Is Plagiarism In Literature Just Sampling?

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?"

Comments

No.

[pwnies]

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.

Re:No.

[mrsquid0]

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.

[EvilIdler]

People usually add some music/lyrics of their own over sampled sounds, too. Does the book have layered text on top of each page? ;)

Re:No.

[LostCluster]

If you sample music to make your own song, you'd better credit properly and pay or else the original songwriter will end up owning your song. The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony is a classic example of that. The music behind the band is a remix of The Rolling Stone's "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and since they didn't license and credit that, The Stones now get 100% of the royalty payments for that song.

Re:No.

[introspekt.i]

My high school did a lot of the same things, but that's not to say that sometimes the overhead that goes into documenting things "properly" can sometimes approach the effort it took to create a new work. In science and non-fiction, this might be necessary as it goes to show how a work fits into the "greater knowledge" of a field and thus the "greater knowledge" of humanity (or something >_ ), however, in creative works I don't know if this really is as important. I think what constitutes plagiarism in creative works is highly contextual. How are the samples used? Why are the samples used? Are the samples' original intent employed, or are they used as sort of a pun, added rhythm, or a new twist on the original creation? In music you have groups that make music by sampling all kinds of other creative works (Beastie Boys [hey, I listen to them, I admit it]) for their own devices. However, simply copy pasting other works in hopes to piggy back off the success of the original work and author is probably seen as an unacceptable practice to most. I think it all really depends on the work, with respect to fiction and other creative works; probably not so much in science and non-fiction.

Re:No.

[whogben]

Let me give an example with musical sampling - it's totally different with bands like Girl Talk who sample music to create new pieces - because 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. From the perspective of a first reader it makes no difference - someone copying someone else's words into a paper they're writing is invisible & the work still exists on it's own. A work exists on its own, and broken down is always recombinations of other things - but it's someone taking credit for it for gain that's the unethical bit. Kids who sample music don't usually have to credit the sample for a listener to distinguish it, so it's a totally different piece. PS: Anyone watch Californication? Were those episodes written and aired before this whole thing?

Re:No.

[DavidR1991]

Agreed with OP + Not to the mention the fact that often (but not always) samples are used in a starting point and end up completely unrecognisable / different-sounding in the final product (NIN songs are a good example of this, they sample literally tons of things and are normally distorted to the point where they're not even anything like the original material)

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No.

[Antony-Kyre]

Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing a blank post concerning the parent.

Re:No.

[rarel]

No.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Verve did license that sample but lost in court anyway (the owner of the original recording thought they used "too much" of the sample, and the court agreed. I still find it to be incredible BS, the string loop isn't that long. Their real complaint was that the song became a hit and the lawyers smelled money). So the real lesson is "music industry people will screw you"

Re:No.

[crimsonshdw]

We have sampling in literature already. It's called citation and quotation. Helene Hegemann took someone else's work and presented it as her own, which I find disingenuous. Had she come out when she released the book and said she "collaged" works for the book that would have been one thing. That concept would have made for an interesting critique on a different media for "mash-ups". I do not personally view what she did as mixing and expanding upon an idea in the same concept of a mashup because she lacked the openness to express what her intention was. pwnies really sums up my opinion, with an excellent point of reference (Girl Talk).

Re:No.

[HoboCop]

This is true.
On-topic: You have to credit other people's work, or suffer the consequences.

Off-topic:
Although I'd argue that covering another artist's work (music) and not worrying about it is a valid business strategy. The music is proven, therefore is more likely to get some recognition. The original artist has some incentive to see that song get airplay, since it pays them. It at least gives you a shot to have your original music heard by both wider audiences, and people in the industry who's attention is hard to get. If you suck then you won't get much further, but at least it's not because nobody heard your stuff.

Re:No.

[Fnkmaster]

Actually, they did have a license - but there was litigation on the matter because they apparently sampled "too much" of the source track, and now the Rolling Stones get all the royalties from that track. So it's not a good example, as it's more a question of whether their use of the sample was so extensive as to not make it an original work at all.

Re:No.

[EvanED]

You plagiarized the OP's post title as your post's body! You monster!

Re:No.

[oever]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[davecb]

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.

[ViViDboarder]

How about Vanilla Ice

Re:No.

[blahplusplus]

Let is remember also that information is non-rivalrous, thank god no one can copyright all frequencies of sound, light, etc.

Everything in the end is just remixed bits of the natural world which no one created.

Re:No.

[reverseengineer]

In the United States, since 1991, the date of Grand Upright Music, Ltd v. Warner Bros. Records Inc., music samples need to be cleared by the copyright holder. That's what seems to be the real distinction here- you cannot consider literary plagarism to be analogous to music sampling because in fact legal music sampling is nothing like plagarism- works are cited, permission is requested and granted and often a considerable sum of money or share of future earnings takes place.

Re:No.

[Xtravar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVuh1Ymve2I
I had to look this up. The song is actually "The Last Time"

Re:No.

[Z00L00K]

And even when you are sampling music it usually makes you realize that the original was better.

But when writing a book, sampling has occurred before, but then usually mostly in the form of short quotes from other sources. To pick large sections of a story is another issue, but it's nothing new.

And one striking section is when you read The Last Castle by Jack Vance, and then Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony. They do share a section that is very similar in plot and performance. (I leave it up to the reader to find it...)

But if it in that case was "sampling" or if it was a joint work on that section by the two authors is another question.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sampling would be someone copying someone else's words into a paper they're writing, or otherwise adding some music/lyrics of their own over sampled sounds. The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony is a good example of simply copy pasting other works in hopes to piggy back off the success of the original work. It's more a question of whether their use of the sample was so extensive as the Beastie Boys [hey, I listen to them, I admit it]), because broken down is always recombinations of other things. Girl Talk doesn't claim to have made the samples, and Helene Hegemann took someone else's work and presented it as her own, which I find disingenuous.

Not to the mention the fact that often (but not always) samples are used in a starting point and end up completely unrecognisable / different-sounding, thank god no one can copyright all frequencies of sound, light, etc.

Re:No.

[pz]

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.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

People usually add some music/lyrics of their own over sampled sounds, too. Does the book have layered text on top of each page? ;)

The book certainly is certainly telling a new story so yes, metaphorically every page is layered with original creative work on top of the 'sampled' text.

Re:No.

[Z00L00K]

Just compare I Want A New Drug and Ghostbusters and then look into the legal processes around that.

Re:No.

[Normal Dan]

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.

If you sample music to make your own song, you'd better credit properly and pay or else the original songwriter will end up owning your song. The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony is a classic example of that. The music behind the band is a remix of The Rolling Stone's "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and since they didn't license and credit that, The Stones now get 100% of the royalty payments for that song.

However,
In the United States, since 1991, the date of Grand Upright Music, Ltd v. Warner Bros. Records Inc., [wikipedia.org] music samples need to be cleared by the copyright holder. That's what seems to be the real distinction here- you cannot consider literary plagarism to be analogous to music sampling because in fact legal music sampling is nothing like plagarism- works are cited, permission is requested and granted and often a considerable sum of money or share of future earnings takes place.

Let is remember also that information is non-rivalrous, thank god no one can copyright all frequencies of sound, light, etc.
Everything in the end is just remixed bits of the natural world which no one created.

Re:No.

[dj961]

Non-fiction readers would disagree on quoting being distracting. Lifting an entire page is hardly sampling. It outright theft.

Re:No.

[migla]

Sampling could also mean that you distort the sample enough to give it you own twist.

I didn't rtfa either, but you shan't just claim you said what someone else actually said. On the other hand. I might splurge around the words "we were put on this earth to fart around and don't let anyone tell you any different" (without the quotes, and in fact I don't know if that's a direct quote) and, expecting the in-the-know to get the reference. I foresee these discussions being messier in the near future.

Re:No.

[twidarkling]

in creative works I don't know if this really is as important.

Legally, if you specifically take text directly from one source, and transplant it to your work, you need to obtain permission or supply a bibliography no matter the "genre." If you're paraphrasing, then unless it's substantial (amount changes per jurisdiction), you don't need to do anything (though if non-fiction, citing sources is just best practices).

Re:No.

[twidarkling]

Footnotes are for losers! Endnotes 4 lyfe!

Re:No.

[Arthur Grumbine]

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

[citation needed]

Re:No.

[shadowfaxcrx]

And there were a few sampling lawsuits when it first got popular, because artists were taking the samples without paying royalties for them.

Since she thinks it's OK, perhaps we should "sample" her book to a txt file and distribute it for free online ;)

Re:No.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

In the United States, since 1991, the date of Grand Upright Music, Ltd v. Warner Bros. Records Inc., music samples need to be cleared by the copyright holder.

Anyone else read that as "Grand Uptight Music" ?

Certainly the follow-on cases like Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films have been devastating to the creative freedom of unaffiliated artists.

And, despite all that, the big labels are massive hypocrites when it comes to following their own rules - as the story of the Amen Break so clearly demonstrates.

Re:No.

[migla]

But where do you draw the line? Should we explicitly credit whomever in the writing staff for the simpsons that came up with the I for one ... overlords bit?

Re:No.

[Red Flayer]

ndeed: 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[1]

Yeah, right. Like anyone who is well-versed with today's media culture would ever bother with that. Whatever...

[1] davecb (6256), www.slashdot.org, post #31120624, 12 February 2010.

Re:No.

[migla]

...or was that a sample/reference? I guess we'll just have to debate every instance of sampling/plagiarism/reference/whatever. I'm sure we'll straighten it all out. Seriously.

Re:No.

[StikyPad]

Actually, the Verve did license that sample [in Bittersweet Symphony,] but lost in court anyway

Fortunately, nothing of value was lost.

Re:No.

[g0bshiTe]

Agree with parent, I think it is customary when sampling the original artist is credited, and perhaps even compensated in some instances for having used their art.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

That should not suggest that there are not myriad groups at there who sample without giving credit opaquely. For instance, I was shocked once when fellow students in an AMCS class didn't know that Coolio sampled Stevie Wonder's Pastime Paradise to create Gangsta's Paradise. Maybe it was in the album liner somewhere, but without assuming your audience knows the piece you are sampling, how are you actually giving credit?

Re:No.

[masmullin]

If your "overlords" slashdot post makes it onto the new york times best sellers list and you get paid nice wads of cash, then yes, you should have given credit.

Re:No.

[migla]

Well, that's just plain wrong, isn't it? The verve obviously made that song. If the other band should get *all* the money, people would go buy their song, right? (i realize there are subtleties)

Re:No.

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

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 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:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but you would need the liner notes in the album to know this and in an age when you just download the song how many people know this?

Re:No.

[camperdave]

So it comes down to how much money you earn from it? How much do I have to earn before I have to give credit?

Re:No.

[Surt]

So it's a retrospective decision to have been made based on what your success will be in the future?

Re:No.

[retchdog]

T.S. Eliot never cited anyone but Jack Shit (well, not formally; he bragged about it in interviews and commentary). Same for Dostoevsky. Of course they were doing legitimate extrapolation, and writing for an audience familiar with the background. The point of "The Waste Land" was its jagged non-synthesis.

It still seems totally different from this case, but maybe I'm just getting old...

Speaking of things coming around, I remember reading an article a decade ago citing Eliot to legitimize the "remix culture" in music. Heh.

Re:No.

[olele]

seriously. I realize this is a cultural and legal issue of primary importance, but has no one ever read Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake"? err, ok. maybe not.

Re:No.

[Miseph]

So plagiarism is OK so long as it remains obscure?

Somehow, I don't think that's the point you wish to make.

Re:No.

[flyneye]

Speaking as a musician who grew up watching analog synth give way to digital synth give way to samplers. Samplers began as a way of making music with recordable sounds. I did say sounds, not other peoples music. The first ad most people saw was "make a sound like an Emu, or a train or anything you can record in high fidelity 8 bit sound" for the modestly priced $8000 Emu which held each sound on a large floppy disk. More money could get you an additional drive.
          Sampling bits of orchestra strikes may have opened the pandoras box, still this wasn't for the talentless as exemplified by those who don't have to perfect skills for years on an instrument. Todays "jams" come as loops made by talented musicians and may be called up live by the push of a button which doesn't require much more than to hit it on a beat. No nuance of a strings envelope, no dynamic control or music theory needed.
Anyone , including your dear old grandmother can now play funky beats and be recognized by a retarded culture as having talent. In a side culture of those who couldn't afford to sample and weren't musical, phonographs and vinyl albums were substituted. Samples can be music. Loops are to music as "guitar hero" is to an actual guitar. Do not confuse pop music-substitute for actual music.
          Yes, loops are plagarized in spite of what an ignorant judiciary may have to say about it.
Put away the toys and pick up an actual instrument and we will see what separates talent from "face bands".
          Thankfully, pop culture is disposable and soon the plague will be dead as disco, pet rocks, monogrammed skirts, Beaver coats, wing tip shoes, player pianos and electric undergarments.

Re:No.

[Carbaholic]

Exactly, My master's thesis was full of sampled text and ideas. All with proper credit given.

Re:No.

[PopeRatzo]

When you're sampling music, you're crediting them.

Not exactly. Girl Talk is unusual in that they use samples that are long enough to be identified. Most of the samples that are used in hip-hop or electronic music are short and mangled and obscured. I can think of only one or two examples in the last 14 years of an artist that actually listed the samples that he used for attribution, and he was promptly sued.

Most music today is created digitally, which allows for using samples in a wholly unrecognizable manner, thanks to digital processing that uses the samples as raw material for varying levels of transformation. I can take a recording of Lester Young playing saxophone, chop it up, mix it with the attack envelope of a xylophone, reverse it, layer it with filtered pink noise and play a melody with it. Is that plagiarism? Not in my view, because I've used Prez's recording as raw material to make something that is fundamentally new and unique.

I suppose that if an experimental writer wanted to take the last chapter of Joyce's Ulysses and use some sort of transformative rules to alter, say, the order of the words to create some new work that has a significantly altered meaning, I could see that as not being plagiarism.

All artists "sample" other work in a very basic way, in that every bit of art you've ever heard or seen or read or touched is chopped and channeled and lowered and louvered by that squishy DSP between our ears known as a "brain" and comes out (hopefully) as something new.

It's up to the consumer of that new work to decide when that "sampling" has crossed the line into plagiarism. And, of course, the army of lawyers that exists for the purpose bringing lawsuits.

The difference between plagiarism and "sampling" is like pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

Re:No.

[hkz]

This is the original piece of music that The Verve sampled from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVuh1Ymve2I

It's an orchestral remake of 'The Last Time', which (to my ears) is a completely different song. This remake, and The Verve's version, are both great works of art.

Re:No.

[flyneye]

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.

[Faerunner]

I need mod points. This is a great post.

I'm a fan of some music sampling. I like finding out that a rap song has a Beethoven sonata woven into the beat and I think hearing Pachelbel's canon in a million songs is amusing; finding familiar tunes in new music is like finding treasure. Similarly, if a favorite character of mine quotes Mark Twain (and the author doesn't smash the fourth wall to tell me they're quoting) I'm just glad I know where the quote came from - who cares if they're sampling? We quote people all the time when speaking and often don't know or credit the author... isn't that sampling, too?

The problem is attempting to pass off someone else's ideas as your own. Using one or two lines is cool. Pasting an entire book of other peoples' ideas together, as long as you're not using one single idea from one single artist/writer, is borderline okay and I'd rather see a work like that acknowledged as borrowing but I think like the parent I'd enjoy the game of figuring out who wrote what instead of worrying about plagiarism, especially if the sampled works are used to create a new and original point (much like sampled music can be used to create a new sound). I think the line ought to be drawn at using a single chunk of idea(s) from a single source work, and passing it off as your own or original. You wouldn't take Mozart's violin sonatas and pass them off as your own; don't do it to a book either.

Re:No.

[Backward Z]

This is how I'm thinking of this.

Words are cheap. Especially in the world of computers where copy+paste roams free.

Music samples are not cheap, at least not in the same way. I understand, when writing books or poetry there's a process involving many people beyond the author: there's publishers and editors and publicists, oh my, but in music samples, there are oftentimes conditions that can never be repeated.

If I read some song lyrics I like, it's fairly trivial for me to copy those into a new work, but say I wanted to recreate a particular guitar riff from a certain album. Approximating that sound is going to be exceedingly difficult and probably expensive.

If all music were composed and performed in General MIDI, then I could see stealing words equated to sampling. And I guess in both cases it would still be plagiarism.

But I think that's why sampling is considered legitimate. Getting those musicians together again using the same instruments in the same condition they were in at the time of the recording, in the same humidity with the same microphones and the same mix console... You feel me? In that context, copy+paste becomes so much more powerful a tool. With creative sampling (which often involves rearranging source material to the point it's nearly unrecognizable) someone without access to expensive gear/instruments/musicians can produce new, compelling, and most importantly perhaps, PROFESSIONAL SOUNDING recordings.

Like, I'm reading Amusing Ourselves to Death at the moment and he's talking about how form has a lot to do with how truth is perceived. Examples are rhetoric in Ancient Greece, the use of the written word versus spoken testimony in a court of law. Every form of media has a kind of zeitgeist of what is an acceptable form for the transmission of truth--if the truth comes in other forms it will be ignored. For example, let's imagine someone emailed you Blinding Truth but it hit your spam filter because it was also trying to sell you Viagra.

People won't take recorded music seriously unless it "sounds" vaguely like the radio. Just like they won't take the newsletters homeless people make on the same ground as the New York Times. We look to the New York Times (an example) for truth whereas homeless people ask us for money.

Re:No.

[Backward Z]

to append: the only reason we're even considering giving this girl the benefit of the doubt is because her work appeared in the correct venue for truth telling in that particular media--she published a book.

Re:No.

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:No.

[EvanED]

Hey, Bittersweet Symphony is a pretty good song.

Re:No.

[John Whitley]

One of the aspects of why plagiarism is seen as wrong is because you're taking credit for someone else's work.

This reminds me of a policy for handling plagiarism (in CS classes, as it happens) I heard about some years back. In summary, the offense was converted to not citing your sources. I recall that the penalty was quite severe, along the lines of a major final grade penalty or perhaps disciplinary action. However, if you cited your sources, you got credit for the portion of the work you did independently. That is, for what value you added. This system changed the economics of plagiarism such that it was vastly reduced, and weasel-wording by caught students was virtually eliminated. Interestingly, students found it much less risky to simply cite one's sources (even when copying an entire assignment!) than to risk the all-or-nothing path. Some enterprising students even found ways to bring in and leverage other works to achieve interesting goals that didn't damage their grade.

Re:No.

[catd77]

I think all sampling is bad. If an artist cannot make their own work and have confidence for it to stand on its own, they don't deserve to be an artist.

Re:No.

[uglyduckling]

Wow, I can't decide which you're more ignorant of: music, or art.

Re:No.

[LostCluster]

That's actually a derivative work done right. They credit The Rolling Stones on the cover of the album displayed.

Re:No.

[flyneye]

Give up indecision and question your own reference material.
        Your reaction is typical of a "wanna be" whos only defense left of dropping too much money on technology meant to substitute for missing talent is " duh.. you're stupid and if I point that out as if I weren't I might be considered credible by my equally clueless peers".
       

Re:No.

[erroneus]

Sampling in music is definitely without citation. Songs like "Super Freak" does not tell people where they got their samples from and people hear the rhythm part and presume it is original ... it's not. The same goes for another song I have been hearing lately. I know the tune as "Werewolf in London" but someone else made some sort of summer time song... I was annoyed to hear it. It's more than "sampling" to be sure.

I have to wonder how much of the book is original content and how much is copied from other sources? I guess I should read the article to see if it mentions those stats. My guess is that it's not more than 10 percent.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

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..

Re:No.

[Akira Kogami]

I'd hardly call Girl Talk a band. More like a spacebar jockey.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an unauthorised sample of my original post, "433 spaces." You will be hearing from my legal staff.

Re:No.

[SEWilco]

It's outright theft, is what I say. Yes, you said something similar. But what I wrote is my improved version, and I've recognized your contribution. So it's not outright theft after all. It would be dishonest if I wasn't recognizing your contribution. And, yes, I'm intentionally making fun of your spelling, so I also have the satirical context.

Re:No.

[SEWilco]

"good point" "good point" "samsamsamsampling".
"someone else wrote" "good point" "good point".
"sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss short section".
"someone else wrote" "good point" "good point".
"acknowledging" "otherwise" "Anonymous Coward".

Re:No.

[SEWilco]

Actually, I first wrote that with "shshsh...shshort section", but only AT&T's TTS got that right. iSpeech still has trouble with "sss".

Re:No.

[SEWilco]

3. Profit!

Re:No.

[masmullin]

nah, thats exactly the point I wish to make. No body cares until they care.

Re:No.

[masmullin]

bingo.

Re:No.

[masmullin]

not money exactly, any sort of profit, be it social, money, political, academic etc.

