an acknowledgments page or similar location. It might also be copyright infringement, regardless of any crediting, since specific expressions of ideas were re-used without permission. Only the latter is actually a problem. Crediting the idea sources would be nice, but the law does not require it.
Re:No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Kind of like lifting a recognizable measure of music. Lifting "a " beat, a couple eighth notes, a triplet, an orchestra strike could be a sample. Lifting a loop as in " ice, ice, baby" from a "Bowie/ Mercury song is a substitute for talent as stealing is a substitute for work. The kindest thing that could honestly be said of it, is that it is a trendy curiosity like a pet rock. When it happens album after album, band after band and becomes a "genre" it is like having a pet rock section in every department store.
Hah! Make your own grooves and quit playing "Karaoke of instrument". Take the time to perfect style on an actual instrument or instruments and quit pushing buttons. Musicians play instruments, technicians push buttons.
The only useful way for a loop to be used and be serious music is for the original artist to do it with their own sound. Even then overuse of this would be deadly dull.
Imagine every art museum having a section of clip art collages. This is a good analogy. This exemplifies why it is little more than a trend practiced by a temporary clique. Pop culture has a tendency to feed on its own waste till the taste is so bland and smell is so repugnant they begin slipping out the door and down the hallway for the "Next Big Thing".
Re:No, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Books and maps were originally allowed to be copyrighted for 16 years as this was viewed as necessary to help people recoup their costs of production, newspapers, handbills, plays, and music were not allowed copyright protection.
With on demand publishing the cost of publication is essentially covered by the purchaser, negating the original rational for copyright protection for books.
If the point of copyright protection is to increase the number of works available to the public, in both quantity of titles and the availability of those works, it would seem like the only form of work that requires substantial investment, in 2010, is movies. Most other things can be done with a capital expense of a $300US computer and an internet connection.
With two hundred years of tweaking copyright law there has become a perception of rights of creators. While this may be a worthwhile endeavor to purse such an objective, it has never been openly made, but rather stuck in the back door.
Claiming credit for something someone else did is slander under certain circumstances, and there is a lot to be said for truthful acknowledgement of creation, but a creative work is generally more than the sum of its parts, and the pro copyright supporters seem to be failing to acknowledge that copyright as it is currently implemented causes a great number of works to be unavailable to the general public, in direct opposition to the intent of granting copyright, and the pro copyright supports do not seem to be answering this rather important question. — How is copyright helping create more books in todays world where we have word processes on almost every desk, and multiple printing on demand services?
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Basing your work on earlier works has been done since antiquity. Ovid certainly did, and yet his work was still original. There's a line here. It's one thing to be influenced, even, perhaps, to adopt passages, but if you're just lifting wholesale large bits of prose from other authors, sticking it in there as your own, then no, that's not "sampling", that's just stealing.
A lot of it depends on the audience. Ovid's audience would certainly known about, and likely read, earlier Roman and Greek mythological works. They would have recognized the borrowings, with little need for Ovid to say "Oh yes, I got this bit from Homer." Still, Ovid's work feels different than his predecessors', it's raunchier and funnier, so even though he shares the source material with dozens, probably hundreds of earlier poets and writers, his work still stands apart.
But if your novel is little more than a pastiche of other peoples' work, it's difficult to say how you can argue it's anything but plagiarism.
Music sampling is accompaniment (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you sample in music, the sampling is just accompaniment, backing tracks. In other words, the DJ samples, the MC does not.
Further, you don't pretend you didn't sample, you give credit where it's due. You often pay the original artist, especially if the sampling is very prominent.
This young lady is not only guilty of plagiarism, but also of misunderstanding sampling. It's not plagiarism.
The literary version of sampling would be to write a new, unplagiarized book using existing characters and settings from another book. Like a Star Wars themed novel. In that case you use Star Wars as backing for a new work.
The tragedy of this is the manuscript should have been considered a first draft and rewritten in one voice, even by a ghostwriter. Publishing the same exact phrases is not required in order to be unoriginal.
A mutt can be an excellent dog... (Score:4, Insightful)
A mutt can be an excellent dog even if it doesn't have any papers. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Neither art nor music should have any position about plagiarism. Plagiarism is for academics whose need for acknowledgment overwhelms their desire to further their own and society's knowledge, and those who care more about their bank account than producing something of value. While it seemed distasteful to me at first, Bowie, Mercury, and Van Halen were all exposed to new audiences when they were sampled, and I truly believe they were better off for being sampled. Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll would not exist without constant borrowing and even stealing. The best music in the world was created when everyone was stealing from everyone else in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Would Hendrix have been as big if he hadn't covered a folk song, All Along the Watchtower? Would Zeppelin, the Stones, or Clapton have been so big without such obviously stolen blues songs and riffs? Did Dylan suffer from Jimi's cover? No, his fan base grew. Did all the Blues musicians suffer? No, in fact many were likely saved from obscurity, for at the time no 'decent' white folk would listen to such music. I think it axiomatic that the more selfish you are, the more yourself and the world suffers. The more generous you are, the more yourself and the world benefits.
What Should Happen . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope she makes lots of money . . . and every last dime of it goes to the people she stole from.
What a jerk.
Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog... (Score:3, Insightful)
I was certainly speaking generally, in the interest of playing devil's advocate if nothing else. I certainly want scientists to get paid. As it is it seems they do an awful lot of work while corporations end up benefiting disproportionately. From my perspective, your system is not functioning very well if it's to support you materially. My point is that brilliance usually makes itself apparent, and pretenders are soon found out, especially in an environment were information flows freely.
The music business was the same way for the longest time in that corporations often made disproportionally more than the artists. Now, artists are better able to dictate the terms of their distribution, often including how big their share is. People who are good musicians will still thrive as people are willing to pay for a product that's good, while the one hit wonders, corporate bands, (often the same thing) and copycats will be more likely to have their one song downloaded in lower quality. The only ones who are hurt in the long run are the blood sucking middle men. In the meantime bands who might never get a shot in the corporate world have a chance to make it on their own.
Ultimately, despite my rhetoric, I agree that realistically there should be some limits to plagiarism; however I am unwilling to let the corporations draw that line. Unfortunately, with their recent decision, the partisan Supreme Court has decided to let corporations make all the laws by way of campaign financing.
Re:No, no. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because quality control, editing, and advertising isn't free, on-demand publishing is vastly more expensive per-book and doesn't scale well, the author's time is a significant investment from the standpoint of the author, and, frankly, you're only paying attention to one of the many claimed benefits of copyright.
To deal with these in order:
This whole discussion is stupid, of course, because, even in the sampling community, what the 17 year old author did would be considered stealing, because she didn't (until called on it) acknowledge that she was taking stuff from the original author.
Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, ultimately we still need to keep people who are great scientists doing science, rather than spending decades of their life trying to make a product just so they can enjoy a payday. I agree the system is broken, and I'm not sure how to fix it. However, freely publishing and giving correct attribution for work done seems to be a pretty straightforward benefit to both scientists and society in general.
Sadly, so much research gets done these days solely with products in mind that a lot of potentially valuable blue-sky research never happens.