Plagiarism in the real world

Our previous post focused on plagiarism in the academic world, but we don’t wish to give the impression that plagiarism is limited to wayward students. Indeed, the list of the rich and the famous who have been accused of plagiarism, accusations supported by evidence which is at times undeniable, includes some surprising names.

For example, Martin Luther King plagiarized significant portions of his thesis and enough material in his other writings and speeches that it created significant problems for the editors of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project and resulted in a national argument on race and politics and scholarship. (Google Martin Luther King and plagiarism for a sense of the scope of this discussion.)

FamousPlagiarists.com has compiled a lengthy list of accused plagiarists which includes such luminaries as H. G. Wells, Joe Biden, Helen Keller, Bruno Bettelheim, T.S. Eliot (there’s more than allusion in the Waste Land), Stephen Ambrose, Dan Brown, Coldplay, Vladimir Putin, and on and on and on.

Sometimes the plagiarism is obvious, as in the recent case of Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, which was pulled from the shelves by Little, Brown & Co. after a number of “parallels” to novels by Megan McCafferty were identified. The Harvard Crimson reproduced some of these “parallels.”

Mafferty: “Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. You’ll see where it’s gotten me.”
Viswanathan: “Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. I had long resigned myself to category one, and as long as it got me to Harvard, I was happy. Except, it hadn’t gotten me to Harvard. Clearly, it was time to switch to category two.”

However, it is worth keeping in mind an observation made in the Library Journal Review: “Fine lines separate unconscious influence, adaptation, paraphrase, and downright theft by writers.” For example, we know that Shakespeare based many of his plays on Holinshed’s Chronicles of England Scotland, and Ireland, (and wasn’t above lifting a few lines here and there) although we refer to that usage not as Shakespeare’s plagiarism but as his use of sources.

Perhaps that is why T. S. Eliot wrote “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.” (Link)

Most discussions of plagiarism, of course, do not even touch upon the common practices of speech writing and ghost writing. Few expect politicians to write their own speeches, and few of the famous and powerful have time or skill to actually write–which, as we all know, can be a difficult and time-consuming process. It appears that Profiles in Courage was actually written by Theodore Sorenson, though John Kennedy contributed some notes and ideas.

Furthermore, in the academic world, it is not unusual for a senior faculty member to be listed as a co-author of a work written by graduate students but overseen by the professor. The Chronicle of Higher Education even offers the advice that “Most graduate students who publish do so as co-authors on articles with more senior researchers and faculty members. This is fine. Be open to sharing credit with others, even if you feel you have made a disproportionate contribution to the research.” (Link)

In the end, it seems to us that the increasing interest in plagiarism parallels the rising concern with the protection of intellectual property rights. The internet has made it possible for intellectual property–be it text or sound or image–to be freely copied without payment to the writer or creator or company which holds the rights. The issue is not morality, but commerce, not art, but the ability to profit from a work.

You need look no further than the Eiffel Tower for a compelling example. Its nighttime display of lights has been copyrighted, so that it is now illegal to reproduce a photo of the Eiffel Tower at night. The copyrighting of that which was once seen as residing squarely in the public domain raises a host of interesting issues, but that is the subject of another post.