If it doesn't matter that you plagiarized then it doesn't matter... but if it does, it does.

eg. I go to a comedy club and pick up some jokes to tell my buddies at work... I pretend I made the jokes myself and no one really cares. However If I start to tour around comedy clubs using stolen jokes it DOES matter, and Im going to get myself into a lot of trouble

eg 2. I read a psychology textbook for a class and during a lab discussion session I argue using the ideas presented in the book... I dont say "according to Dr. Bob" for each sentence. No one cares that I dont cite my sources... however if I do this on the exam im in a heap of shit.

get it?

Re:No.

[steve.howard]

What are you talking about? There are several pages of citations attached to "The Waste Land."

Re:No.

[sixsixtysix]

istill think instrument makers should copyright each note that their instruments make. easy money in licensing fees

Re:No.

[flyneye]

yup typical rationalization by the owner of a sampler playin his creative "beets" originally recorded by someone else. Well if technology buys talent, by all means go empty "Guitar Center".
I'm not ripping actual electronic/experimental musicians or even samples. I'm ripping the morons claiming talent and creativity by using other peoples recordings. Sample a sound, go make music from it. Use someones recording of a finished work to make a loop and claim its creative talent and you might as well just paste cut out pictures of lips and eyes on the Mona Lisa and pretend to be an artist.
Linking weinipedia means nothing.Now gimme a rim job.

Re:No.

[Oligonicella]

"Copyright law should not be an artificial obstacle that limits the texts an artist can write."

It doesn't. It limits the texts that you haven't written from being used/claimed as your own. You do see the difference?

"Like in music, sampling significant pieces of text might require monetary compensation."

You've just contradicted yourself. It's copyright that enforces the "require".

Re:No.

[flyneye]

Aww don't you feel special anymore like Mr. Rogers said you were?

You can rationalize all you want and it won't change things a bit.

If you don't make the music yourself you might as well just be opening an exhibition of paint by numbers. Music like art is subjective, not misdirective for profit by the industry or fame for the talentless.

Re:No.

[hedwards]

That's really the point. When the Beastie Boy's released Paul's Boutique, there was a huge amount of layering and interplay between the various samples and their own new work in such a way that it was far more than the sum of the samples. With literature, it's not really the same thing, you can reference other works, but when they creep into your supposedly new work, it's very hard to do that without misappropriating somebody else's ideas and style.

It also tends to be difficult to do in a way which fits with the rest of the writing in the book.

Re:No.

[hedwards]

Vanilla Ice tried the equivalent and when caught was only able to muster a "it's not the same, it's different" response. Which was incredibly lame since anybody listening to the two songs would recognize the overwhelming similarity. That's equivalent to pagiarism, not MC Hammer sampling portions of Rick James' work.

Re:No.

[Garridan]

Boy, am I glad you piped up. I can't tell you how much I hate to find myself tapping my toe to what I believe to be some catchy tune, just to find that not only is it popular, but now you're telling me that it wasn't even music. Boy, I'm so ashamed, I should probably post this anonymously.

Can you just go ahead and define music for us, and settle it once and for all? Thanks, that'd be just grand of you -- it'll save me lots of undue embarrassment.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

every conventional musical instrument has an API with a constrained family of waveforms that can be generated by manipulation of the API. CutNPaste is simply a natural extension to the API which can greatly extend the family of waveforms available for expression by the composer or musician. An early electronic device for CutNPaste was the echoplex which used an anolog tape loop to introduce a repetitive, self-plagiarizing delayed feedback loop of phrases performed by the musician.

Re:No.

[flyneye]

Echo loop = long delay
Sampled loop from someone elses music recording= no creativity on your part.
Painting a picture = creative proof of art even if someone considers it bad art.
Pasting cut out lips and eyes on a paint-by-numbers of Mona Lisa= oh come on, quit stealing your little sisters paint-by-numbers.

Re:No.

[flyneye]

Creative expressive sound by THE ARTIST WHO CREATED IT.

Embarrassment is a strange self defeating choice as a response to a lack of understanding.

Re:No.

[MoeDumb]

Music sampling should have been squelched when it started. It was inevitable the practice would bleed over into other fields. Can't put the genie back in the bottle now.

Re:No.

[Garridan]

If I pick up my violin and play Mozart, then that's not music because I didn't write the notes? (assume for the moment that I can play the violin sufficiently well to reproduce the piece more or less in the manner Mozart intended) Or is it just the sound? Then is Mozart played on a synthesizer not music, because it isn't expressive on the part of the performer (a machine)? What if the synthesizer is so good that the human ear can't differentiate between it and a recording of a virtuoso violinist?

What about a compositum, where I've taken a cool backbeat from another song, and improvise over that? According to your definition, what I'd be playing would be art, but the backbeat that (perhaps) provides the inspiration was originally music when played by the original creator, but now that I'm re-using it, it isn't music? Is the whole of it music, or just the part?

What about a boom-box? If I have a recording of Itzhak Perlman playing that same Mozart piece, is it music if I play it out loud? Or was it only music the first time he played it?

I'm terribly sorry, but you've done nothing but muddy the waters. Perhaps you could make a more precise definition that I could work with? Also, you seem very angry -- that's a strange self defeating choice as a method to appreciate art or music.

Re:No.

[lena_10326]

When you're sampling music, you're crediting them.

Then where is the credit? You are just familiar with the sampled work and immediately recognize it. What about users hearing the sampling for the first time? How would they know it was sampled?

Re:No.

[Kagura]

I agree. 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.

Re:No.

[the_womble]

In those circumstances the author is still not passing off other people's work as their own.

Even then, I would say that (again, morally, not legally) the original author should receive credit prominently enough that everyone who reads it knows, even if they are less knowledgeable than the intended audience.

The standard argument against calling copyright infringement theft does not apply here: if you steal credit, you do deprive the other person of it.

Re:No.

[oranGoo]

Obviously the line between obvious and not-obvious is a fuzzy one...

I think you might have an original thought there!

Re:No.

[oranGoo]

But it happens. Take for example Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote. Read the english translation, there's a link in external links. Do it slowly.

Re:No.

[uglyduckling]

Wow! You worked all that out from one sentence.

Re:No.

[Ninth Marion]

It's a highly ridiculous result for what is something like a 2 second sample of a string arrangement. Somehow they end up losing the entire songwriting copyright, the lyrics, the actual composed music, everything. Certainly not justice. I try to look at it postively, as adding to the meaning of the song. They write a hit song, and get the fame and people coming to their concerts, but then get their song stolen by very rich musicians through legal injustice. It's a bittersweet symphony indeed.

Re:No.

[BrennaLyons]

Dave, Quoting is NOT sufficient, in all cases. If you are writing a work you intend to release for sale (not a scholarly paper...which severely curtails "fair use," as many people understand it), the quote/s are integral to the book and cannot be paraphrased or otherwise hinted at, even if you properly attribute them, the quotes are not so well known that they have become iconic/popular culture, and they are not public domain (use copyright law for that and not the idiotic excuse I've caught some kids at that finding it on the web makes it public domain, please), you can still be sued. I don't have the case in front of me, but there is a current case where an author wrote a book teaching people to work in stand-up comedy, including quoted jokes from well-known stand-up comedians, properly attributed. She's still being sued, because those jokes are not her IP. They belong to the comedians and/or their writers and were used without permission in an endeavor that could make her money on their work. From the author seat...no, plagiarism is not and is not likely to be accepted anytime soon as acceptable practice. In general, when authors find another author plagiarizing, the responses range between: "What are you, stupid?" to "I hope you never sell another book, you fake." It incenses me that someone that claims herself an author thinks this is acceptable behavior. I may suggest this subject to Patric at Copyright Alliance for a blog post, if he hasn't already done one. Brenna Lyons author and president of EPIC (Electronically Published Internet Connection)

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same goes for another song I have been hearing lately. I know the tune as "Werewolf in London" but someone else made some sort of summer time song... I was annoyed to hear it.

As a wild guess, you might be thinking about Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London."

Re:No.

[flyneye]

At this you're being pedantic looking for a piss fight.
O.K. we'll just pretend you're stupid for the moment.
      Mozart pieces were meant to be played by others. We can assume he didn't appear in Vienna with an Orchestrion.
      Where you've taken a loop from others songs and improvised an aire over it would be fine as long as you didn't include the loop in the final product. If you just can't stand to work with a rhythm section, do it with MIDI equipment. The loop is someone elses.
      Boom Box, see above.

If you didn't write it, and it's someone elses recording in your own it may be music in a cheap sense, but it is plagarism. Go record your own stuff and quit stealing. Cover their song, Base an imporovisation on a section, don't use loops and claim its your creativity. Is that digestable or does it need to be reduced to one syllable words?

      I'm not angry. I'm sarcastic. What are your super powers?

Re:No.

[flyneye]

Bingo! Finally, someone who reads and writes English.
      Crtl-f flyneye in this thread to find those I've encountered who don't.
        Thank you for being intelligent and non-pedantic.

Re:No.

[Phoghat]

IZZAT SO? So when someone samples MC Hammer because the beats were good, they send him a little sumpin' sumpin'?

BTW, if I hear the beats to "Super Freak" one more time, I'm oiling up th 1911 A1 and going hunting.

Re:No.

[emrwriter]

I have to agree with parent here. In writing, if the source is sufficiently well-known, or even within the same genre, then direct citation is not really necessary. Modernists and Post-Mod poets are well known for this. In the case of little known, or outside references, a subtle hint at origin is often enough and satisfies the conscience of the writer. There are instances, when a citation is appropriate. Such as an article from AP (I've written several poems based on such, and have included citations at the bottom of the page. Not only because I lift quotations, but because the original article provides a level of detail and understanding that is not appropriate to the poem itself). In many cases, a simple reference is less obtrusive and more effective, however. At any rate, the real issue is representing someone else's work as one's own, without modification or reinterpretation to warrant it being a "new work," which is what our teen-aged author has perpetrated. I know nobody RTFA, but has anyone read TFB?

Re:No.

[Spaseboy]

When you're sampling music, you're crediting them

That's a new phenomenon (as in the last 20 years). Please research sampling so you know what you're talking about. Samples are now required to be licensed. You can give as much credit as you want, that still doesn't mean it's not copyright infringement unless you pay for the sample.

Re:No.

[retchdog]

The annotated edition, yes; this is what I called "commentary" above. It wasn't published like that originally.

Re:No.

[davecb]

I quite agree: quoting is necessary and sufficient to avoid plagiarism, but not sufficient to avoid copyright breach.

My comment was predominantly humorous in nature, not prescriptive...

--dave

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. Thanks for qualifying that. As an author, I tend to look at both and not separate them overmuch, since both are concerns. Since the person in question was writing for a paying market, it would have been to her benefit to do likewise. Grin...

Brenna

Re:No.

[pugugly]

Bingo.
I would be perfectly happy if everything else about copyright was dropped to something sane (15 years again, whatever) and the attribution right was made mandatory for the next ten million years. It's fine to build on work, but give the proper credit.

Pug

Re:No.

[Surt]

brillant!

Re:No.

[gfody]

Girl Talk is a bad example. How about Jason Derulo, The Fugees, Kanye West, countless rap artists really. They don't credit the original producers of the samples used in their hits - some of the samples make up the entire hook like w/Jason Derulo.

Re:No.

[gfody]

2 second string sample? The only thing original in bittersweet symphony is the lyrics. It's a great song but they should have gotten their permission in the form of a legally binding notarized contract.

Re:No.

[Tokerat]

If you think that all samples are cleared in music, especially electronic music, then you are kidding yourself. Most drums in electronic music, for example, are ripped from older tracks. The Amen break is one of the most glaring examples, but this is true for almost every sound you hear in electronic music, including hip-hop and pop.

Re:No.

[Golddess]

You realize, of course, that Kagura is plagiarizing OP, right? :P

Re:No.

[dfghjk]

That's nonsense.

Re:No.

[Rophuine]

If I pick up my violin and play Mozart, then that's not music because I didn't write the notes?...

No, it's not composing. It's still music. If you play to a room full of people and claim you wrote it yourself, it's plagiarism.

What about a compositum, where I've taken a cool backbeat from another song, and improvise over that? According to your definition, what I'd be playing would be art, but the backbeat that (perhaps) provides the inspiration was originally music when played by the original creator, but now that I'm re-using it, it isn't music? Is the whole of it music, or just the part?

This is both music and composition. If you try to pass it off as your own work without mentioning the poor starving artist (or vastly rich dripping-with-gold-chains artist, or whatever) who wrote the backbeat and inspired your creation, it's plagiarism, unless you apply your creativity to the back-beat as well, rather than just lifting it verbatim.

What about a boom-box? If I have a recording of Itzhak Perlman playing that same Mozart piece, is it music if I play it out loud? Or was it only music the first time he played it?

This isn't about music; it's about creation. It's still music; it's not composing. The piece is about an author who 'performed' someone else's writing in text, and didn't tell people it was only a performance, not an original creation.

I'm terribly sorry, but you've done nothing but muddy the waters. Perhaps you could make a more precise definition that I could work with? Also, you seem very angry -- that's a strange self defeating choice as a method to appreciate art or music.

It's a shame you decided to stir the mud in with your own shit.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 self-indulgent

Re:No.

[Garridan]

Check the context. We were talking about the definition of music, not who gets credit for what.

Re:No.

[Rophuine]

Guess you didn't read my post.

Some highlights...
"No, it's not composing. It's still music." (What is music?)
"This is both music and composition." (What is music?)
"It's still music; it's not composing." (What is music?)

I was just trying to bring it back into context with the original post. That's what we're discussing, right? On the comments section for the post?

Re:No.

[Jesus_666]

It's interesting to see how differently these things can end. Bridgeport v. Dimension piants a picture where taking even very small samples can cost you your copyright if you didn't do it with permission. On the other hand, when Timbaland sampled part of a chiptune, changing small parts, the case was tossed out.

Of course it's also interesting to see the attitude in the latter case, with Timbaland alleging that sampling is immune from copyright infringement charges.

Most likely the truth is that sampling without permission is perfectly fine if your lawyers are more expensive than those of the original artist.

Re:No.

[Hognoxious]

Imagine every art museum having a section of clip art collages. This is a good analogy.

Only if the pictures are of cars.

Re:No.

[Hognoxious]

The same goes for another song I have been hearing lately. I know the tune as "Werewolf in London"

Could it be Moondance (also known as Jenny's tits' theme) by Van Morrison?

Re:No.

[anghara]

Being inspired by what has gone on before is fine - it's standing on the shoulders of giants. In the end, most plots can be reduced to a very VERY simple sentence or phrase which can cover a multitude of ideas. But taking actual words that somebody else wrote and pretending that you own them is just laziness. Not only that, but deceitful laziness. It's the "I don't want to write but I want to have written" attitude. Sorry, young miss. You don't get the laurels without putting in the sweat equity. Work out your own ideas in your own words. If you can't write without stealing, you can't write. That's the basic bedrock of it. CAN you write without stealing? Go prove it. Write something that nobody can claim but YOU.

Re:No.

[Chosen Reject]

What's the difference between using middle C on the piano as a note and using a brief sample as a "note"? What is the difference between using c, d and g to make a chord or using three samples to make a "chord"? Are you suggesting that a melody and a loop are all that different? No doubt, some people who sample are complete hacks, but some create something new. Note that I said "new", not "something you like" or "on the same par of creative genius as what you would approve as being good". Then again, the classical composers were profane and they were still popular.

Re:No.

[flyneye]

I consider a sample or sound taken out of context fair game. Looping a phrase or measure or more is not creative, its pinching someone elses creativity. Some extreme examples are the giant crater in "The Dark Side of the Moon" in which Pink Floyd pinched an entire vocal track for "Great Gig in the Sky", figuring it was obscure enough no one would notice. They were caught and spanked by the estate of said singer. Another example is a Song by My Bloody Valentine in which Kevin Shields loses my respect for stealing and slowing down a riff from a Talking heads song making it the main theme in his. Normally Kevin Shields is genius, but that just sucked. On a readily recognizable commercial level, Vanilla Ice, copped a bit of Bowie/Mercurys "Under Pressure".
        I question some sounds other than music, like spoken clips from movies being injected, but since it clearly isn't musical content and gives expression outside a filmmakers intent, I don't see a lot wrong with it except overuse.Done to death is distasteful but not wrong.
        Its those lacking in talent either to write their own music or sing that I target. Rather they "sample" others music and call it their own product like taking pictures from a magazine and pasting them to a canvas and declaring it theirs so you can buy it. They are mere technicians, pushing a button, requiring no discernable musical talent not possessed by a chimp already.

        It's cheap, it's stealing, there's no excuse.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

 

She must not have taken high school classes yet...

[LostCluster]

In my years at high school in the late 90s, they showed all of the forms of documentation standards to properly credit research. With services like TurnItIn.com all the rage in academia the risk of being labeled a cheater for using a sentence that has already been written by somebody else has gone way up. This is a case where the "child prodigy" is just somebody who hasn't learned the rules of the world yet.

In a way it is understandable

[mikael_j]

It seems that today we are exposed to a lot more sources of information and ideas and the amount of raw "data" per source is both smaller than it used to be (blogs, twitter, irc, podcasts, etc.) while at the same time larger ("Hey, this snippet of text from $AUTHOR was pretty good, I wonder what I can find about him on Google/Wikipedia...").

If you were writing a book back in say, 1950, you would have to base it a lot more on your own experiences in the "physical"/"real" world while today you would probably use the internet and other media sources to aid your creativity to a larger degree.

/Mikael

Re:In a way it is understandable

[Hadlock]

This is the dumbest thing I've read in a long time.

Re:In a way it is understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't do a lot of reading eh?

Whee

[mewsenews]

Hello, kdawson.

Have we entered a new era where plagiarism is not just tolerated, but seen as normal?

No.

Is this the ultimate in cynicism, or is it simply a brash attempt to get away with something now that she's been caught?

Who cares?

Is her claim to legitimacy compromised by the fact that she only admitted it after it was discovered by someone else?

Yes.

And finally, if 'sampling' is not acceptable in literature, is this reason to rethink the legitimacy of musical sampling?

No.

I might read the article next time.

Re:Whee

[LostCluster]

Yep.. Report to Oprah and cry... your story has wound up in "A Million Little Pieces".

Re:Whee

[Stargoat]

This makes me wish I had mod points.

Re:Whee

[Jane Q. Public]

On that last question, I disagree strongly. Books or music, there is a line between fair use and plagiarism. "Sampling" in popular music has definitely gone over that line.

Sure... certain parts (generally small parts) can be sampled or "borrowed", and still be legitimate. But when you take people like Kid Rock for example, and listen to him outright take someone else's music -- with hardly a single change -- and then add lyrics of his own, that is not Fair Use, that is plagiarism. It is nothing but capitalizing on the talents of others when you have none of your own. And don't misunderstand me: I actually like Kid Rock's stuff. The problem is that it's really NOT "his" stuff. I think he should be in prison, not on album covers.

And it's a doubly egregious offense because he has done it with the express intent to make a profit.

Other people in the past have had the pants sued off of them, successfully, for "borrowing" a hell of a lot less than Kid Rock does. Time to call him (and others) on it.

Re:Whee

[Anonymous Coward]

>I actually like Kid Rock's stuff.

Stopped taking your opinion seriously right here.

Re:Whee

[Qzukk]

But when you take people like Kid Rock for example, and listen to him outright take someone else's music -- with hardly a single change -- and then add lyrics of his own, that is not Fair Use, that is plagiarism

Weird Al does it better.

Re:Whee

[dougisfunny]

How bout Weird Al?

Re:Whee

[pz]

Hello, kdawson.

Have we entered a new era where plagiarism is not just tolerated, but seen as normal?

Note to self: stop reading Slashdot when kdawson is editing because the signal-to-silliness goes to hell.

Re:Whee

[Jane Q. Public]

No, what Weird Al does is satire, or more properly, parody, which is specifically excluded from copyright infringement.

Re:Whee

[maxume]

It is only plagiarism if he misrepresents the source of the work.

And, for instance, Rolling Stone doesn't seem to be real reluctant to 'call him on it':

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/16700035/review/16720051/rockandrolljesus

Re:Whee

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly don't know much about the history of American popular music.

Blues and folk music is all about copying other people and putting your own spin on it. When people say rock & roll "ripped off" the blues, they're talking out of their ass, because all those old blues guys "ripped off" each other as well.

Sampling is just a new method of achieving the same goal. Rap is the new folk music.

Re:Whee

[SleazyRidr]

Isn't that usually done with the consent of the original writer and suitable license payments?

Re:Whee

[koreaman]

Also, whether or not he is legally required to do so, Weird Al gets the permission of each and every artist whose work he imitates.

Re:Whee

[Jane Q. Public]

That's very good of him (I mean that seriously), but probably not legally required, considering the nature of what he does.

Re:Whee

[Akira Kogami]

Most musicians who use samples in their releases get permission from the copyright owner of the sample. I don't even slightly doubt that someone on a major label like Kid Rock had every sample he used cleared by the copyright holder. If you get sued for sampling, it's because you didn't get it cleared.

Re:Whee

[FauxReal]

Are you talking about the "Sweet Home Alabama" melody and lyrics plus what sounds like some piano melody from Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London? First, I don't think he sampled it... not that it makes much of a difference. But if he somehow used those parts without crediting them and paying royalties without getting sued out of his shirt I would be very surprised.

Re:Whee

[Jane Q. Public]

That was one of them, sure. But there are more.

The fact is that I haven't seen one of Kid Rock's hit songs that had any appreciable original work in it at all. Maybe he credits the original artists and pays royalties, maybe not. But regardless of whether he is doing it legally, he hasn't shown me that he really has any talent of his own.

True, I wouldn't want to actually see him punished unless he really is doing something wrong... but I'm not going to buy any of his stuff, even if I do think some of then are catchy.

Re:Whee

[JeffAtl]

If you get sued for sampling, it's because you didn't get it cleared.

Better have really good lawyers if you sample anything by the Rolling Stones because they'll sue you even you do get it cleared by them beforehand.

Re:Whee

[Jane Q. Public]

I should qualify that. Not all of the songs I heard were copies (even if not "sampled"... I don't care if it's a recording or their own playing), but just about everything I have heard from him has either been mashed up from other artists, or "hip-hop-ified" covers of other peoples' work.

Definitely Not

[Jane Q. Public]

I don't care if it's "a new generation". In the past, "new generations" did not claim they could rob or steal just because they feel like it, either.

Not that plagiarism or copyright infringement is stealing... I know the difference and why the law treats them differently. But that was the closest thing that came to mind just now.

This "new generation" needs to wise the f* up and learn the difference between Fair Use and just plain plagiarizing someone else's work. If they don't, everybody else will end up coming down on them like a ton of bricks.

If they don't like the copyright laws, then get them changed to something more reasonable (something I would like to see, as well). But just pretending they don't exist is not going to work.

Re:Definitely Not

[Nadaka]

It depends on how you define plagiarism. At the university I attended, making a mistake in the format of your references was considered plagiarism. I wouldn't personally hold anyone to that high if a standard. Did she originally claim complete ownership and provide no references or sources at all? Then yes, by any definition plagiarism and absolutely unquestionable wrong.

Re:Definitely Not

[Jane Q. Public]

It's not just that. According to the law, work in education and academics actually does not have to abide by the standards that people outside that world do... Fair Use is actually expanded somewhat for educational purposes.

But it's not just listing the reference, but also the amount of the work that is "borrowed" that determines infringement. Using whole pages, even with references, might qualify as infringement all by itself. Much depends on the circumstances... but much does not.

Re:Definitely Not

[EvanED]

But it's not just listing the reference, but also the amount of the work that is "borrowed" that determines infringement. Using whole pages, even with references, might qualify as infringement all by itself.

The real problem is that you're confusing (perhaps knowingly, but confusing nonetheless) copyright infringement and plagiarism. Using whole pages with properly attributed references might qualify as infringement -- but would never be plagiarism (or at least should never be, or you're using a broken definition IMO).

Re:Definitely Not

[zippthorne]

No, plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement. They're related, but orthogonal. You can quote any amount of text and not be plagiarizing as long as it's quoted and attributed. Using whole pages might be copyright infringement, and there might be so little of your own work that it's not really a unique paper any more, but you're ok on plagiarism as long as you don't claim it's your own.

Re:Definitely Not

[Jane Q. Public]

Well, I did not actually confuse the two but I did mention them together in a way that could be misunderstood. Point taken.

Re:Definitely Not

[Frosty Piss]

I don't care if it's "a new generation". In the past, "new generations" did not claim they could rob or steal just because they feel like it, either.

Got an music on your iPod that you didn't pay for? Oh, right, that's different.

Re:Definitely Not

[DriedClexler]

I hate to sound cynical, but what's really going on here is about status. If you're Stephen Ambrose, and you get caught plagiarizing, well, you're at the top of your field, so you get a slap on the wrist. Is "Dr." Ambrose persona non grata in the field of history now? Didn't think so.

OTOH, if you're a young, low status newbie who hasn't "paid her dues", and you embarass your country because they were investing so much credibility in you, well, the kid gloves come off.

I'm not endorsing plagiarism. I'm saying, denounce the act and the wrongdoer *wherever* it occurs, and don't make it a function of how kewl you are.

Re:Definitely Not

[countertrolling]

Got an music on your iPod that you didn't pay for? Oh, right, that's different.

Damn right.. Spread the word

Re:Definitely Not

[masmullin]

no... OBVIOUSLY every song on my iPod was created and mixed by myself.

Re:Definitely Not

[selven]

It's not stealing, or anything close to it. It's building on an existing pool of literature and culture, ie. the whole point of copyright in the first place. If everyone had to start from scratch, there would never be any Progress.

Re:Definitely Not

[Jane Q. Public]

Even if I did, that is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand (but since you asked, the answer is no, because I don't even own an mp3 player right now).

If you want to draw a parallel to the situation being discussed, you should ask if I am getting paid by a nightclub to DJ mashups that "borrow" a little too much from the original artists, and calling it my own. And no, I'm not doing that, either.

Re:Definitely Not

[Jane Q. Public]

You are missing the point. Of course nobody starts from scratch. Words are not copyrighted. Musical notes are not copyrighted. What are copyrighted are combinations of words or notes or both that are original works of art.

But the point you missed is that it might be okay to "borrow" a small amount from others, but there comes a point at which you are actually marketing the talent of somebody else and calling it your own. There is no justification for that.

Re:Definitely Not

[koreaman]

I think you mean independent, not orthogonal.

Sorry, just got out of linear algebra class :(

Re:Definitely Not

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care if it's "a new generation". In the past, "new generations" did not claim they could rob or steal just because they feel like it, either.

Yes they did, that's precisely what the communists did, claimed they could take the property from those who possessed it and redistribute it as they saw fit. Socialism is still regarded as theft in principle by some people. The establishment of the property rights that socialism destroys was done at the expense of the previous system which was absolute power of monarchs, which defined everything (and everyone) as property of the king. Kings generally rose by forceful acquisition of property previously held by tribes, clans etc.

Redefining property rights and acquiring them against the wishes of the previous owners is the historical norm. That's not to say it's always right or a good idea, but it's certainly nothing new.

Re:Definitely Not

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I would permit her work on one proviso: it was done for free.

If she published this and charged nothing for it, or UP FRONT donated all proceeds after cost of printing and distribution to charity, then I'd let her slide. Principles have their price, and free is hard to beat.

but that's not what she did, so hell with her.

RS

Re:Definitely Not

[Myopic]

At the university I attended, making a mistake in the format of your references was considered plagiarism.

Yeah... that's because otherwise people would claim that they just 'made a mistake' and forgot to mention a couple cites. At my college, when there were cheating scandals, we always heard the perp say that, which is crazy because it doesn't make any sense. If you, say, mistakenly put a comma where the citation format requires a semicolon, I hardly think any school would bat an eye; but if you mistakenly cite 7 papers when you have whole paragraphs listed from 6 others, that's gonna get you parkhursted. Of course, there is a scale all along between those extremes.

Re:Definitely Not

[dwye]

> If they don't like the copyright laws,
> then get them changed to something more reasonable

Copyright doesn't matter to plagiarism. If someone published the Illiad (or even a fresh translation thereof) and claimed it as their own poem, they would be guilty of plagiarism even though the original work has always been out of copyright.

Bringing up copyright is just a red herring to obscure the real issues of her plagiarism. Any copyright infringement claims can be settled in court.

Re:Definitely Not

[zippthorne]

Hmm, upon further reflection, I think you're right. I was going to say that in the domain I've used it, they're equivalent, but they're really not: the concepts are not two completely separate axes of possibilities; there are areas of overlap.

Orthogonal was definitely not quite the right word to use there.

Childish

[robmarms]

Artists who sample should always give the original artist credit... This is a childish attempt to explain, or rather justify, a wrong AFTER the fact.

Re:Childish

[martin-boundary]

Duh. She's 17, so obviously she's a child.

Re:Childish

[girlintraining]

Artists who sample should always give the original artist credit... This is a childish attempt to explain, or rather justify, a wrong AFTER the fact.

What about paraphrasing? A hobby of mine is collecting quotes. I paraphrase some of those quotes from time to time in my personal correspondence. See, the problem here is where do we draw the line? We have intellectual property on one end saying it's wrong to plagarize ideas, let alone what is manifest from them. On the other you have scientists, researchers, programmers, etc., that benefit enormously from the free exchange of their work. And old saying; "Stealing from one is plagarism, stealing from many is research."

It IS a childish attempt to justify what was done. But that doesn't mean the point is invalid. My generation doesn't respect artificial boundaries imposed by intellectual property. And I can point the finger firmly at RIAA's overly-aggressive enforcement tactics as the de facto reason for that. We live in a world super-saturated in information, and we have a strong innate desire to share that information. We post details of our innermost thoughts and daily activities online where our friends, family, coworkers, even random strangers, can see. Do you really think that if we value our own privacy so little we're going to respect the access barriers imposed by faceless corporations and over-zealous government officials?

We are seeing tectonic plates smashing together here -- intellectual property versus my generation's seemingly insatiable appetite for self-disclosure and publication. It's a mess of international law, court judgements, congressional hearings, and everything else. But eventually, intellectual property will die. It will do so at glacial speed, but it will die, because fundamentally the benefits to society being able to freely access and exchange information massively outweigh the benefits from ceding control to interested parties. That isn't to say in some select cases the practice won't continue... But the list of reasons will grow shorter, and the laws that gave the institution a form and purpose will melt away.

Re:Childish

[khallow]

My generation doesn't respect artificial boundaries imposed by intellectual property.

How about natural boundaries imposed by intellectual property? For example, there's rarely a legal repercussion for comedians stealing fellow comedians' jokes, but they apparently do have some sort of cultural punishment for those that do.

Re:Childish

[KingAlanI]

That joke reminds me: I'm a junior now, but at various points last year (and four years prior), I pointed out that I was quite entitled to enjoy sophomoric humor.

It's sad that some people think this is okay

[ip_freely_2000]

Her generation grew up sampling from other sources -- and I've always felt that was a result of a weak and uncreative person. I wonder where is the line when sampling becomes copying. In any event, I hope that the people being stolen from are being compensated ( but I doubt it ).

Re:It's sad that some people think this is okay

[Brian Gordon]

Have you read Free Culture? It might change your perspective on how "owned" our cultural treasures should be.

Also this kind of sampling is rather common in literature. I'm not sure how extensive her plagiarism was, but a large proportion of The Waste Land for example is pieced together from other writings..

Re:It's sad that some people think this is okay

[SkunkPussy]

Would you also say that if you are building a house, you should construct all the bricks yourself - otherwise you're a poor and unskilled builder?

If you are a writer, should you invent all the words yourself, otherwise you're a weak writer?

There are entire genres of music that have sprung up based upon sampling the drum beat out of ONE SONG from 40 years ago (c.f. Amen Break).

Isaac Newton is said to have made a comment about how he only achieved what he achieved by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Re:It's sad that some people think this is okay

[Jane Q. Public]

You are (perhaps unintentionally) using straw-man arguments to confuse the issue.

"Would you also say that if you are building a house, you should construct all the bricks yourself - otherwise you're a poor and unskilled builder?"

Of course not. But you would pay for the bricks you use. That is the issue here.

"If you are a writer, should you invent all the words yourself, otherwise you're a weak writer?"

Again, of course not. Nobody thinks that. Don't be stupid. Copyrights cover large combinations of words, not just words. But there is a point at which your "borrowing" becomes simply the copying of someone else's work. It is not a hard and fast line, though. That's why we have courts.

"There are entire genres of music that have sprung up based upon sampling the drum beat out of ONE SONG from 40 years ago (c.f. Amen Break)."

That's right, and 40 years should be more than enough time for the copyright to have expired. Not everything about today's copyright law is reasonable. On the other hand, I have heard excessive sampling of songe that are only 10 or 15 years old, to the extent that if I were a judge in those cases I would say that infringement had occurred.

"Isaac Newton is said to have made a comment about how he only achieved what he achieved by standing on the shoulders of giants."

That's just another straw-man argument. Scientific principles are not the same thing. Would you also have allowed Newton to patent gravity? However, his Principia was probably copyrighted at the time. So what? That doesn't mean that people could not use the ideas in his book... they just couldn't copy his book.

If you want to get ideas from an old (but still copyrighted) song... fine. But use those ideas to make your own lyrics, and use the musical ideas to make your own music.

Re:It's sad that some people think this is okay

[Anders]

In any event, I hope that the people being stolen from are being compensated ( but I doubt it )

If she stole, what did they lose?

Re:It's sad that some people think this is okay

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that Mr Lessing is using Apple to do his presentation. By doing so he is demonstrating it is ok to sell your freedom to certain point.

Re:It's sad that some people think this is okay

[countertrolling]

If she stole, what did they lose?

3) Profit!

I Just Can't Agree With This

[eldavojohn]

First off, I'm 27. No clue if I'm therefore a member of her generation or not. But anyway, I do recognize a move towards a slough of progressive distribution models of information. I think the public domain is underrated and I would like to see copyright length dialed down a year or thirty. I don't think it should be completely abolished anytime in the near future.

I also feel like writers should be rewarded with incentives for their work. If her anything goes usage attitude was applied to me I would simply make a character with my name and pick up all my favorite sci-fi books and write glue to transport the character from one favorite scene to another in each of the books. I'd publish it and get all the proceeds. But that wouldn't be fair if all I did was write crappy glue to string the stories together. I should make pennies on the sale with the rest of the cash appropriately divided up to the real authors who did the real writing. I'm not a sampling artist but the ones that do get permission in music I believe settle up with the owner of that copyrighted work first.

I guess she lives in Germany so things might go differently for her. But in the United States, if you commit a crime as an act of art, you are still charged for the crime. Murder someone and string their body parts on a Christmas tree to represent the commercialization of Christmas? You're going to be tried for murder.

Something of curious note to me is that she's 17. In our code of law, I believe her record would be expunged when she's 18, not sure how it works in Germany. So maybe she's taking this hit now to generate publicity knowing full well it won't stick on her. Who knows? I think it's a shame that she didn't get permission and I hope the other authors are given a reasonable royalty rate on her sales.

Re:I Just Can't Agree With This

[BaronHethorSamedi]

Expungement of a record wouldn't really be an issue--she hasn't committed a crime. In U.S. copyright parlance, she may have infringed copyright, but that's a civil matter that doesn't entail the creation of a criminal record.

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:I Just Can't Agree With This

[LWATCDR]

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:I Just Can't Agree With This

[bugi]

Luckily we're starting to get criminal statutes for copyright infringement?

Re:I Just Can't Agree With This

[moogaloonie]

If nothing else, I'm entertained by your superfluous apostrophe.

Re:I Just Can't Agree With This

[EL_mal0]

You make some good points, but I would have to disagree with what appears to be the focus of your argument and many, many others on this page: that this is wrong because she plagiarized copyrighted work. I disagree. This is wrong because she was trying to pass someone else's work as her own.

It doesn't matter if the work has been out there for hundreds of years, landing it squarely in the public domain. Plagiarism is dishonest, regardless of whether or not it happens to be illegal where you live.

Sampling Your Dinner

[handy_vandal]

First, you eat a delicious steak dinner. Then I'll take a steak knife, carve a sirloin off your body, and enjoy a deliciously sampled steak dinner. Like secondhand smoke, but entirely voluntary.

Re:Sampling Your Dinner

[Anonymous Coward]

First, you eat a delicious steak dinner. Then I'll take a steak knife, carve a sirloin off your body, and enjoy a deliciously sampled steak dinner. Like secondhand smoke, but entirely voluntary.

Re:Sampling Your Dinner

[handy_vandal]

Made me chuckle -- you smug bastard.

Depends

[DaMattster]

It really depends upon which side of the fence you are on and which party stands to make or lose the most amount of money. If you side with RIAA or a Publisher, sampling might be an absolute no-no. If you are the artist and your ideas are being used to create new ones, this could be a form of homage to your talent. A Zen master once said, "Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Dave Matthews would most likely encourage this.

Re:Depends

[LostCluster]

We're to the point where nearly all four-note combinations are under copyright, and therefore it's hard to write an "original" song without having to pay somebody else for the rights.

 

Re:Depends

[Jane Q. Public]

There is still a limit as to how far sampling can go, and I have experienced quite a few instances of "sampling" that were very clearly over the legal line.

Even if 100 artists agree with you, I have no doubt whatever that I could find, with little effort, 1,000 who do not.

Re:Depends

[Jane Q. Public]

That's just nonsense. The fact that a 4-note sequence is under copyright doesn't necessarily mean that you can't use it legally. There are standards, such as "orginality". a 40note sequence would probably not be judged "original" enough to be covered by the copyright, in the same way that a couple of common chords would not be protected, if someone else wanted to use them.

But if you were to copy something of much more length, such as a complete rhythm or background, you might be infringing.

For example, the distinctive 9-note bass line behind "play that funky music" would likely be protected by copyright (even though it has been "sampled" already), because it is very unlikely that anybody else would come up with exactly that same combination by themselves accidentally, which makes it an "original work". If I were the originator, I would sue the sampler.

Re:Depends

[Jane Q. Public]

Damn typo. That first part should have been "4-note sequence", not 40note.

Re:Depends

[howlatthemoon]

It is only flattering if you acknowledge the one you imitate. It is not only the honorable thing to do, but in scholarship a necessity. It avoids sloppiness of thinking and provides linkages to the origins of the original thought. For example I hight doubt the author of the quote "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" was a Zen Master as the person who wrote it, Charles Caleb Colton, was a 17th century English Cleric (Wikipedia).

While I do believe there are original thoughts, unlike Jim Jarmusch, I do believe that knowledge in our civilization advances by our building on the works of others in all aspects of the life, science and art. There needs to be reasonable respect for IP (the incentive to create for some but still less than life+70 yrs), and even more reasonable terms of use (the incentive to make things even better). Still, when things enter the public domain, I see no less of an obligation to attribute the content to the original source.

Much of the standing on the shoulders of giants we do may be way of inspiration, which can be hard to attribute, but it does sound like this is the case for the author in cited. She is an unrepentant plagiarist, and deserves scorn heaped upon her.

Re:Depends

[phiwum]

A Zen master once said, "Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

Charles Caleb Colton, 19th century English cleric, was a Zen master?

Or perhaps he just lifted the saw from a Zen master.

Nonsense

[symes]

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.

Re:Nonsense

[sckeener]

Also it doesn't make sense. In music, sounds are variations on each other with a few power cords tossed into the mix. The supreme court limited it to (I believe 8 seconds.) To compare that to language would be to use a simplified dictionary and then use only derivatives of those words. Any large sections would not be usable because complex thoughts could not be conveyed. Plagiarizing a literary sample should consist of say a sentence, not entire passages.

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a big difference between sampled audio and most sampled text. With audio clips you're (usually) hearing the exact same content pulled directly from the source. This makes it easier to recognize. But, when "sampling" text, more often this context is removed. All that remains are the words themselves, without any original formatting style as added context. A more legitimate approach to text sampling would be to scan the original text, cut it out, and place it in your new work as a block. Same effect as putting something in quotes, only better looking.

Re:Nonsense

[shutdown -p now]

If she made it clear that she is "sampling", and also provided the sources, then I could understand. But as it is, her explanation is clearly bullshit, and here's why.

The existing Net culture of "mixing and sampling media" is actually rather meticulous about respecting original authorship. It's generally perfectly fine to take someone's picture (or part thereof), and use it in yours; or to write a fanfic using characters or setting developed by another, or as a direct continuation; and so on. But you always say where you've borrowed your ideas from! Heck, even those lame YouTube videos list their sources for music and video...

And if you don't? Well, chances are no-one will find out, but if someone will, and they publicize it, you'll get heckled for it. It's just "seriously uncool" to not give credit.

Plagiarism and copyright violation

[JoshuaZ]

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.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[91degrees]

I knew this poet. His work consisted of snippets from newspapers rearranged into a poem.

Since this was the point, there was certainly no deceit involved. Nobody even raised the question as to whether this was unoriginal. It was original. He rearranged a limited amount of work in a new and totally different way. So it's quite possible not only to use other people's words, but to use entirely other people's words and not be considered to be stealing.

I realise this girl wasn't doing that. I merely point out that this sort of thing can be done legitimately.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[VoiceInTheDesert]

Exactly. If you get thrown out of college for it, it's probably not legit.

Sampling acknowledges the original author. In music, it can be using a riff in the background of your song with a nod in the credits of your album. In literature, it's called "citing your source." If you don't cite, it's plaigarism. Furthermore, this is fiction, not a research paper where citing would be needed. We already have a catagory for writers who "sample" fiction from other sources, it's called "fan fiction," and no one gets paid for it because if they did, it would be copyright infringement.

This makes me really angry because it's just the kind of disrepect that my generation seems to be inidated with towards anyone but their own interests. You do NOT steal people's work and pass it off as your own. What a lazy bitch.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[Dr_Ish]

I fully concur with JoshuaZ. If this happened in one of my classes, they would get an automatic F in the class, assuming they confessed when challenged. Any fancy footwork like she is trying to pull and I would try and get her expelled.

As for the question about why words might be different from music, I am surprised that this question even arises. We have all these niffty things like quotation marks and citation conventions (APA, MLA, etc.), which make it possible to easily indicate when words are not original. To the best of my knowledge, no such conventions and tool exist in the case of music.

I really hope that the people who had their words stolen call their lawyers. It would give the lawyers something useful to do, rather than helping out the greedy fools of the RIAA, MIAA and associated creeps.

Self-righteous 'explanations' after the fact are very common among plagiarists and cheats. So, her putative 'defense' should be held up as an object of ridicule. She should also have her works pulped, forthwith. I find this whole affair "...fills me with the urge to deficate." (Waters, Ezrin, 1982)

References:
Waters, R. and Ezrin, R. (1982), "The Trial" in Pink Floyd, *The Wall*, Columbia Records.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[swillden]

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:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[Nethemas the Great]

I'm not entirely certain that one may call this an apples to apples comparison. For starters the student is presumed to be turning in an all "original" work, you are implying that that is a requirement. A novel on the other hand does not come with the same requirements. Unless you're Neil Stephenson, it isn't "common" to include a bibliography or "works cited" in your fictional novel. This girl's work might extend past traditional expectations of written authorship but is by no means the exception. This girl points to modern day "mash-ups" and music remixes as explanation, however literary history as well as art generally has a long tradition of "borrowing" from others' work with varying degrees of obviousness.

The fact that she borrowed from the work of others makes her accomplishment of assembling the surrounding words no less impressive. Few people could lift a couple dozen pages from Walt Whitman or Charles Dickens and assemble a novel around them that made clean transitions let alone seamlessly tie it together to form a work worthy praise from the literary establishment.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[Jane Q. Public]

A lot of people here have seemed to keep missing this point: snippets are one thing. Whole pages are quite another. To some degree it is the amount you copy, as well as what you copy, that determines infringement.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[Jane Q. Public]

"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."

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:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[Zerth]

It is rather common to have a "works cited" in the front of your novel if you quote poetry or lyrics. If you write a story in somebody else's setting or use a character, even if there is no text copied, you generally cite that as well.

Relatedly, if you write a novel expanding on a short story, you cite that too, but I think that has to do with your own copyrights more than citing your own previous works.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[TakeyMcTaker]

Copy rights don't exist -- they are complete legal fictions, currently designed to make sure the Disney Corporation can keep profiting from any configuration of 3 intersecting circles.

The only valid concern here is attribution rights, which are natural in a social sense, and act as a consumer protection against fraud. Plagiarism is usually defined more in terms of proper attribution than "copying", because uses of the terms with the root "copy" are so ambiguous and problematic (esp. in the digital age) as to make it unusable in enforcement, even when limited to enforcement of social norms. Quotes, citations, footnotes, bibliographies, and now hyper-links are all valid methods to lend attributions to originating sources. None of these attribution methods were used in this case, which makes finding of fault very simple.

Please don't let this debate devolve into "fair use" definitions, which are still ambiguous after centuries of contradictory court findings. Defining fair use as less than 140 characters, a few sentences, a chorus, a bar, a frame, an act, or a page are all equally subjective and ambiguous. The variety of potential valid reuse contexts are just far too great to simplify by numerical means. Copyright laws in the U.S. have always been in conflict with the First Amendment, and "fair use" has never been a sufficient work-around.

Let's talk about attribution rights and forget the copy right fiction.

Re:Plagiarism and copyright violation

[swillden]

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.

Copyright law isn't about "right" and "wrong", it's about money. Even if the copyright holders sue, and win (which is far from certain), then all they get is some of the money she made.

All of you people waxing moralistic on this issue are just silly.

wait, what's the problem?

[drDugan]

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?

Re:wait, what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

HA HA HA HA HA that's hilarious.

Re:wait, what's the problem?

[davidwr]

"HA HA HA HA HA that's hilarious." -AC

Dear AC, I'm pretty sure I've seen that before. Your failure to credit your source could put you on the wrong end of a lawsuit, or worse, you could find yourself featured on the /. main page.

Re:wait, what's the problem?

[failedlogic]

I was just about to make a similar post. How dare you steal my ideas!

Not right ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But not entirely wrong either. I don't know where the limit is, but I was taught that it was five consequent words, which is ridiculous really, especially today when everyone is writing stuff up and the worst cases are building huge databases against which to check new works.

I doubt none of my works/assignments would have passed the five word rule.

Good grief,

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing is really original anymore. When you have a planet with a population of nearly 7 billion -- it is fairly easy for me to claim that 99.999% of everything written, said, or done today, has been done by someone else in the past: including music.

Even mathematics is full of stories where there is more than one inventor, who claimed that they developed ideas independently.

If the offense is blatant copy-infringement, and contributes more than an insignificant impact to the copied works, then let a judge determine a financial penalty.

Re:Good grief,

[fremsley471]

Replace '7 billion' with 'infinite' and make sure your population is made of monkeys and you're probably correct.

Re:Good grief,

[Jane Q. Public]

"nothing is really original anymore. When you have a planet with a population of nearly 7 billion -- it is fairly easy for me to claim that 99.999% of everything written, said, or done today, has been done by someone else in the past: including music."

Complete nonsense. And it should only have taken a little basic application of that math you mention to tell you so.

There are so many possible combinations of instrument, notes, timing and inflection that you could ask all 7 billion of those people to play an arbitrary 6-note combination on the instrument of their choice, and there is a pretty good possibility that none of them would sound exactly the same to the ear, especially if you include chords. With that many, odds are that some would be very close, but the point is: that's only 6 notes, and 1 instrument! Add a drum or a bass line or some kind of background or other accompaniment and the possibilities grow exponentially. It is easy to see that there are far, far more than 7 billion possible combinations in even just a few seconds of music.

That is even more true of words. Even if one holds to pretty stringent rules of grammar, there are far, far more than 7 billion legitimate combinations of words in even a single fairly short sentence, much less a paragraph or whole page.

Re:Good grief,

[quantaman]

"When you have a planet with a population of nearly 7 billion"
No results found for "When you have a planet with a population of nearly 7 billion".

"who claimed that they developed ideas independently"

No results found for "who claimed that they developed ideas independently".

"If the offense is blatant copy-infringement"
No results found for "If the offense is blatant copy-infringement".

Re:Good grief,

[dfghjk]

Yes, it is laughably absurd. The world is filled with new creative expression.

crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine how crazy the world would be if you couldn't copy ideas... Oh wait.

Some thoughts on this

[Quiet_Desperation]

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 the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

Re:Some thoughts on this

[bsDaemon]

Methinks the lady doth protest too much, however I feel that now may be the winter of her discontent....

Re:Some thoughts on this

[Digero]

Wow! Very eloquent, Quiet_Desperation. You should be an author.

Re:Some thoughts on this

[Anonymous Coward]

chaka, when the walls fell...

Re:Some thoughts on this

[Qzukk]

we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way when suddenly a lone zombie staggered into the road before us.

Re:Some thoughts on this

[PPH]

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:Some thoughts on this

[zippthorne]

You made it further in than me. The sheer thickness of that work is daunting.

Re:Some thoughts on this

[knuth]

I have great expectations of you as a writer. How the dickens did you come up with that?

Re:Some thoughts on this

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no... "The night was sultry" :-)

Re:Some thoughts on this

[cptnapalm]

I'm gonna kill that bitch!

Re:Some thoughts on this

[chiguy]

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.

In a World....

Re:Some thoughts on this

[jonaskoelker]

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.

Burma Shave

Re:Some thoughts on this

[Jesus_666]

At least completely originally write (and there's nothing wrong with it if someone happened to have come up with those exact words before) the entire thing.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Re:She must not have taken high school classes yet

[Anonymous Coward]

As a matter of fact, she quit school at 14 years old. There's still no excuse for the deed, her father being a literature professor after all (the reason why she got book deal in the first place..).

Re:She must not have taken high school classes yet

[Shadow of Eternity]

Correction: With businesses like TurnItIn.com all the rage in academia the risk of being labelled a cheater at all approaches 100%.

Turnitin and its ilk are businesses first and foremost. As long as plagiarism rates remain high business is good, and since they control the reported amount of plagiarism and there is no possible defense against an accusation by their system there will always be a high rate of plagiarism.

From the article...

[GPLDAN]

Deef Pirmasens, the blogger who discovered the passages taken from “Strobo,” said that he could understand a few words or phrases seeping into the work through inspiration, but that he quickly noticed that there were too many for it to be a coincidence. “To take an entire page from an author, as Helene Hegemann admitted to doing, with only slight changes and without asking the author, I consider that illegitimate,” Mr. Pirmasens said.


Entire pages verbatim? She is the Vanilla Ice of literature sampling then.

Re:From the article...

[kill-1]

AFAIK, she didn't copy whole pages verbatim. In the box at the bottom of
this page, you can find a comparison of the original and her text (in German, of course).

Re:From the article...

[pigphish]

you summed up what I wanted to know so I will just copy it all. Deef Pirmasens, the blogger who discovered the passages taken from “Strobo,” said that he could understand a few words or phrases seeping into the work through inspiration, but that he quickly noticed that there were too many for it to be a coincidence. “To take an entire page from an author, as Helene Hegemann admitted to doing, with only slight changes and without asking the author, I consider that illegitimate,” Mr. Pirmasens said. Entire pages verbatim? She is the Vanilla Ice of literature sampling then.

Re:She must not have taken high school classes yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until she gets to university, especially if she gets involved in any graduate research. Then she'll really find out how research credits work in the real world. She'll be the one busting ass and doing the research, while her supervising professors will just stick their names on her papers.

Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[NiteMair]

As stated in the article, the whole controversy is also generating sales for the lesser-known "Strobo" book that was allegedly plagiarized. That can't be a bad thing.

http://www.amazon.de/Axolotl-Roadkill-Helene-Hegemann/dp/3550087926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266012743&sr=8-1

Still waiting for copyright enforcement advocates to realize that copyright infringement isn't always a bad thing.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Microlith]

And if the controversy hadn't broken and no one had uncovered that she lifted the text, would those sales still have been generated or would people just have assumed that page, like (most of?) the rest, were her words?

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Tezcat]

As stated in the article, the whole controversy is also generating sales for the lesser-known "Strobo" book that was allegedly plagiarized. That can't be a bad thing. http://www.amazon.de/Axolotl-Roadkill-Helene-Hegemann/dp/3550087926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266012743&sr=8-1 Still waiting for copyright enforcement advocates to realize that copyright infringement isn't always a bad thing.

The scandal is generating sales. If there was no scandal, if she had got away with it, the original copyright holder would not be profiting at all, while the plagiariser raked it in.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[mr_matticus]

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

[xigxag]

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:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Alomex]

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.

This is incorrect. Mod parent down.

If you had a good reason you can use an affirmative defense on the basis of necessity. Under such circumstances you may well be found not guilty, depending on the specifics of the case [1,2]. You should check your local jurisdiction laws, to see if they allow an affirmative defense and exactly what are the necessities that justify it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_defense
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity

IANAL, this is not legal advice, YMMV, all standard disclaimers apply.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Oligonicella]

"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."

Actually, I think it's only you that made that particular leap.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[mr_matticus]

It is not incorrect.

First, an affirmative defense is not a negative defense; that is, an affirmative defense does not mean "I didn't break the law". A negative defense is "you're missing something to prove the violation of law". An affirmative defense is "yes, I broke the law, but punish me less because...". It is a justification on why one should not be punished even though they broke the law, or should be minimally punished, because of some extenuating circumstance. In other words, a factor considered in sentencing, as I said in the first place.

Second, necessity is a criminal defense, not a defense to the tort of trespass. Trespass on a private citizen's property is almost never criminal absent some other aggravation, such as trespass for the purpose of committing crime. That goes far beyond the example given.

Third, while criminal trespass may indeed be met with a necessity argument, but "I was hurt and it was faster for me to get to the doctor by trespassing" is not necessity. Necessity at law generally requires an actual, immediate, and life-threateningly serious harm that can only be avoided by the unlawful conduct in question. That, again, greatly overstates the simple example I gave of an injury that left the trespasser sufficiently mobile to trespass in the first place.

IANAL

Clearly. Before jumping to declare someone incorrect, perhaps you should consider your certainty of basic facts.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[LainTouko]

One should really distinguish between the right to freedom, and the 'right' to control others. You only impinge on someone's rights if you stop them from doing something, in some way. Disobeying an order in a way which doesn't affect what they can do is impinging on their power. The term 'copyright' is doublespeak, unlike genuine property rights, in which eating an apple stops others from eating it, copyright is purely a restriction on people.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[xigxag]

I should hope so, one would hate to be redundant, wouldn't one?

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot wrong with your posting, but we'll get a few obvious things out of the way first.

"If you trespass, you are liable for damages should the owner wish to pursue them."

Actually, trespass [to land] in most jurisdictions (English common law) is an actionable wrong (civil tort) even *when no damage or injury takes place*. Thus one can sue a trespasser for doing no 'damage' other than having been on one's land. As well, if one wants to be lawyery, one should distinguish between trespass to land (here), trespass to person, trespass to chattles, etc.

"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"

So you conflate stealing, with trespass, with copyright infringement? The thing is, [expression of] ideas really aren't property but for an act of copyright. Copyright establishes a property right to expressions ideas and that property right can be easily removed by a simple act of a legislature/parliament, etc. Attempting to do the same removal of rights to land property or possessions are probably not so easily done, since of course property of objects and land is very very distinct from attempting to own expressions of ideas, etc.

"With copyright infringement, you pay for the injury, your depriving the owner of his exclusive property rights."

An act by government (especially one unrestrained by a constitution) can give me property rights to the air, water, and the labor of you and your unborn children but that doesn't necessarily make it either sensible or moral. Similarly with copyright, and if it proves to be too cumbersome perhaps it's time to have it modified, or as I mentioned: even done away with.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Alomex]

An affirmative defense is "yes, I broke the law, but punish me less because...".

You keep on making this mistake of assuming that an affirmative defense affirms the crime. For one an affirmative defense applies also in civil liabilities, where there is no crime. Second it affirms the facts and introduces new evidence that--so the defense claims--will negate the criminal nature or liability from the facts.

The best known example of an affirmative defense is killing in self-defense. The next best known one is insanity defense. In both of those cases the typical verdict is not guilty, not "punish me less".

Second, necessity is a criminal defense, not a defense to the tort of trespass. Trespass on a private citizen's property is almost never criminal absent some other aggravation, such as trespass for the purpose of committing crime. That goes far beyond the example given.

That is correct. It exculpates the criminal act, but restitution must be made.

Third, while criminal trespass may indeed be met with a necessity argument, but "I was hurt and it was faster for me to get to the doctor by trespassing" is not necessity.

This is something that is ruled on a case by case basis. In your example would depend on how badly hurt you were, and how much time you saved by trespassing.

Necessity at law generally requires an actual, immediate, and life-threateningly serious harm

Not so. It varies by jurisdiction. Some require life-threatening conditions, in others it simply suffices that the alternative was sufficiently worse than the otherwise illegal course of action ("choice-of-evils" doctrine).

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[mr_matticus]

You keep on making this mistake of assuming that an affirmative defense affirms the crime. For one an affirmative defense applies also in civil liabilities, where there is no crime

Not so. As you quoted me saying, an affirmative defense is "yes, I broke the law, but punish me less because..."

There is no mention of criminal proceedings or of guilt. It was your post that made the first and only references to criminal prosecution.

An affirmative defense does affirm the prima facie case. That is why it is called an affirmativejustification, not a denial of committing an unlawful act. In order to assert an affirmative defense, it must be the case that the law has been broken.

The next best known one is insanity defense. In both of those cases the typical verdict is not guilty, not "punish me less".

Once again, you are imposing a criminal context where none exists. Moreover, in both of the examples you cite, the defendant has broken the law and is arguing for a lesser punishment. In the criminal context, sometimes that means an acquittal if the justification is sufficiently strong.

However, and this is key, the defendant broke the law and is responsible for that action. The justification defenses simply relieve him of the burden of punishment. A finding of not guilty does not mean that the subsequent civil case will result in a finding of no liability, and in fact, arguing an affirmative defense in a criminal prosecution while having jury findings against any negative defenses is usually sufficient to find for liability.

Once again, however, since my example was a discussion of damages and civil liability, your entire tangent remains completely orthogonal to the original point.

Not so. It varies by jurisdiction. Some require life-threatening conditions, in others it simply suffices that the alternative was sufficiently worse than the otherwise illegal course of action ("choice-of-evils" doctrine).

(emphasis added"
Again, not being a lawyer and not having attended law school, you fail to realize that the other elements of necessity as borne out in case law, uniformly require a grave injury for a successful necessity defense. "Sufficiently worse" being the key, it is not sufficient for a 51/49 split. There must be clear and convincing evidence that the harm to the trespasser would have been great, and that the only reasonable alternative was to trespass.

This is a higher standard than you make it seem, a very different scenario than the one given, and a defense that effectively never would apply in a copyright infringement scenario, so the argument by analogy accomplishes nothing for you.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[mr_matticus]

One should really distinguish between the right to freedom, and the 'right' to control others.

Meaning what? The right to control others is inherent in a property owner. Property is an exclusive right--one shared by no one else and under your sole power to control. Today, you're more likely to see the phrase "proprietary interest" rather than exclusive right, but both mean the same thing (but watch out for non-exclusive proprietary interest in transactional work). Any interaction by a third party with your proprietary interests is yours to control unless explicitly stated otherwise by standing law. That is the essential freedom of the property owner.

What should be distinguished is who the freedom is for. With all property, it's the owner's freedom--not a third party's. A copyright is the owner's exclusive right (i.e. "property) to control copies.

The term 'copyright' is doublespeak, unlike genuine property rights, in which eating an apple stops others from eating it, copyright is purely a restriction on people.

Absolute hogwash. First, copyright is hardly doublespeak. It is exactly what it says. The owner of a copyright has the exclusive right to authorize and make copies, distribute, modify, and so on. The Constitution itself refers to it as property.

Real property is purely a restriction on people. The owner of land can't physically occupy all of it. Your total lack of rights, except those given to you by the property owner, are purely restrictions on your actions.

"Genuine property rights" is also a hilarious red herring. Property is nothing more or less than the exclusive right at law. All property is intangible; all property is legal fiction.

You only impinge on someone's rights if you stop them from doing something, in some way.

For example, depriving the owner of his exclusive right (a proprietary interest) to grant admission to his land. You have stopped him from exercising his legal right to exclude you, no matter what the conditions.

Or asserting a distribution right to a creative work that belongs to someone else. You have deprived the owner of his exclusive right (a proprietary interest) to control the distribution of his creative work, permanently substituting his market authority for yours without right or authorization.

Disobeying an order in a way which doesn't affect what they can do is impinging on their power.

No, trespassing, the classic real property example of what you're saying, is very much an infringement on the owner's exclusive rights (i.e. property).

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Alomex]

An affirmative defense does affirm the prima facie case.

Without any admission of guilty or "breaking the law".

In order to assert an affirmative defense, it must be the case that the law has been broken.

You keep on stating this without providing any evidence for it. Just repeating it does not make it any more true. For example, assumption of risk is one of the forms of affirmative defense. To use assumption of risk there is no claim that any law was broken. It simply argues that even if the facts as stated are correct the fault lies on the claimant as he/she knowingly engaged in a risky activity. As you can see, there is no "it must be the case that the law is broken" there.

Moreover, in both of the examples you cite, the defendant has broken the law and is arguing for a lesser punishment.

No so. Affirmative defenses do not necessarily carry an admission of guilt. The typical example is entrapment, in which the Third Circuit (US v Hill 1981) claimed that entrapment (and entrapment alone) carries an assumption of guilt. At the same time, the Ninth Circuit court ruled "that a defendant may assert entrapment without being required to concede that he committed the crime charged or any of its elements" (US v. Demma, 1975). This ruling is based on precedent from the US supreme court in which Chief Justice Hughes "expressly rejects the Government's contention that a claim of entrapment necessarily involved an admission of guilt."

In most cases an affirmative defense argues that "even if the plaintiff's claim is proven" there was no crime committed/no liability incurred because of some other reason such as insanity, necessity or assumption of risk (in civil liability cases).

grave injury

This is not the same as life or death. For example, loss of limb can be considered "grave injury".

There must be clear and convincing evidence that the harm to the trespasser would have been great, and that the only reasonable alternative was to trespass.

There you go. You see, your life-or-death has become "grave injury" which is now "great harm to the trespasser".

This is a higher standard than you make it seem, a very different scenario than the one given, and a defense that effectively never would apply in a copyright infringement scenario, so the argument by analogy accomplishes nothing for you.

I've never claimed that necessity defense applies in copyright cases (nor did I state the contrary). I simply took issue with your misrepresentation of the legal facts surrounding a necessity defense.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[mr_matticus]

Without any admission of guilty or "breaking the law".

An affirmative defense by definition is an admission that the law has been prima facie broken. It is an excused breaking of the law by the operation of some greater interest.

Getting an NGI in a murder case means exactly that the defendant actually committed the offense, but will not be punished due to insanity. It necessarily includes the perpetration of an illegal act, as otherwise the verdict would be based on a negative defense.

Arguing "necessity" in any sort of applicable context necessarily includes the commission of a crime. You can't argue that "I needed to break and enter because I stood to suffer grave injury" and then claim in the same argument that you did not break and enter.

(NB--you *can* plead in the alternative that (A) I did not break and enter or (B) if I did, I did it out of necessity. However, the verdict will specify by its nature which argument was found to be true. If (A), you win by negative defense [no proof that a crime was committed]. If (B), you win by affirmative defense [a crime was committed, and the defendant was justified in committing it]. A finding of "not guilty" does not mean that no crime was committed; it means that the defendant lacks culpability for it.)

You keep on stating this without providing any evidence for it. Just repeating it does not make it any more true. For example, assumption of risk is one of the forms of affirmative defense. To use assumption of risk there is no claim that any law was broken.

The evidence is in the name and development of the relevant doctrines. Affirmative defenses are justifications for lower (including nullified) punishment. They are not negative defenses (assertions that the prima facie case has not been made). Your continued resistance to the idea does not alter the fundamental reality of the distinction.

Note also the legal operation of acquittal: a finding of not guilty is not a finding of factual innocence. An acquittal by a verdict of "not guilty" simply means that the jury decided either that the breaking of the law was justified (by successful argument of an affirmative defense) or that it was not proven (by successful argument of a negative defense). An actual finding of innocence is exceedingly rare.

Further, you are mistaken regarding assumption of risk. Assumption of risk is a defense that excuses the defendant from his duty of care. It is not an argument that the defendant had no liability generally or no duty of care at law; it is an argument that the plaintiff engaged in behavior that reduces or eliminates that duty. In other words, "my duty of care as a landowner does not apply to this person and this activity because he voluntarily assumed the risk of engaging in this activity on this land."

It is not an argument of no legal duty; it is an argument that the landowner is excused from his duty. If the argument is that the landowner does not have a duty, the proper relief is summary judgment, not litigating on the merits. (See e.g. Knight v. Jewett (1992) 3 Cal.4th 296.)

No so. Affirmative defenses do not necessarily carry an admission of guilt. The typical example is entrapment, in which the Third Circuit (US v Hill 1981) claimed that entrapment (and entrapment alone) carries an assumption of guilt. At the same time, the Ninth Circuit court ruled "that a defendant may assert entrapment without being required to concede that he committed the crime charged or any of its elements" (US v. Demma, 1975). This ruling is based on precedent from the US supreme court in which Chief Justice Hughes "expressly rejects the Government's contention that a claim of entrapment necessarily involved an admission of guilt."

Your argument is not on point. The government in the entrapment cases argued that arguing entrapment was an admission of factual guilt to an

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[Anonymous Coward]

We are moving around in circles due to the loose and imprecise way in which you describe how affirmative defenses and necessity work. Here's one last example:

An affirmative defense by definition is an admission that the law has been prima facie broken.

Affirmative defenses apply to non criminal cases too. How can a law be broken in a non criminal case? Your statement doesn't even make sense.

Re:Generating sales for the plagiarized book

[mr_matticus]

We are moving around in circles due to the loose and imprecise way in which you describe how affirmative defenses and necessity work.

The only thing that is loose and imprecise is your understanding.

Affirmative defenses apply to non criminal cases too. How can a law be broken in a non criminal case?

Breach of duty of care is a violation of the law of torts.
Trespass is a violation of the law of property.
Copyright infringement is a violation of the law of copyright.
Breach of contract is a violation of the law of contracts.

Unless a case is proceeding purely in equity for which there is no constitutional, statutory, regulatory, or case law, the alleged violation is of the law.

Your statement doesn't even make sense.

Only because of how poorly versed you are in the salient details. You don't even know what a law is, apparently, given your idiotic belief that the only laws on the books are criminal.

I mean, good god. Copyright infringement is against the law and is almost always civil. You don't even have to branch out beyond the topic of the discussion to find examples of your ignorance.

Hideous

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I'm going to take 30 seconds of a Bowie song, 30 seconds of a Beatles song, and 30 seconds of a Led Zeppelin song, string them together, and call it a new work.

Re:Hideous

[I cant believe its n]

"It's on americas tortured brow,
that Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow."

David Bowie, Life on Mars.

Stop "sampling" my work!

[tomhudson]

Hey you! Stop "sampling" my work. I own the rights to ALL those words, and all the remixes, you thieves!

signed: Daniel Webster

Re:Stop "sampling" my work!

[JoshuaZ]

Funny but 1) Daniel Webster is long dead and not under copyright (the author has taken material from living people whose books are still available for sale) 2) Webster compiled information about how words were used. He'd have no copyright of the words. It isn't actually obviously clear if even his dictionary would have been copyrightable under modern copyright laws. See for example Feist v. Rural Telephone - (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service or for those who want the actual case http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=499&invol=340 which says essentially that copyrights can't apply simply to compilations of existing information but must have some originality to them. (The original case in question dealt with whether or not a phone directory was copyrightable). This is actually an area where modern copyrights might actually be too lenient about what is copyrighted (Seriously. Really. Stop laughing. Stop. Please. I mean it.) And in fact some countries other than the US use a test that measures effort not originality. For a dictionary, the concise definitions might be copyrightable. Maybe. But that's it.

Re:Stop "sampling" my work!

[qqqlo]

What, like these?

Re:Stop "sampling" my work!

[Jane Q. Public]

Besides, a dictionary might be considered a compilation of tabular data, which generally isn't copyrightable.

I am aware that dictionary companies today have (somehow) managed to copyright their works, but that doesn't mean it is proper. In recent years we have seen a lot of bogus patents awarded, in the same way.

Re:Stop "sampling" my work!

[tomhudson]

It isn't actually obviously clear if even his dictionary would have been copyrightable under modern copyright laws.

The "Webster Dictionary" is not copyrighted. Anyone is free to make their own "Webster's Dictionary". The ONLY portions that are copyrightable are any additions, like a modern guide to pronunciation, etc.

You can't copyright a fact, such as "1+1=2". You can't copyright trivialities, such as "Hello, world!\n"; You don't even have exclusive copyright to movie titles, which is why there are movies with the same title and completely different stories.

Select the "blank text"...

[IANAAC]

and you'll see it's not blank.

Re:Select the "blank text"...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was generating by typing:

<p>
&nbsp; </p>

You can see that by hitting the "Quote Parent" button.

Re:She must not have taken high school classes yet

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." -Picasso.

This is well established, it's called "quoting"

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have a well developed system for sampling other peoples works in literature, it's called "quoting". It ideally establishes that the material is quoted by indenting it or wrapping it in "quote" marks and you can even reference where it came from. This is not rocket science.

Is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or does the requirement that I cite my source seem like a social convention that is open to debate?

Jefferson and Madison certainly thought so. Jefferson originally argued against copyright altogether. When Madison convinced him that it was a necessary legitimacy in order to promote commerce and ensure economic stability, he reinspected his philosophy. Having done so, he advocated for a copyright term of half the average lifespan of the contemporary population. He claimed this was adequate to ensure that an author would profit from his effort without impinging on the next generation's ability to do so as well.

It took Sonny Bono and the interests of an 800 pound Californian mouse to extend the copyright term to its current, life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. See: Bono's Copyright Term Extension Act

Hey, what happened to equal rights for people, Sonny!! (Wonder if Cher got any of his campaign contributions...)

Good argument against copyright . . .

[wrencherd]

. . . protection.

Of course, the end of such protection would radically reduce the power of publication houses to create "prodigies" purely as a matter of marketing (as is the case of "Helena-Montana" here and her ilk), thereby rendering the little pup's comments as irrelevant as her prose.

It's a matter of degree

[l2718]

Art has always built on ideas and elements from the work of previous artists. Mozart's first four piano concertos are arrangements of piano solo movements written by other composers. Liszt arranged Beethoven's symphonies for piano solo and two pianos. Most of Shakespeare's plots and characters are not original. Rachmaninov wrote a famous "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini". Beethoven's "Wellington" Symphony incorporates "God save the King". The cover art to Terry Pratchett's book "Night Watch" adapts Rembrandt's famous painting. Card's "Alvin Gentry" series retells the story of the Book of Mormon.

The question has always been one of degree and certainly has been culturally dependent. What was acceptable for Mozart (republishing work by others as his own) wasn't acceptable for Liszt (his piano arrangements were published as such, not as entirely original pieces). Was is acceptable for Disney (adapting Stevenson's book "Treasure Island" to a live-action film) isn't acceptable for you and me (adapting Disney's "Toy Story" into a book).

With regard to the case at hand, you'd have to see how much of the work is adapted, and whether this kind of adaptation is normal for the relevant genre.

Re:It's a matter of degree

[grcumb]

Art has always built on ideas and elements from the work of previous artists. Mozart's first four piano concertos are arrangements of piano solo movements written by other composers. Liszt arranged Beethoven's symphonies for piano solo and two pianos. Most of Shakespeare's plots and characters are not original.

Indeed. The phrase 'stole my thunder' derives from an incident in the Elizabethan period wherein Shakespeare's theatre company appropriated another's method of wobbling a large tin sheet to make thunder noises. The phrase endures, but its author is long forgotten.

And for all intents and purposes, so are the authors of the phrases 'Green eyed monster", 'hoist by their own petard', 'misery loves company' and countless other pithy aphorisms.

Everything comes from somewhere and though giving credit where credit is due is honourable and worthy, as time goes by we remember only the work itself. Sure, critics with a keen eye for such things will recognise the source, but most of us just won't care.

Has anyone even stopped to ask whether this young woman's book is any good as literature? If it is, then people should read it. If it's nothing more than a hack-job that pastes together passages from better authors, then it should be relegated to the scrap heap of history.

(Bonus points to anyone who recognises just how few expressions in this post are actually original.)

Re:It's a matter of degree

[Microlith]

It's one thing to build on the works of others, and another thing to take parts of their work and claim them as your own. I don't think it's ever been acceptable to do that, only it's gotten significantly easier.

What was acceptable for Mozart (republishing work by others as his own)

But was it acceptable? He was the patron of royalty, who would likely not have entertained those who questioned him on such a subject. Would they have even know his works were lifted from others?

Most of Shakespeare's plots and characters are not original.

To be fair to Shakespeare, while his plots and characters were not original his plays and settings were.

Consider how people are proclaiming this girl to be prodigy, but she is being questioned now that bits of her work are found to have been lifted. Were the ability to compare information on the level we can achieve today available in Mozart's time, would he have gotten away with what he did?

And at what point does an inclusion become so obvious that "this is not my work" need not be said? I doubt even Beethoven could lay claim to "God save the King," and used it because of its cultural ubiquity.

Your comment about Disney is disingenuous, as Treasure Island is in the public domain while Toy Story is not.

Re:It's a matter of degree

[l2718]

Your comment about Disney is disingenuous, as Treasure Island is in the public domain while Toy Story is not.

My comment was carefully considered. Everyone knows that Treasure Island was in the public domain, while "Toy Story" currently is not -- but will "Toy Story" ever reach the public doamin? Disney has aggressively lobbied Congress to extend copyright indefinitely (by winning a definite increment each time), so that their own creations never reach the public domain. It should therefore be clear what my comment actually is about: the hypocrisy of using the public domain but refusing to contribute to it. PS: Mozart was 11 when he wrote his early piano concertos.

Works Cited

[rxan]

If it's not there, you plagiarized.

Re:Works Cited

[JoshuaZ]

If it's not there, you plagiarized.

That's not necessarily the case. Sometimes something is original enough that it doesn't need them. While this is rarely true in the humanities, it is more likely to be true in the sciences although still very rare. But it isn't at all rare for minor math papers to not have any sources if they don't work off of anything pre-existing that was that major. Something like "Here's an intrinsically interesting problem we thought of. The problem is naturally interesting because of XYZ. Here's what we did with it." No works cited and no plagiarism involved.

Re:Works Cited

[rxan]

Good point. It's interesting that axioms are not usually cited.

Well, it isn't really sampling

[novakom]

I think a key difference here is in music sampling, you generally take a beat or a riff or something and then do something with it to make it your own. Your average sampled song these days is not just clips of different songs strung together, it tends to be different components of different songs combined together in some (relatively) new way. Whereas it isn't like you can sample the "beat" of a book, fiction or non-fiction. What she did is like splicing 3 songs together without modifying them at all; that, I'm sure, wouldn't be considering sampling, more ripping off. So at first blush no, not really cool.

With that said, all literature borrows, more or less, from things that came before - various insights, ideas, subplots, writing styles, etc. The fact that this girl recombined existing pieces of literature to create something more or less new is, abstractly at least, close to how any book is written. The difference is that she was just more blatant about it. I don't think we can deny the fact that recombination of existing work (direct or indirect) is a common (if not dominant) method for creating new art-of any medium-these days, and as long as she only claims credit for the recombination, not the source material, then I can't really fault her or the method. You can knock her for not being creative and original, but that's like complaining a clip show (see:VH1) isn't creative or original. It's not, but it's entertaining, it can be commercially viable, and the combination does tend to bring to light ideas that might not have been obvious prior to composing the elements.

Regardless, the key point is if she (or anyone like her) claims credit for the original elements. If so, that's not cool. If not, then it's nothing new and I don't particularly care.

No, no.

[Frosty Piss]

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.

No. Sampled music is *not* "put in quotes". It is generally fully integrated into the new work.

The correct analogy is a reference in the back of the book acknowledging the original author.

I think clearly there is a different standard being applied here. But I think that it might be perfectly fine to use a different standard, it's not at all, in my mind, valid to treat all media the same. We're not cutting up a block of cheese here.

Re:No, no.

[Maxo-Texas]

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:No, no.

[Frosty Piss]

If you sample a female actress and you are a male singer, it's pretty obvious.

I saw that video. Grainy and overrated. It's already all over the Intertubes, gonna be hard to exert copyright control over it now!

Re:No, no.

[hrimhari]

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.

Re:No, no.

[micheas]

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, no.

[flyneye]

"It is generally fully integrated into the new work."
Well since the work was done by someone else, perhaps we should put quotes around "new work".
  or maybe "new work of 'sampled music'" is proper. It is proper to make oxymorons stand out with quotes as it is with misnomers.
        It is really necessary to do that or you would end up with something long and drawn out like: new masturbation of material, stolen due to lack of talent and foisted off to the culturally misdirected"
        You can see my point. Quotes where quotes are due.

Re:No, no.

[Muros]

If you sample a female actress

There's something about that idea that I just find really appealing.

Re:No, no.

[mysidia]

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?

Because it robs from the uniqueness and distinct character of the original work and ascribes the author's hard work to someone else who doesn't necessarily deserve that..

That said... sampling can be a good thing. Maybe that other author wrote volumes of garbage. Noone in their right mind will ever read it all. Sampling the actually interesting or useful bits exposes more people to enlightenment, enjoyable, or informative material.

A few works sampling other works could provide much better coverage (in some cases) then all the good works related to a subject put together...

I just wish someone would sample all the slashdot comments and post all the good ones to a 2 page text. It would save hours of reading time :)

Re:No, no.

[mysidia]

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.

Copyright is not about quantity of works.

Copyright is about promoting progress in the sciences and the useful arts.

You can have a lot of works of low quality, or a lot of works that are cheap knock-offs of each other, but that is not progress.

Progress consists of new works of high quality that contain substantial creativity, originality, and progress from past work. Arguably: fewer works, but higher quality and greater usefulness to society, represent more progress, then a massive number of low-quality works someone lazilly compiled one afternoon.

The cost of developing original high-quality works (especially ones that require research or involve science) remains high, because doing the research isn't getting any cheaper.

The usefulness of Fictional books and Movies are debatable, but some hold educational value, and others can inspire people resulting in progress.

Paradoxically the courts have given much stronger protections against "fair use" to works that are fictional or pure acts of creativity by the author, playwright, musician, or film maker than works which are strongly factual. Factual works that contain independently verifiable information and research results are more subject to being reused, for analysis, or criticism, than fictional works.

It's in keeping with the purpose of the law to promote progress. But it's still interesting that the works that do the least to promote progress get stronger protections, that probably are not even deserved.

Re:No, no.

[flyneye]

I look forward to your next album of Michael Jackson and Partridge family grooves, G.

      Nobody ripped noise, dumbass
      Nobody ripped synths
      Nobody ripped samples.
learn to read.

  Now rim me with that noisy pink lil tongue jackass.

Re:No, no.

[Maxo-Texas]

damn it. either include the entire quote or put in ellipsis. It's obvious that you are copying from the constitution (could even call it plagiarizing since you passed it off as your own words.

Here is what the original document says:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Re:No, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you even talking about? Copyright has zero to do with plagiarism.

Re:No, no.

[flyneye]

Lol, you moron. My complaint has nothing to do with the music you make. HAHAHAHA.
You seem to make your own music. I detect no loops from anyone elses work.
Hell, I even like your music. You just wanted a piss fight and you got one sis.

BTW, I Got rare altered vinyl by Boyd that would make marble crumble.Envy me.

Re:No, no.

[Count Fenring]

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:

1. You are completely incorrect in your statement on the capital expense required for producing a book (or album) of saleable quality. Period. Self-publishing to a level where you can compete with a commercially published book is ludicrously hard, and then you still need a decent distribution chain if you ever want to make real, "I can live as a writer" money off of it.
2. Copyright has other purposes; for that matter, it is a fairly complex branch of law, which will not reduce to the space of a single post, much less the two sentences you give it. Also, copyright is, in fact, largely concerned with the rights of rightsholders, who are, by default, the creators of properties. So, well, it's not "stuck in the back door," it's the whole point. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of U.S. copyright law (particularly the Disney Extension Syndrome), but your statement on it here is worthlessly reductionist where it's not just false.
3. Copyright is, at least under the current system, a big part of how the process of how writing (and other creative processes) are turned into a possible source of income. Without the ability to be a full time writer, both quality and quality decline.

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:No, no.

[OrangeCatholic]

99 year copyrights are meant to compete with the black market.

Back in the days of 16-year copyrights, if someone fired up a printing press and started making bootleg copies of Catcher in the Rye, you would pretty quickly find out about it. It's hard to put a bunch of fake books on a shelf and not have word getting around.

Now, copyright violation is an assumed percentage of manufactured units. Hell, I bet the studios leak movies directly to bittorrent to fire up the thirst of the poverty-stricken. If you can manage to stay impoverished for 99 years, you can still "win". But it's hard. Over a 99 year period, most people get tired with bootlegging and become regular consumers.

Can you imagine some guy on the streetcorner going "Psst, I got a xeroxed copy of Catcher in the Rye, only ten cents!"

"Cool! This will hold me over until I can save up fifty cents for the real thing!"

Bootlegging really wasn't worth the trouble before copying got easy.

Re:No, no.

[micheas]

Although to Europe 16 year copyrights in the United States meant that for things like Charles Dickens works they were about an order of magnitude cheaper in the US because the were in the public domain in the US but not Europe.

Bootlegging was done in the 1700's, because copying has been easy since Gutenberg.

During most of the time that the US was going from irrelevant former British colony to World Super Power the US had relatively short and limited copyrights compared to the rest of the world.

Mozart and Shakespeare were never afforded copyright of their works, and were economically prosperous as artists. It is not entirely clear that copyright law actually accomplishes what it was intended to, whether the intent is the protection of printers or artists.

Re:No, no.

[kandela]

"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." What about the cost in time to the originator of the work. How long do you think it takes to write a good novel? To plan out how the story will proceed, to give life to the characters and make them believable, to incorporate original thoughts and ideas into the narrative? Now, how long do you think it takes to copy that?

Re:No, no.

[freedomischaos]

You don't need to claim authorship to be entertaining.

Yeah right, Carlos Mencia.

Re:No, no.

[black88]

Well, I 'm glad you like my tunes. Yeah, these posts have been a little strident, I was in fact in the mood for some good old fashioned 'net war.

I still submit that, excepting wholesale lifting of an entire song, sampling can be a creative aid, but yeah, I get your point from one of the other replies.

Which vinyl? With the locked groove? What's on it? I do fucking envy you for having that record.

Re:No, no.

[laddiebuck]

What's that got to do with anything? We're talking about plagiarism, not copyright. It would be just as bad if she were plagiarising Goethe, who's long been in the public domain.

Your assertion that to do anything worthwile and creative outside movies only requires the capital investment in a word processor is startlingly ignorant. Perhaps to produce the sort of drivel this German writer has -- it'll be forgotten in one or twenty years. But worthwile books or plays or even blog posts need a lot of effort put into them for research if they're going to be of value. Most such worthwhile books take years or decades to write. Or do you think time isn't money? Even purely fictional works like Harry Potter required an enormous amount of effort from the author and the publishers to keep the plot consistent over seven longish books, readable and interesting. Many more man-hours went into it than you'll ever put in during your full-time career -- so is your life's worth worth just "$300US"?

Re:No, no.

[flyneye]

In a plain white L.P. cover ,heatwarped ,scratched with a nail to deviate grooves and a nasty saber shaped hole with a crack emanating from it bouncing the needle around and thunking it shreds what is arguably a Doris Day album. I like to get it out during garage sale season when I can find phonographs with the needles still intact. Back in the 90s we used to like to run it to a P.A. system and soundtrack "Pink Flamingos" inviting random people over for a party just to see who could bear to stay. The label is even ripped off and only some white paper fuzz remains. Over time some of the misdirection has been on account of damage sustained by the equipment playing it as its needles committed suicide. Ergo garage sale phonographs.

Re:No, no.

[flyneye]

Added note: this is a distinct blatant example of theft. It is not music. It is not art. It is a violent act of terrorisim that lies over the edge beyond art or music.
      But then its supposed to be.

Re:No, no.

[Chosen Reject]

If you're going to try bolding the important parts of sentences, at least bold the right parts. Useful arts meant the opposite of the fine arts. I can point you to the Wikipedia page about it, but the first time I realized it was while reading The Count of Monte Cristo: "I have devoted myself to industry; I study the useful arts." Copyrights are contained in the sciences part.

Re:No, no.

[mysidia]

Well, copyrights are contained in both. Neither the useful arts nor the sciences have a monopoly on the benefits from copyright, the constitutional mandate is to promote both, and copyright can promote progress in both.

The product of writing a software program such as a computer operating system is useful art.

Composing a piece of music, a theatrical production, or writing a poem or philosophical piece is science.

I'm not bolding necessarily the most important parts of sentences, only the parts that make my point the most vivid.

Anyways, the point is... the purpose that was most cleanly expressed by the result of the version of the text accepted into the constitution is that it's about progress.

The purpose of copyright is not merely to increase the sheer number of works available to the public.

But to actually promote progress in the arts/sciences.

If more works does that, then great.

But it's not automatically true that fewer works doesn't do that, or that fewer works means copyright has "failed"

Avoiding subconscious plagiarism?

[tepples]

So if I write my own song, how do I know whether I have subconsciously plagiarized someone else's song? George Harrison got in trouble for this (see Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music about "My Sweet Lord"), and so did Michael Bolton (see Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton).

Yes

[iamhassi]

Yes, this is a new generation where it's ok to copy someone's work and sell it as your own and not credit the creator or give them any of the proceeds. How is this not fair? I think someone should receive my paycheck too and take credit for the work I did.

/sarcasm

obviously she's a child who has never worked before. scary part is she believes her entire generation thinks this is acceptable. No doubt she believes pirating is fine. Wonder if she'd mind if we all stole her book?

Re:Yes

[colesw]

No we don't steal it, we "sample" it!

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

scary part is she believes her entire generation thinks this is acceptable.

I think she's probably right.

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like Deja Vu... all over again!

Limitations of the medium

[tepples]

It's not always practicable to include full attribution. When a song that uses a sample under license is played on the radio, the DJ doesn't list all the samples.

Re:Limitations of the medium

[rxan]

I will agree that it's not practical, but for the presentation of the works only. The bottom line is that the other works you directly copied parts from, whether modified or not, must be acknowledged somewhere in the publication of your work.

Is Sampling Just Weak-Kneed?

[pileated]

I'm happy to say that I'm of the pre-appropriation, pre-sampling, pre-plagiarism-is-just-fine generation. But this did get me thinking. Picasso redid Velazquez, see 'Las Meninas After Velazquez.' But those paintings are radically different. You can see the similarity but there's no way in the world that anyone could accuse Picasso of plagiarizing Velazquez. You might say he cannibalized him in some sort of perhaps perverse homage. But the original was just a jumping off point.

What I don't understand about appropriation art and everything that's come after it, including this somewhat ridiculous novel and its rationale, is the lack of ambition. Are people too incapable of coming up with something original? Do you just copy a more famous artist, throw in an ironic comment or two and think you have original and probably superior art to the original. It's a mystery to me.

Re:Is Sampling Just Weak-Kneed?

[KingAlanI]

However, the other approach to that argument seems to be valuing originality for its own sake, not for the sake of originality leading to better stuff. The latter argument makes sense, the former doesn't.

Re:Is Sampling Just Weak-Kneed?

[Anonymous Coward]

where would we be today without:
spear
needle
fire
wheel
lever
screw
pulley
seeds
livestock
symbols
pottery
etc.

What I don't understand about appropriation art and everything that's come after it ... is the lack of ambition. Are people too incapable of coming up with something original?

The most interesting sentence in the article

[swillden]

Referring to the German Amazon page about the book, the Times article said 'Under the heading “Customers who bought this item also bought” was “Strobo” by Airen'. I think that raises some interesting questions. Artistic questions aside, can you argue that plagiarism damages the author of the plagiarized work if it increases sales?

There are two common theories for why we have copyright. I think the more correct one (at least for US copyright law -- yes, I realize that these events are playing out in Germany, under German law) is that copyright exists in order to promote creativity, and on that basis it's very hard to argue that "mashup" works that actually do create something new and interesting by combining pieces of older stuff don't satisfy that goal just as well as purely original works. And in this case, no one appears to be arguing that this young woman is simply riding the coattails of Airen.

The other theory is the economic one: that copyright exists so that authors get paid. Although we'd need to see real numbers to know for sure, the fact that sales of "Axolotl Roadkill" seems to be driving increased sales of "Strobo" seems to indicate that this usage of text from Strobo satisfies that version of copyright rationale as well. It'll be interesting to see what Airen says about the use of his work. Does he feel ripped off, or flattered?

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[oldhack]

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:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Seraphim_72]

Imagine the scenario where you walk up to someone and kick them in the butt and then hand them a hundred dollar bill. Now had you asked ahead of time I know any number of people that would say sure go ahead (unless you were an NFL field goal kicker) but doing it without asking is just wrong regardless of the amount of money the person makes from it. This is that same situation. The same sort of thing came up with the guy who wanted to do a sequel to Catcher in the Rye. I am sure Salinger would have made a great deal of money tangentially from that book being created, but they are his characters and story and he said no. Airen was given no choice at all.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[oldhack]

Damn. Mod my post down. I shouldn't have done such a name calling to a teen girl.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[swillden]

Assault and copyright infringement are completely different things, both morally and in the law. Maybe you should try a car analogy?

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[McSnarf]

Damn. Mod my post down. I shouldn't have done such a name calling to a teen girl.

Make this "Stupid, ignorant, thieving teen girl" and mod him up.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are right. She is a lying twit. Now if you had called her a lying twat...

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Tacvek]

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:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Does he feel ripped off, or flattered?

"Royalties are the sincerest form of flattery".

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

since copyright only covers the expressions of ideas,

Apparently not - see all the licensing of rights for remakes of foreign movies (and the occasional lawsuit when the rights have not been secured).

If a remake of a movie in a different language, with different actors, different cinematography and the inevitable differences in storyline is still considered the same expression then the definition of 'expression' has become so broad that it is nearly boundless.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Tacvek]

Interesting point. I suspect the idea here is that a movie is a derivative of the movie's script.
The remake's script is often not too much more than a translation, although some differences beyond language may be present. Thus the basic expression of the ideas is still close enough that the new script would infringe upon the original unless licensing was taken care of. Thus the final film is a derivitive of the new script, and may infringe upon the original script.

I'll freely admit this is pretty tenuous, but that appears to be the thinking in this case, despite appearing very questionable given the simple but common definition of copyright infringement I used (even in law textbooks the concept is introduced with very similar wording in many cases).

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Oligonicella]

"Artistic questions aside, can you argue that plagiarism damages the author of the plagiarized work if it increases sales?"

Sure. Copyright is not about sales. It is about the author having exclusive distribution. When you plagiarize, you take that right from the author.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Oligonicella]

"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."

That paragraph contradicts itself several ways.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

A third and more classical way of portraying copyright is the protection of foundational ideas. Assume that a book has a message and/or an emotional response it wants to evoke from you. Is a distillation of that message or emotional response still doing the same thing? How about when it's taken completely out of context? I think the underlying fear beyond copyrighted books is that when you cater to the lowest common denominator by recycling things that have not originated with you, you stop thinking critically. Eventually the original idea becomes so watered down with schmaltz, with pandering drivel, or with oversimplification, that it ceases to be challenging emotionally or intellectually.

Whatever else the girl has done, she's distorted the author's intent towards her own ambition, and if the most compelling reason she can give for doing so is that it's just how things are these days, she's doing the worst disservice possible to her readership. She's telling them that what has been written --what has come before her-- is sufficient.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[dfghjk]

Yes, you anecdotal evidence of one possible sale is proof that there was no damage and all upside. That's some real genius thinking.

I hope you aren't suggesting that this case of plagiarism is, in fact, a creative "mashup" work. Literature and music/video performance are not analogous.

Re:The most interesting sentence in the article

[Tacvek]

It does not exist as a useful concept outside of academia. In the real world it might be considered a moral or ethical failing, but is normally just considered common business practice.

Inside academia it may be an important concept, but it has no practical application outside of academia, which implies that using it in academia may be a mistake to begin with. In the real world it is not important to credit sources. Generally in the real world one worries about the veracity of facts, and any legal requirements surrounding the expression of facts and ideas such as those from copyright law, or patent law. [1]

That is the message I intended to convey with some short statements that may not be consistent if interpreted literally.

[1] Indeed the plagiarism concept honestly is more like patents than copyrights in that it applies to all expressions of an idea (all implementations of an invention), rather than the

Did She Create Something New?

[thethirdwheel]

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:Did She Create Something New?

[crazybilly]

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).

This hits the nail on the head. Excellent sampling takes a bit of an old work, and while referencing it, creates something new out of it. Does this book create something new? or does it simply parrot the old? Is the 'sampling' (or plagarism) a purposefully act, and is it done for a justifiable literary reason? What does referencing, or perhaps more accurately, replaying Strobo (or whatever the original work was) mean within the new work?

The answer to those questions determines whether she's a dirty, lazy plagarist or a Girl Talk-esque genius. Without reading the book, I'd have a lot of troubles making that judgement call.

(All that said, I think not immediately giving credit where credit is due up front is ridiculous and unethical no matter what she's doing. Whether or not it is (or rather should be) illegal is different story.)

Re:Did She Create Something New?

[McSnarf]

We'll use Google translate to translate one of the samples here:

http://www.gefuehlskonserve.de/axolotl-roadkill-alles-nur-geklaut-05022010.html

Axolotl Roadkill, page 23:

"I have a fever, problems with coordinationn, [one part per 1000] in the overheated blood ..."

Strobe, page 106:

"I have a degree fever, and barely [one part per 1000] alcohol in the overheated blood."

By the way - she copied from more than one source.

Re:Did She Create Something New?

[thethirdwheel]

I don't think we're questioning whether or not she copied excerpts verbatim. The question is whether or not the entirety of the work is going to contribute to literature in a novel way.

Re:Did She Create Something New?

[McSnarf]

Not the question here. The (assumed) literary value of a copy/paste novel wouldn't be reduced in any way by some kind of attribution. In fact, it would even be improved.

So why admit to major plagiarism only after being caught?

September 11 was an impressive move in asymmetric warfare. We are still suffering from the attack - just try to board a plane. Was it something novel? Yes. Did it help the attacker's cause? Yes. Did they play by (what we consider to be) the rules? No.

Society has rules. For warfare and for literature.

Accidental sampling

[tepples]

it is very unlikely that anybody else would come up with exactly that same combination by themselves accidentally

Very unlikely != impossible.

If I were the originator, I would sue the sampler.

Then how should a songwriter prevent himself from accidentally sampling something copyrighted?

Re:Accidental sampling

[Jane Q. Public]

"Very unlikely != impossible."

So? Just what do you want? Do you want the law to say "thou shalt copy only up to 5 notes and no more"??? Ain't gonna happen. Use judgment and common sense.

"Then how should a songwriter prevent himself from accidentally sampling something copyrighted?"

There have been borderline cases (again, that's why we have courts), but usually it's pretty clear when someone has blatantly copied someone else. It is mostly a matter of common sense. Let's face it... Kid Rock simply copies other people's music, and it is not questionable at all... it is quite obvious, if you've ever heard those other songs before. And if somebody comes to you and says "Hey... that's identical to what so-and-so did 8 years ago", and you listen and it's true... stop doing it. Even if you developed it independently, the law has no way to know that, so you would probably lose in a suit.

Re:Accidental sampling

[tepples]

And if somebody comes to you and says "Hey... that's identical to what so-and-so did 8 years ago", and you listen and it's true... stop doing it.

So I can stop selling copies. But what if the letter is "Hey... that's identical to what we did 8 years ago, now pay us $10,000" and I don't have $10,000?

Re:Accidental sampling

[Jane Q. Public]

The usual course of events is that you get a letter informing you of the infringement and asking you to stop. If you don't stop, then you get sued.

That is not cut in stone, of course, but that is the normal course of events. But if you had been blatantly selling infringing works in a manner such that you reasonably should have known it was infringing, it is more likely that they will simply sue up front.

The Strawminator

[nicknamenotavailable]

I'm going to inter-splice book pages of the Terminator and the wizard of Oz.
A bit of tape, and I will be famous!

Would this be my creation or that of Cameron and Baum?
What if I paraphrase the sources?
What if I rewrite everything in another language?
What if I don't tell anyone what my sources are?

The limits of what we view as original work are shifting, why would that which is applicable to music or other media, not be applicable to books?

If I paint Leonardo painting the last supper and his canvas covers most of my canvas, then at what point does this cease to be my painting and become a copy of his?
What about art not in the public domain?
Would Disney be upset if I painted one of their artists creating Mickey mouse?

The girls book has won numerous awards. I don't know how much of her book really is just a "copy" of someones work, and if these are in the public domain. But her book must be interesting, otherwise this debate would not exist. To me this would qualify as 'sampling' other art to create something unique.

If I drew an illustration and someone used a part of it without my permission, at what point would I be upset? I think I would be upset if the new work decreases the value of my own work.

There are so many what if's that would be answered differently depending on culture or century, - that I find it unreasonable to think that our view should be static.

Did she copy stuff? Yes
Did she combine it into a new and unique work? Yes
Did it negatively influence any of the (non-public domain yet) copyright holders? I highly doubt it.

Re:The Strawminator

[painandgreed]

I'm going to inter-splice book pages of the Terminator and the wizard of Oz. A bit of tape, and I will be famous!

I'm sorry, but there's a Mr. Gysin and a Mr. Burroughs who would like to speak to you about violation of their patent on the cut-up method.

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal

[TwiztidK]

In every Humanities class I've ever been, the teachers always try to convey that humans just continually rehash ideas that other people thought up. That people use others ideas to such an extent that almost everything we do is a derivative work. The reuse of ideas, or even small sentences or clips of music, to come up with new works has come to be known as "Fair Use".

I've never read the book in question or any of the books that were "sampled" into it, so it would be idiotic for me to comment as to whether it's Fair Use or not. If she used passages from many books and she included quite a bit of her own writing, then there is nothing wrong with her book. In fact, if her story was original enough there would be no reason for her to even cite the authors she borrowed from.

Re:Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal

[psnyder]

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." -T. S. Elliot

"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." -Pablo Picasso

"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal." -Igor Stravinsky

"Good artists copy, great artists steal." -Steve Jobs

"Good coders code, great coders reuse." -anonymous

Nothing new here....

[segfaultcoredump]

See Jonathan Lethem's excellent essay on the subject: http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387

Bonus points if you get to the end and read through the references section :-)

Merrit of final work vs process to get there

[waTR]

Please stop following the outdated property rights model. We have the tools and technology to start the shift towards the Chicago school's economic model to intellectual property.

Society needs a re-focusing of the driver for innovation. People should still be paid for their work, however, it should not be a pay-per-use model of intellectual property. There is a good example of this in Canada with the CD tax. When you purchase the recordable media you pay a tax that goes to artists for their work. In exchange you acquire the right to make copies of your music CDs. This is a good beginning, but there is no desire to develop it as it would take the power away from the publishers, and give it back to the artists. Publishers would no longer be the middle man that has made them so rich. Intellectual property laws are no longer appropriate for the new creative landscape. However, they don't need to change, they need to be completely removed and re-thought from scratch. Existing laws and any potential changes will never succeed in what people imagine they exist to achieve: artistic freedom through compensation for efforts expended.

The emphasis of intellectual property rights are on the individual and on the "I made it" or "I invented it". The whole founding principle behind copyright was in-fact to give authors the right to control who publishes their book. It was a direct attack on the way too powerful publishing industry at the time (see context of Statute of Anne UK).

Since that time there has also been the issue of attribution. This was mostly due to the fact that you needed to attribute the work in order to claim copyright and thereby control the work (see publisher battle in previous paragraph).

Lastly, there has been an element of profit introduced, more so recently, but also in the past. Don't forget that before there was the global market place and the invention of the printers people earned their living (or death in the case of Aristotle), through recognition for their works. These days people are no longer making a "living", but rather making their fortunes via the same. Now, there is nothing wrong with this. However, when it becomes the driving force as opposed to contributing to the story of humanity, then there is a problem. This is the great shift that intellectual property laws embrace and were engineered to contribute to from the beginning (accidentally or not).

These days there has been a re-emergence of publishers as an enemy to the artist, and there is a great need for a new "Statute of Anne" to address this. Creators need to start concentrating on the contribution to the humanity, rather than getting bogged down in who should gets a cut. It is only when this shift occurs will humanity be able to shed their shackles of intellectual mediocrity. It is only when there is less concern for profits and more for intangible value added to society will we see some great innovation.

Learn about the Chicago economic theory regarding intellectual property rights.

Maybe it is generational

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really consider myself part of their generation, but I couldn't care less whether someone gets compensated for a sample in a music, or a page in a book, which is ripped off. Copyright is to protect jerks from wholesale republishing my book without my permission, not to give me perpetual control over whatever words or sounds I make until the end of history. Plagiarism is if you commit something which you and your community considers dishonest, and if she is right, and she and her community do NOT consider it dishonest but rather part of the art, then who are we to quibble? Maybe I am part of that generation.

Stealing isn't new in Great Literature

[thethirdwheel]

The idea of copyright in literature is brand spanking new. Some of our greatest works of literature have blatant elements of "plagiarism". A significant portion of the body of Arthurian literature is straightforwardly copied, often word for word, from one source to another. Medieval authors embellish or elide where they feel it is appropriate, but they have no qualms about lifting verbatim from earlier writers. Many commonly anthologized and academically respected english sonnets are straightforwardly copies of pre-existing italian ones. The bible is a hodgepodge of shoplifted stories from the epic of gilgamesh and who knows how many other ancient sources. Literature is a dialogue and a group endeavor and it has been for ages. This isn't new, and so long as it adds value to the body of literature, it isn't bad.

Kind of like... you know... always

[Anonymous Coward]

As somebody that spent four years studying English literature in college, I can tell you straight up that this is how writing worked for years and years and years. It's only in the past century or so that we started being so rabid about total originality. Shakespeare stole speeches from other people, as did most of his contemporaries. In fact, it makes sense that you might be able to repurpose a speech about one thing for another artistic work. That's how you end up with irony and lots of other logical comparisons.

The only thing this would change is that readers would have to pay more attention and would be able to get more meaning out of books.

That and because it would do to writing what filesharing did to music.

yes

[Anonymous Coward]

yes

Happens in Research Too

[iOdin]

In terms of research literature, this happens too. In fact, it may be even worse if you think about it. I publish at least 3-4 papers each year in various different conferences and maybe a Journal or two. Go figure... even if it is my work, if I am not careful, then I may be liable for "self-plagiarism", from which they can retract publications and even my doctoral degree if the University deems it a serious offense. And we are not talking here about copy-paste to a whole paper section, even taking a sentence or two from one of your previous publications is debatable. I personally think this policy is ridiculous as it forces me to reword everything, even the obvious, no matter how much overlap there may be between the current paper and one I just sent in through the pipeline a month ago.

Re:Happens in Research Too

[ffflala]

Why aren't you citing your own material, rather than rewording it?

Re:Happens in Research Too

[dj_tla]

I'm in the same boat as iOdin. A lot of the work my lab produces is based on a certain framework we've developed. To make any sense out of our publications, we have to give a cursory description of the framework, even though we will obviously cite a suitable source as well. Even in a short paper this amounts to a few paragraphs; rewording them for each paper is no fun.

Re:Happens in Research Too

[iOdin]

Oh, we definitely cite our own material! There is no way around that, even if we reword it. In fact, if you simply rephrase your old material but still omit the citation, that can also be argued as plagiarism. This is somewhat the point of the original post, it is ridiculous. Even if it is your own work, even if you cite your previous work...... you must still rephrase or risk self-plagiarism. The big issue arises the moment you sign off rights to IEEE/ACM/etc (which is not an option if you want it published), as they also become "copyright holders" and therefore you cannot treat that source as if it were just yours.

Open source remix?

[Ash-Fox]

So, when is someone going to make the freely downloadable opensource remix of her book then?

Re:Open source remix?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could probably find it on Mininova or ThePirateBay.

Ancient Behavior Channelled through New Tech

[tobiah]

Retelling popular tales with one's own twist is an ancient human behavior. The story of a messiah with a miraculous birth, tragic death and resurrection goes back at least to Horus, and appears at least twice in the Old Testament. Copland lifted the theme for Simple Gifts from an old hymn, very close to sampling. The promo shot for the current season of "Lost" recreates Michelangelo’s Last Supper. Art has always cannibalized/plagiarized previous art.

The difference is now we have new tools for this old behavior, allowing us to cut and paste words, sound and image directly into the new story, without having to recreate it. As programmers we all do it worse than any other group, recruiting layers of packaged code into serving our own. But the behavior is hardly novel. If there's anything truly new here at all, it's the concepts of copyright and plagiarism.

2 rules of copying

[davidwr]

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 and its references for more details.

Childish Indeed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...judging by the age of the author.

But we needn't go all the way to Germany for this kind of behavior.

Best-selling author P.C. Cast and her daughter Kristen may also engage in this sort of behavior.

So that's two best-selling "teen authors." Wonder whether they'll make it when they're no longer able to capitalize on how much they "stand out."

Meh

[russotto]

Copying bits and pieces from other works without explicit attribution has been common in literature and the visual arts (and probably in music as well, though notes and passages rather than samples) for centuries if not millennia. Everyone writing literature in English ends up taking something from Shakespeare at some point (as well as many others), and Shakespeare borrowed liberally from others. Should Asimov have been hung by his thumbs for starting a story with (Melville's) "Call me Ishmael"? Should the Star Trek writers be given the sack because of Khan's "From hell's heart I stab at thee" speech? Neither gave credit.

Painters are even more obvious about it; many works include parts of earlier works; some even include entire earlier works.

The strict standards of plagiarism applied to academic works or journalistic works shouldn't be applied to other works.

Re:Meh

[McSnarf]

*sigh* It is one thing to quote a well-known work. It is another one to have a well-known father in literarture and creating a copy/paste novel, stealing from lesser-known bloggers and bands. This is not about taking inspiration from other authors. Also not about quoting, either literally (as seen in science) or as an easy-to-get reference, such as an in-joke.
This is not Pratchett's Sam Vimes using a swamp dragon as a weapon, in a hilarious Dirty Harry quote. Also not Blade Runner quoting Metropolis. This is "Oh cool. I'll copy and paste this and make it my own because noone will notice."

Hegemann cannot even remember some major passages of her OWN book, as demonstrated in a recent talk show. No wonder - copy and paste will not leave as strong an impression in someones memory as doing it yourself.

Seriously. There are a lot of web sites comparing text from both sources. And yes, it IS a ripoff.

Re:Meh

[wjc_25]

This is a good point. I'm surprised no one has brought up T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"--it was controversial when it came out decades back for the same reason. Eliot lifted lines not only from well-known authors like Dante and Shakespeare but also lines from more obscure authors and the like. He provided footnotes to the work that mentioned some of the borrowings, but the work was so dense that even those footnotes covered only a fraction of the quotes. I think it's important to find a middle ground. You can't expect an author to cite every brief quotation or allusion--that would be oppressively difficult for many types of works--but "remixing" or borrowing large sections wholesale should require permission or, at the very least, clear acknowledgment of the borrowing. When a musician remixes a song it is typically at the request of the artist or label that released the original composition; if we're following the standards of remixing, this author is still in the wrong.

what do you mean "was"?? Or did you mean 2009?

[davidwr]

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...."

This describes modern-day America. If you are preparing a treatise on the state of the modern world, may I recommend a novelization instead? Not only do they are easier to turn into movies.

Stop ... my work!

[poena.dare]

Hey ... Stop ... my work. I ... remixes ... thieves!

Eragon

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it sounds like this really is just the next logical step though. This "Eragon" book, also written by some precociously young author, left me with an odd feeling of it being a mix of real fantasy classics, like very direct ideas from Tolkien, Carrol, etc. But rather than sink that 17-year-old's novel as obviously derivative and clearly unoriginal, they made it into a movie. If I were the 17-year-old subject of this article, I'd probably think well, what the hell, why bother to hide the ball anymore?

A different view of the economic argument...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The other theory is the economic one: that copyright exists so that authors get paid. Although we'd need to see real numbers to know for sure, the fact that sales of "Axolotl Roadkill" seems to be driving increased sales of "Strobo" seems to indicate that this usage of text from Strobo satisfies that version of copyright rationale as well. It'll be interesting to see what Airen says about the use of his work. Does he feel ripped off, or flattered?"

If that is the case, it is most likely only because the passages were recognized and then associated with the original author's work. A feat that would have been easily accomplished had she given recognition to the original author. If the author's work is obscure enough or is not read in the same circles, then it is possible that no recognition would have been made and hence little benefit to the original author. Or, perhaps it is the scandal itself that is driving the sales; if she had properly given credit then who would care about the original author's work.

Finally

[QuantumG]

And so we get to the real different between scholarly works and music... if you want to quote someone in your scholarly work, you don't need permission - imagine how terrible scholarly works would be if you did.

Re:Finally

[Wovel]

Would make it awfully difficult to refute someones findings :)

Yes, but later than you think.

[Anonymous Coward]

"These rules are here for a reason." Right..

She's savvy enough to realize she was breaking the rules, and savvy enough to simply state that she's calling "BS" on them rather than play the innocent victim route. Us 30 somethings will have about as much luck convincing kids her age to "shape up an do original work" as the current 50-somethings do convincing us that we should buy our music afresh every time a new format comes out.

It'll take another 20 - 30 years before her generation is in charge, but I'm guessing the era of the printing press copyright regime really is behind us.

Anti-copyright yet she's still wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe copyright should be entirely reworked to be completely against companies/corporations and a person has complete immunity. Considering publication is practically impossible without a corp of some sort... the harm to literature or otherwise would be negligible. While the appropriate freedoms to consumers and similar are highly protected.

However I think this plagiarist is in the wrong. She should be free to use samples as she wishes, without permission or royalties, so long as she attributes with citations. Sample size being something the publishers have to worry about.

The real interesting part is when you consider that she might have been young enough to have not read the applicable books to have plagiarised them. That it was original thought/content. While yes she admits to plagiarism. If she really hadnt... why should she attribute anything or owe anything to anyone?

On a side note, if I never plagiarized anything and released my book. I would put the idea out there that I had plagiarized. People would read the book over and over trying to find the plagiarism... when they do find something it would be proof positive that there's no such thing as original thought.

What a softball

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is legitimate. It shouldn't be punished, but you do not deserve plaudits for remixing. Original work will always be more noteworthy.

Damn!

[Locke2005]

Does this mean I can no longer start all my novels with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night..."?

yeah...

[foqn1bo]

It's true that there is an entrenched culture of sampling in music, typically without explicit attribution. Even if the artist in question pays for the right to use a particular sample, credit is rarely given in an obvious fashion, if at all. When I was a younger lad, I remember the disappointment I felt when I learned that the sick-ass grooves I was listening to on the radio were mostly lifted wholesale from soul records, Ice Cube, Puffy (well, I guess I never really liked his music, but he was one of the worst offenders), etc. It wasn't that I was mad they had sampled it, I just felt like a tool having assumed they had come up with the groove themselves, and found myself far less impressed by the music, which was usually my favorite part of a lot of the classic '90s hip hop.

Sure, sampling in music has been going on a long time, and yeah yeah kids these days and their mashups, yadda yadda. I even do a fair amount of it myself, as an electronic musician, and I try to get creative with the ways that I use my sample material. But I think that this sort of corner of sampling, where you just take a loop from an Al Green track and play it over a breakbeat and you're done, is as close to plagiarism as it gets, ignoring the fact that most of these producers probably got legal permission one way or another. If this author wants to pull the whole "we live in a digital culture now" thing, that's fine, but there's no reason why she couldn't have listed the sources she plundered in an appendix, and made public the fact that she was trying something innovative by applying the wisdom of the new generation, or whatever. I'd even hail her initiative. As it stands, it seems pretty clear that she just wanted to pass other people's words off as her own, got caught, and made up a bullshit excuse.

Of course it is legitimate...

[Cornwallis]

Meanwhile, I'm announcing my new play:

Romeo and My Beyotch, Juliet.

Music sampling is accompaniment

[gig]

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.

Re:Music sampling is accompaniment

[Legion303]

"Further, you don't pretend you didn't sample, you give credit where it's due."

Unless you're Timbaland, then you act like a little bitch and claim it was sampling AFTER you get busted. Which almost puts him in the same league as Vanilla Ice, who I don't think ever admitted to stealing Bowie's riff.

But I agree, sampling done right (giving credit where credit is due) is fine. Anything less is plagiarism.

It's all in the way you market it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an unimportant event in the litterature world. Best sellers don't imply quality and I don't see how she is a prodigy.
I was a bookworm during highschool and still read quite often but never heard of this woman and I'm pretty sure I will soon forget her name.

Well, of course intertextuality is a major side of writing, but this is not what's the news about...besides it's more "olds" than news. Plagiariazing, quoting, imitations and such are as old as litterature itself (in fact, it's even true about old oral traditions, such as celtics and nordic ones), so I suspect she is only using the numeric era as an excuse. That, or being cynic. Reminds me of some Dilbert comics when it's all in how you justify stealing ideas.

A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[P0ltergeist333]

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.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Kell Bengal]

I'll say upfront that I'm an academic and probably biased. However, I'm an insider looking out and I'd like to think I've got some idea of how academics works.

I would argue that academics don't put need for acknowledgment ahead of desire to further knowledge - they put the need to feed their families ahead of the desire to further knowledge. It may seem strange, but a scientist's merits are determined by the papers he or she writes, the things he or she discovers. If you do good science and someone rips you off and publishes it first, you don't say "Oh well, society still knows!" you say "Oh hell, I've wasted ten years of my life, now I won't advance in my field because everything I publish will be seen as derivative of some other guy's work".

So long as we live in a society that rewards people according to their productivity, scientists will need to demand recognition for their work. Their stock in trade is ideas and concepts - and they don't come cheap! How many truly original, ground breaking ideas do you have in a lifetime? A dozen, if that? Every idea is precious and when your livelihood depends upon being appropriately rewarded for them, you take citation very seriously indeed!

It may seem petty to the uninitiated, but so long as our incomes are tied to our papers, we have no choice but to publish or perish.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Kell Bengal]

I'm just going to clarify that, unlike how things work in the music industry, we don't get for the papers we publish directly - in fact, it's increasingly common to publish them on the net for free, or even to have to pay fees associated with have a paper printed in a journal. We only get advancement for the 'impact' our papers have, as ranked by institutions - the aptly named "impact factor" associated with journals and conferences. Through your list of publications and citations, faculties and committees decide whether to take you on as faculty or give you tenure.

Giving scientists credit for our work doesn't stop the world from benefiting from it in the slightest; it just makes it worthwhile for us to keep working.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[P0ltergeist333]

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:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[flyneye]

Two different animals , covering a song recorded by someone else and including someone elses recording in your song and fobbing it off as creativity.
        Of course you can rationalize it all day long. " the man got me down by taking all the spotlight, so if I take what he did and bend it my way I can get famous too. This record company will promote it and tell people it's legitimate till they believe it. Now I'm tha man, G."
        Speculating about what it would've been like if... well if frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their ass a'jumpin'.
      Of course you think its axiomatic that if someone does well with their hard work they should give it to you. Whattza matter, Man got you down?

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

let me get this straight.
If we put a word processor in a cage with a scientist we might get ten or twelve original ideas lurking somewhere hidden in the arcane ascii dribble pumped out after thirty or forty years? Is the scientist paid a salary? Is the government paying the salary? If so, why am I paying to train the bozo and to fund his lab resources, I think I and everyone else paying taxes ought to be able to do anything we damn well want to do with the dribble.
 

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Kell Bengal]

Sadly, the commercial sphere does disproportionately benefit when it comes to invention. However, as they say, it's 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration. A lot of the wealthy inventors you see out there are such because they took their great idea and turned it into something marketable. There are quite a few It and engineering spin-offs that started as a lab project years back.

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.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

And if credit isn't given to an obscure artist, how does their fan base grow? You are a moron, and so are the moderators.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Kell Bengal]

Even a cursory glance at how science works disproves your case. To start with, universities pay the bulk of academics' salaries. These are supplemented by grants from private bodies and government bodies to support work that they feel is valuable. Further more, many hoops must be navigated in order to see a shred of government money.

Finally, sadly you can't get that oh-so-valuable dribble without worthwhile lab time to test which bits are non-valuable dribble. A lot of the drool produced by scientists is actually quite worthless and flawed. The process is as follows:

Laboratories are highly-tuned apparatuses set up to extract the valuable drool milked from professors by their students. At weekly meetings, the students collect the drool on 'plots' and 'graphs' specially prepared for this purpose. In the lab, the students take the dribble and carefully distill the concentrated saliva to separate out the valuable fractions then bake them into what are called 'papers'.

These papers, once prepared, are taken back to the professor to be 'proofed', wherein the professor will produce further dribble, but of a much higher and refined grade than first obtained. This process is known as 'editing' and is a common technique used to refine otherwise coarse secretions across many industries. Once infused with the higher grade of slime, these papers are sent to a panel of judges to be assessed and certified. Only the very finest dribble is passed to be presented at fairs and meetings where these students show their prize professors and hawk the papers.

The very best papers may eventually be bought by investors who will take them and wring the saliva out of it and eventually incorporate it into any number of products. These include pharmacuticals, industrial lubricants, robots, batteries and computers. The uses of academic slime are truly limitless!

Over time, researchers exposed to the highest grade drool in the course of their work may begin to produce the dribbles themselves. When they are recognised as lucrative dribble producers, they will be put out to pasture themselves so that their valuable effusions may be harnessed. This is called 'tenure'.

And that's how science is done.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[OrangeCatholic]

The difference between the two forms is that music can be mixed, and text cannot.

With music, there's a range of extremes from simply incorporating a riff to basing a whole rap song on someone else's beat. The latter is pretty close to plagiarizing, but at least you've added something.

But with text, there's no way to sample without actually plagiarizing. The whole page you've sampled isn't yours.

If you listen to the way rappers quote other rappers, that's the way to do it. You're talking about two or three words at a time that have been sampled.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

The above sounds like it's made of a different kind of secretion...

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[kandela]

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but everyone knows flattering to deceive is wrong.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you actually suggesting that developing the next hard on pill or the new and improved sham-wow is not going to make us live longer, solve our energy problem, solve environmental problems, or raise our standard of living in any meaningful way?

Sacrilege! Heresy!

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[pugugly]

NO!

Plagiarism is about cultural memory, and attempting to substitute a false memory for a true one. It is Deceit.

I have no objections to creating new work based on old work, but don't lie to me and try to pretend there was no old work.

Pug

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the very finest dribble is passed to be presented at fairs and meetings where these students show their prize professors and hawk the papers.
[...]
And that's how science is done.

Hold your horses; this how the academia machinery works, it's not at all how science is done.

Just for the record:
Paxos algorithm was proposed by Leslie Lamport some 20 years ago and rejected by such a "wise" "scientific" "committee".
Luckily, in 1998 Leslie's close collaborator Marzullo convinced him to retry in a venue he was having control of, and took the algorithm out of the darkness. If you check how fundamental that contribution was, and how popular it became very quickly, just check this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_algorithm#Production_use_of_Paxos

Now you can tell who is doing the science and who is "playing the academic".

enjoy,
an anonymous basher of the paper-maniacs

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[ffflala]

I think that the following paragraph, which I just wrote, illustrates one problem with your position.

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.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[dfghjk]

It sure seems like these comments are relevant to plagiarism, I just am not seeing how. Anyway, it's good to know that popular music isn't corrupted by those seeking fame and fortune like academia is! With insight like that, maybe Mensa is in your future.

Modern sampling has nothing in common with the age old practice of borrowing from others in musical composition. Sampling steals the performance, that's the difference.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Rophuine]

Music doesn't just 'sample and include' to create something new. It takes themes and creates on top of them. Imagine if any of the big 'derived' music styles had just put in whole excerpts from other styles, and added some bridging sections? They wouldn't have been the new sound they were. While I think it's okay to use elements of something someone else created in something new you create, there are three things you need to do:

1. Create. You don't just 'cut and paste'; you take the old and add your own touch to it, lending a creative element to the copying.
2. Attribute. Van Halen was only exposed to new audiences from being sampled because the audience could easily find out who was being sampled. If not for that, the audience would just think they were listening to something new.
3. Compensate. If you make a whole pile of money, some of it needs to go to people who's effort made your profit possible. For an idea barely lifted and heavily changed, maybe you just tell your fans to check out the other creator. If you took substantial chunks from the other work, prepare to hand over substantial chunks of profit (or prepare for a lawsuit!)

Also, while a mutt can be an excellent dog, you're not allowed to sell it claiming it to be a pure-bred. And the analogy is stupid anyway.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[ffflala]

My post plagiarized the parent post in its entirety. Too subtle?

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[Rophuine]

Hey, I was just attacking the content.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[RyanEdel]

I like the humor to this post, but this only portrays the lazy side of academia. Yes, there's plenty of drool out there, but most writers and researchers are looking to post something new and unique. And let's be honest - someone who fails to produce unique work will, in time, be forgotten. Consider Einstein, or Marie Curie, or Sigmund Freud - regardless of how you view their efforts, they produced unique ideas which revolutionized the knowledge of their day. In terms of plagiarism, I think we have to differentiate between those who are following (and adding to) revolutionary work and those who are simply trying to steal some of the glory for themselves. This young author in Germany - has she contributed something new to pages she has lifted from others? Or did she simply lift them because she was too lazy to do the real work herself? The fact that she didn't announce her intentions up-front leads me to suspect the latter. And I imagine she was too naive to know she'd be caught. So sure, we can let her argue that she's a product of the "modern era" - let her claim whatever she likes. In the long run, we'll know that her works have nothing original to contribute, and we'll ignore them in the future.

Re:A mutt can be an excellent dog...

[anghara]

There"s generous and there's "hey, you're STEALING from me and directly affecting my way of making a living". Quote me all you like - I REALLY don't mind one bit, I'm VERY generous like that - but if you are using MY words, then quote ME. My generosity stops right where you start claiming that YOU wrote something that I actually penned. I claim those actual words - they are mine - and no, you can't just HAVE them because you think they're free for the taking. Quote with attribution, have my blessing. Take my words and slap your own name on them - and then sell them, so that YOU get the money for it - sorry, no. If you can't put over an original idea that is your own in words that are your own then possibly, just possibly, writing may not be your game. Go do something else. Stealing is not good karma.

Re:She must not have taken high school classes yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming the rate of plagiarism remained constant, the plagiarism detected by turnitin would rise even if they were completely honest. As their database grows, the chance of a newly submitted work coincidentally and innocently matching a previously submitted work rises. If the threshold is low enough, the system could eventually detect all new work as plagiarism.

Copyright shouldn't chill expression

[moogaloonie]

I think the point is whether or not a distinctly new work is created by the use of the previously created material. I disagree with the Verve outcome because the song uses an excerpt from "The Last Time" recording to a create a new work that any reasonable person would never mistake for being by The Rolling Stones. When Disney lost their copyright defense against "The Air Pirates" it was because despite visual similarities, their were too many differences between them for one to be mistaken for the other. No one could read a Disney comic and think it was The Air Pirates. If Helene Hegemann were a student and plagiarized another person's work to save herself the effort, or to demonstrate a false knowledge of the material, that would obviously be wrong. However, it seems that she created a new work with a legitimate right to exist in its own right, as determined by both sales and acclaim. Many songs which use samples are also unique works, as any fan of Hip-Hop or Beck or the Beastie Boys would tell you. Requiring permission to use an excerpt or sample runs the risk of denying the rest of us the resultant work, should permission be denied or be prohibitively expensive. I personally quite like DJ Dangermouse's "The Grey Album", and could never mistake it for The Beatles or Jay-Z, but yet it is an illegal work nonetheless. I think the Hip-Hop genre as a whole was much better before samples had to be cleared. If a work is entirely plagiarized, it would likely prove redundant (such as with a plagiarized term paper on a generic topic) and be forgotten anyway. Her book doesn't seem to fall into this category.

Reasonably should have known

[tepples]

The usual course of events is that you get a letter informing you of the infringement and asking you to stop.

In the RIAA "settlement letter" preceding Capitol v. Thomas, it wasn't just "stop"; it was "stop and pay us".

But if you had been blatantly selling infringing works in a manner such that you reasonably should have known it was infringing

If I have to pay if I "reasonably should have known", then what reasonable steps should I take before I record and publish a song that I have written in order to know whether or not it is infringing?

Re:Reasonably should have known

[Jane Q. Public]

"In the RIAA "settlement letter" preceding Capitol v. Thomas, it wasn't just "stop"; it was "stop and pay us"."

I don't think just about anything the RIAA does can be characterized as "normal course of events".

"If I have to pay if I 'reasonably should have known', then what reasonable steps should I take before I record and publish a song that I have written in order to know whether or not it is infringing?"

Be reasonable. That's what it's all about. If a reasonable person should have known that it was copying, then you fail the test. For example, if it had been a hit on the radio for five years prior to your "discovering" it independently, it might be said that you "reasonably should have known" that you were infringing. It's not a perfectly square box such that you can say "all this stuff goes inside, and everything else outside". That's why the word "reasonable" is in there.

Re:Reasonably should have known

[Jane Q. Public]

Besides... none of this has anything to do with what Thomas allegedly did. This is about one person selling work that was copied from others as her own. Not the same thing at all.

What Should Happen . . .

[MarkvW]

I hope she makes lots of money . . . and every last dime of it goes to the people she stole from.
What a jerk.

Re:What Should Happen . . .

[CarbonShell]

(/me wishes he had mod points)
+1 Insightful

*Just* sampling?

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem is an assumption that sampling is perfectly fine and the norm. Perhaps it's an increasingly rare perspective, but sampling always means a creatively compromised starting point. In other words, always an asterisk beside the work. Can't be compared apples-to-apples to an original piece that doesn't rely on sampling. Perhaps you can still create a commendable piece of work with elements of originality, but plenty of artists/writers/musicians still create original work without any sort of "sampling". Of course work can't be created in a vacuum, but substantial unattributed sections of work taken wholesale from another work mean a loss of artistic integrity to some degree.

Plagiarism

[golden age villain]

Is her claim to legitimacy compromised by the fact that she only admitted it after it was discovered by someone else?

Definitely yes. In the case of electronic music, it is obvious right from the beginning that samples are samples. The creativity resides in the fact that those are assembled in original ways creating a new piece of music. When you copy words, there is no such thing like mixing beats and samples.

Cultural thing

[heidaro]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of sensible plagiarism. Plagiarism is a very cultural thing for us Westerners [especially]. In some countries [Middle East] you will find that you do not get top marks unless you copy everything your professor told you, letter to letter. If someone makes a scientific discovery and states: "I have proven that the sky is blue". Now I am writing a paper and I want to use his research as a reference and in order to not plagiarise I have to paraphrase (I could quote but I won't in this example). So how do I do that for such a simple and short statement? "It has been proven that the heavens are azure." This decreases readability, often adds to length and decreases efficiency. Conclusion: Plagiarism is a part of our [bullshit] Western culture and it is counter productive; referencing alone should be enough.

its been true all along...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Einstein

its just that this generation isn't pressured into hiding it.

Allusion vs Plagiarism

[bunge]

I am a fan of the practice of alluding to other well know literature. I think it is a great way to communicate complex ideas efficiently and capture big thoughts and ideas easily. Who doesn't know what 30 pieces of silver signifies? I love the statement "we are standing on the shoulders of giants". Such devices make progress in literature much more possible.
Those are well known samples. It is good to give credit but not always necessary. Otherwise credit should be given. If it is not it is plagiarism.

it's not "plagiarism"

[pydev]

Plagiarism is an academic concept, not an artistic one. Reuse of previous art in new art pieces has a very long history, in all forms of art: music, theater, painting, literature, dance, etc. There used to be nothing wrong with it, it didn't even need to be acknowledged.

Misapplying the concept of plagiarism to art probably has two sources: (1) academics who over-analyze art, and (2) greedy copyright holders who want to be able to make money off of even the slightest hint of reuse of their content.

Is Plagiarism In Literature Just Sampling?

[Starlet Monroe]

One of the aspects of why plagiarism is seen as wrong is because you're taking credit for someone else's work.

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 also think that a work that is very obviously built of "samples" needn't expressly say what is what. If you sample music to make your own song, you'd better credit properly and pay or else the original songwriter will end up owning your song. I still find it to be incredible BS...the real lesson is "music industry people will screw you

In the United States, since 1991, the date of Grand Upright Music, Ltd v. Warner Bros. Records Inc., music samples need to be cleared by the copyright holder. That's what seems to be the real distinction here- you cannot consider literary plagarism to be analogous to music sampling because in fact legal music sampling is nothing like plagarism- works are cited, permission is requested and granted and often a considerable sum of money or share of future earnings takes place.

Helene Hegemann took someone else's work and presented it as her own, which I find disingenuous. Had she come out when she released the book and said she "collaged" works for the book that would have been one thing. That concept would have made for an interesting critique on a different media for "mash-ups". 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. There is a long-standing history of one artist performing works by another, adding their own touch to the music.

Who cares? Artists who sample should always give the original artist credit... When done wrong it is theft.

Perhaps she might have a legitimate point. 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. Have we entered a new era where plagiarism is not just tolerated, but seen as normal?

Foolishness! She is the Vanilla Ice of literature sampling then.

Artistic questions aside, can you argue that plagiarism damages the author of the plagiarized work if it increases sales?

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. 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.

I personally think this policy is ridiculous! Is someone going to make the freely downloadable opensource remix of her book? 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.

More importantly...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who is only slightly older than she is: Yes, this is plagiarism - in fact, it may be even worse if you think about it. 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 entirety as the majority of a new work, as long as the original author is credited. 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. Aside from that, the sky is the limit as well as the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.

God's Little Toys

[radarsat1]

To those who immediately say "No", I'd just like to submit this essay by William Gibson as a talking point.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.07/gibson.html

Beatles vs. Bowie vs. Zeppelin

[KingAlanI]

I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Bowie/Lennon/McCartney/Page/Plant would be a kickass songwriter credit.

However, this would be more likely to invoke charges of musical sacrilege than the Dawson/Horton/Germanotta/Khayat/Nielsen/Penhaglion mashup project I've been working on. :)

You're right, a 30-second bit of each just strung after the last would not be very artistic. I can, however, see something interesting happen if it was bits that added up to 30 seconds each being ordered in an unexpected manner.

My attempt at a summary of this discussion

[KingAlanI]

This seems to be a relatively nuanced discussion of an IP-law related issue, at least by this site's standards. :)

In our terms, it has to do with how the level of copyright protection affects input costs for new works.
There's a bit of moral creators' rights theory in this discussion.
However, a lot of the discussion has to do with what policy leads to better or more-popular works; that part of the commentary also seems strictly economic, as it relates to the utility people derive from the products in question.

A lot of economic issues are, apparently, quite frankly, somewhat unclear or complicated, like the answer to the questions posed in this article. I'm not sure what answer to offer, myself, and I understand why the discussion went so back and forth.

Interesting that the discussion came about because what is arguably just an attempted defense of immature behavior.

TS Eliot

[andrewagill]

We are the hollow arguments/We are the stuffed arguments/Leaning together/Contentions filled with straw. Alas!

As others have noted, the modernists copied extensively from others with or without attribution. Unfortunately for this poseur, both modernists and samplers lift well-known bits and hope the audience is savvy enough to get it either as an easter egg or an integral part of the text. Stealing obscure mundane quotes and not acknowledging where you got them means it's no longer sampling, but plagiarism.

Re:TS Eliot

[gujo-odori]

+1.

Ancient Chinese authors sampled from other works all the time, too, but it was the "savvy audience/nod to their forebears" angle that you cite: their readers were expected to recognize the references. Far different from her approach, it would seem.

Is society stagnating?

[jsimon12]

Most if not arguably all the movies in the last few years are either remakes or rehashes, many artists rehash or sample others music and now society has started tolerating plagiarists. Is society stagnating?

Re:you are being narrow minded.

[lpq]

I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit, as my first tendency was to write what you wrote. However, I'd like to point out that when bands sample other's works, I may recognize those other works if I've heard them first -- but I certainly don't hear any quotes where they say "quote "hey there[repeated 3 times in staccato succession]". It just doesn't happen -- it would ruin the flow of the song. Why in writing? I would suggest, alternatively the ability to have endnotes that lists sources -- BUT not annotation that again would ruin the flow of the writing.

In thinking about this -- given the wide use of sampling in music, I don't see why such shouldn't be the norm in writing.

However--whole sale copying of more than a paragraph, or about 30-50 words, I would say would violate the spirit of sampling (depending on the length of the larger work). I would say that depending on the venue for which they are writing, they would be safer to use quotes and footnotes -- especially in scholarly works, but in 'fiction' or works for public sale?

It really would depend on what was used and where, but I could easily see that a blanket ban would be wrong -- just as it would support repeating lines from other people in speeches or songs. Sound bites are catchy.

Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers could never have brought forth, on this continent, a new digital nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal. We should dedicate our selves to the great task remaining before us -- that from those unjustly imprisoned or executed for crimes against freedom of speech and liberty on the net, shall not have suffered in vain -- that this digital nation -- formed by no geographical borders, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that internet of the people, by the people and their just representatives shall not perish from the earth.

q.e.d.
-lpq

endnote -- apologies to A. Lincoln for butchering parts of body of work.

Human beings work by copying

[thaig]

Just listen to how people pick up each other's phrases. Or how they pick up on the idea that you mentioned last week and start talking about it as if it was their own. Then you realise that you actually read it somewhere. . . .

What is "fashion" after all other than a word for the currently most popularly copied ideas?

No artist or scientist has truly "paid" the originators for all the knowledge that they have based all of their own work upon. Do we send Newton's family trust 10c every time we use F=ma?

What this is all about is how we produce exceptional science and music by investing money in people and the current model seems to be to offer a great prize, e.g. a patent. and then let people find their own investment. It is obviously an imperfect model but has it's good features, like putting the judgement of whether the idea is good or not into the hands of the general public who will either buy products based on the idea or not.

We have invented some odd conditions (like pretending that copying ideas is shameful or in some way not desirable) to make this system work.

Now that we have a system it's abused and may actually slow down progress, since people cannot innovate without fear of stepping on some legal IED. So the protection for works should really be short.

Re:Human beings work by copying

[Patch86]

Copying ideas isn't considered shameful, IF you tell people you've done it.

If a scientist reads somebody's paper, it gives him a blinding flash of inspiration and he applies their ideas to his own work, that's fine. But he's expected to credit the original thinker in his study so that people know who came up with what.

Similarly, if a musician wants to use another artist's work in their music then that's fine- but they're expected to ask permission first, and they're expected to credit the original.

If the author in TFA wanted to make a "novel of samples" then that's probably pretty legitimate. But she should have attributed her sources (an introduction / appendix would have done the trick) at the very least. Only admitting to it after you've been caught reeks of just trying to leech other people's work, and making excuses for something you know you shouldn't have done.

Same title, different stuff: thoughts

[KingAlanI]

Looking through my music collection, I notice that there are many cases of different songs sharing a name as well.
Generally, the name involved is a straightforward word or short word combination.
Indeed, copyright shouldn't be that anal, and it isn't (at least not yet. :P)

A couple examples:
"Mother" (John Lennon and Pink Floyd)
"Move Over" (Janis Joplin and Steppenwolf)

It's not that simple

[zmooc]

Basically there are several "types" of sampling in music.

The first one is simply sampling instruments. This can be considered the same as using the same words as another author. This is more about the technical process of recording such instruments than it is about the composition. No problem here, I think.

The second one is sampling musical phrases. A drumloop or a guitar-riff or so. Once again, this is quite a lot about the recording-aspect and just a little bit about the composition. Even though there are incredible many possibilities in combining tones and rhythms, a lot of similarities can be pointed out, not in the least place since music is influenced heavily by fashion and culture. This could be compared to using well-known phrases from literature (to be or not to be?:-)).

And then there's the sampling of lyrics. This is a bit more complex; an important aspect of this is the voice of the singer, which is something very personal. This aspect can be compared (a little bit) to the font of a book. Reusing such fonts is commonly accepted, but if you'd imitate a writers handwriting, this becomes something else entirely.

In general, the comparison is hard to make. Music is a sort of three-dimensional; many phrases play at the same time, but also they repeat, often in complex ways. Also, such phrases can be transposed in frequency. It's a composition of layers. Literature is not; it is - by definition - one-dimensional. Linear. Also, there is no extensive use of repetition (with the exception of poetry, I will discuss that below). Where in music, one can sample a single layer without capturing the essence of (that part of) of the musical piece, in literature this is not really possible. If one copies an entire paragraph, it's just that: a copy. No reordering, repetition or layering occurs.

And then there's the way we make music. One always uses an instrument created by someone else and that is often played according to certain rules. In this sense, reusing sounds has always been acceptable in music and the rules cause the reusing of phrases to be rather common as well. It's even the way everybody learns how to make music: by copying others. Even the reuse of a "type of sound" is extremely common; that's why we have different musical genres. There are millions of possibilities to combine sound, but we only choose an extremely small subset of them, as determined by our culture, which demands similarities in music. Music that does not copy as least a small aspect of other music is generally not very popular.

Also, music is poetry a lot more like poetry, not prose. When lyrics are involved, it even IS poetry. So there is a rather fine line between some kinds of music an some kinds of literature while an enourmous gap exists between other kinds of music and literature.

More in general, no two forms of reuse can be compared. They're all completely different and the act of reusing has always been allowed until copyright-laws made it illegal sometime in the past two centuries. Therefore, what we're discussing here is a LEGAL and FINANCIAL problem, not a MORAL one. The moral part of this is actually quite simple and extremely hard at the same time: on the one hand, mankind produces art, which is and always has been meant to be spread since such art only has value withing the culture that consumes it and provides feedback. On the other hand, most of us know the feeling (moral is about feeling) when someone copies something you put a lot of work in without giving you credit. Some may also know the proud feeling when you find that a theory or trick you thought up was reused somewhere. So whether credit is given or not, we can often not even explain for our own intellectual property whether reuse of it is morally acceptable. Reusing art can been seen as a compliment or as theft. It is a complex interaction between the original author, the reuser and their audience. Sometimes such reuse is even encouraged (remixing of music, youtube mashups) while sometimes one explicitly attempts to preve

Re:It's not that simple

[daisybelle]

Music is a sort of three-dimensional. [...] It's a composition of layers. Literature is not; it is - by definition - one-dimensional. Linear.

Mm, I don't quite agree there. Given different assumptions/backgrounds (ie storylines, characters, relationships, themes), the same words can have very different meanings. A character's motivation for doing or saying something can really change the meaning of what they do or say. There are plenty of layers of meaning in language. For example, am I not providing examples because I can't, or because they are so obvious I don't need to?

50s,60s,70s? Try 18th century and before.

[Anonymous Coward]

You see ladies and gents, that is why you should study and listen to classical music, that way you will know that music did not start with Elvis.

Before recorded music it was pretty standard practice to use other composers themes for your own purposes. Crediting where you got the music from. And nobody cared, it was a standard practice of the trade to be musician and a composer: catch a tune you liked and use it to your hearts content.

In many instances this was even encouraged by the original composer himself, to be copied was seen as the greatest accolade and flattery.

Check Bach's Musical Offering for example (listen ot it, expand you pop constrained horizons), he was offered a theme by a King to play with, and Bach produced perhaps the most astonishing piece of music ever created (it is an authentic geek's fest to understand the Musical Offering at a technical level. Learn music geeks, it is a real nerdy pleasure). Nowadays the King would have demanded copyrights and a passable tune would have died in obscurity while Bach would have come up with something else himself or would have given music altogether and continued frolicking with his young wife and prasins god, both much easier enterprises unecumbered, still, by the rapcious nature of greed.

National anthems have been born from copying tunes, troubadours and other travelling singers (like Mexican corrido singers) copied tunes verbatim to spread news from faraway lands.

This was culture people, culture.

The recording industry has managed to convince many of us that creating culture is wrong, that creating culture without paying them is morally wrong. Amazing to see what a bit of money and a corrupt political system (in Washington mostly, but countries elsewhere could have put a fight to the spread of US copyright nonsense) can achieve.

Re:50s,60s,70s? Try 18th century and before.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean we WANT another renaissance?

Re:50s,60s,70s? Try 18th century and before.

[Rophuine]

I'm not sure what your point is; for or against the author in question?

It's a little more modern than your examples, but imagine if Lizst's "Fantasies on a theme by Paganini" had just been excerpts of a violin playing the orininal piece, verbatim, bridged by sections of blending piano solo? That's not culture. What made it culture was when Lizst took, not the notation verbatim, but the idea, and built something entirely new but recognizably derived. Classical (and modern) music didn't excerpt: it used themes as a basis, not as a substitute for talent.

Uncreative person?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bach did it.
Mozart did it.
Beethoven did it.
Prokofiev did it.
Tchaikovsky did it.
Rachmaninof did it.

And that is only some of the most famous classical musicians for starters.

Creativity is not the skill to create something from nothing (I propose that such a thing is impossible) but the skill of transform the cultre you are receiving.

That act of transformation is under relentless attack from rich conglomerates with the aid of morally bankrupt politicians.

At least Ambrose admits it

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Ambrose admits it. Check out the differences if you're even more important:

JK Rowling:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1193283/JK-Rowling-sued-500m-plagiarism-lawsuit-family-late-Willy-The-Wizard-author.html
http://truelegends.info/sayville/potter.htm

Or Disney:

http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm

Yes they are different, klutz.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they are different, klutz. One is copyright infringement (a civil action) and one is Plagiarism (criminal). Unless JQP claims that she sang those songs she didn't pay for and that's why she didn't pay for them, then yes, they are different.

So it's OK if I plagiarise JK Rowling?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's OK if I plagiarise JK Rowling? The courts don't seem to agree.

Re:So it's OK if I plagiarise JK Rowling?

[pydev]

Legally, it is OK if you plagiarize JK Rowling since there is no law against plagiarism.

You should, however, not violate her copyright, since there are laws against copyright violation.

Copyright violation != plagiarism.

*First* book?

[Anonymous Coward]

s/first/only/

Or so we can hope.

Captcha: "DODGED".

Citations Needed

[pubwvj]

If she doesn't cite and references her sources then it is plagiarism and wrong. There was no original thought in her head, just the echos of other people's creativity. She is no artist. She is merely a thief.

Re:Citations Needed

[^_^x]

I agree. The world is full of resources. Take an excerpt if necessary - take a hundred - and cite them, ideally in a standard style like AP. If you just use them and pretend they're yours... it IS just plagiarism, is not an issue of "sampling" and new media culture, and the derivative piece should not be given credit itself.

Author Fail.

[pacergh]

Seriously.

My only question is why copyright laws have not kicked in. There must be a deal with the co-opted author or authors.

Especially interesting is that this is in Germany. European copyright laws tend to have much stronger moral rights that allow authors to prevent the use of their work.

And, as for being an artist or a thief — those are not mutually exclusive.

The bigger sin, however, was not disclosing who she was sourcing. The sourcing itself, artfully done, is not the problem

.

Perhap's it's the current state of language?

[tius]

Perhaps this has more to do with the state of language than theft or not giving due credit? The "author" claims or more likely believes, that they are "sampling." That might suggest that they're trying to express something that they themselves can't quite come up with in words.

I seem to recall in John Ralston Saul's, "Voltaire's Bastards," that he presented a thesis where language was becoming so specialized that it became difficult to impossible to express ideas unless one was a specialist in that particular area.

Repackaging vs. building upon

[Anonymous Coward]

There are really two issues with regards to the use of someone else's creation. Whether you're simply trying to repackage their creation to circumvent their property rights for your own financial gain, or whether you're really trying to build upon, reference, or extend their work to create something new and to move the dialogue forward. The former is clearly wrong. The latter is clearly not, and within that context, plagiarism, sampling, or copying, regardless of how you want to refer to it, are irrelevant. As such, every work of art must be judged upon its on merits as a whole, regardless of whatever percentage might be copied from some other work of art.

As an example, think of a long novel that's very well written up to the end, but the end simply stinks for any number of reasons. Another author could theoretically copy the first 99% of that novel and simply re-write the ending. What if their ending is so much better, that it makes the reader completely re-think the entire story. That's significant. You could dismiss their effort as merely plagiarism, but the reality is that the synergy of the new, much better ending, along with the 99% that has been copied creates a story that is significantly better.

Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. If you can transform someone else's creation from mundane to genius by copying 99% of their hard work and adding your own 1% of inspiration that is significant. At that point it really isn't their creation any more. You've made it your own.

Re:She must not have taken high school classes yet

[emrwriter]

Not to mention the fact that they are businesses that make money on someone else's copyrighted work (all the student papers that get sent to them.

Rethink it?

[JustNiz]

Rethink it? I _always_ thought musical sampling was plagiarism.

Re:Rethink it?

[^_^x]

Yeah... it's one thing to play a riff or two from a song, and another to take a direct 1:1 recording of part of it and use it to make your song, with no authorization or approval from the original artist. That was considered ripping off even before the idea of intellectual property rights spiraled out of control.

Re:Rethink it?

[JustNiz]

agreed. More to the point though, it seems used mostly in commercial pop music to cover up the fact that the sampling artist actually cant play an instrument and/or has limited creativity themselves.

She doesn't have a clue about mixing&sampling

[Anonymous Coward]

The first rule is, if you want respect for your creation, give respect. Give credit to your sources. Don't pretend it's all original and use "modern culture" as a cop-out when you're found out.

Yes to plagiarism

[Murdoch5]

I`m all for this, if you can quote someone`s words then you can quote what they write.

The title

[Squiffy]

I thought the title of the book might be "Fucking and Punching" but I guess not.

The author is a child.

[Morrigel]

At seventeen, she is not considered a morally or legally responsible individual in my country--I have no idea where the law stands on this in Germany, but to me she is just a kid. The people I consider to blame in this scenario are the editor and the publisher. When the girl's plagiarism was proven, they should have withdrawn the book, apologized to the public, and re-released it a few months later when she had been given time to clean up the text with original passages. As is often the case of the adults who surround evil, lawless, and morally bankrupt children, they are full collaborators in her criminality and without them, she would not be able to harm anyone, including herself.