What is plagiarism and what do we actually mean when we say something has been plagiarised?
Simply put, plagiarism is theft. The theft of an idea, whether those ideas are words, sounds or pictures. Anyone who copies the words, notes or visual aesthetics of another artist and presents the work as their own, is committing an act of fraud and are liable for prosecution. In the eyes of the law, original ideas are classed as 'Intellectual Property' and like any other kind of property, when it is wrongly claimed, the perpetrators of the theft are held accountable.
The consequences an aspiring artist can face for plagiarism, are serious. There are many cases throughout history confirming just how serious those consequences can be. A fairly recent and famous example of this comes from the world of Shia LaBeouf, the child star of Disney's
Even Stevens and more recently,
Transformers.
Above; Shia LeBeouf
(Ironically taken from Google Images while searching for plagiarism)
Shia entered the Cannes film festival, with a short film called
Howard Cantour. What he failed to declare was that large parts of the film where actually identical to another story written by a Daniel Clowes many years previous in the form of a graphic novel called
Justin M Damiano.
Mr LeBeouf soon found himself under a critical public eye which prompted him to apologise and while heartfelt and taking ownership of his crime, it seems he had not learnt his lesson as, part of his apology, seemed to have been taken from a
Yahoo! Answers page some four years old. To recap; Mr LeBeouf apologised for plagiarism, by plagiarising his apology.
Criticism flooded in at Mr LeBeouf from every angle, the irony being that while the internet has made it easier for plagiarism to happen (since the information is so readily available) it's also easier to detect (with the emergence of software that can detect similarities to previously published work). It's also easy for the public to declare their outrage at the guilty party, which likely lead Mr LeBeouf to 'retire from public life'.
Another example comes from Germany, in the form of a lesser known Helene Hedgemann, the seventeen year old author of
Axolotl Roadkill. The book was an instant best seller and the author was the subject of much acclaim, more so because she was so young. It wasn't until a keen eye'd blogger read the book and realised that some pages were almost identical to another book
Strobo by writer Airen. This is yet another example of how the internet had made it easier to out plagiarists, the more well known the offending author or their work, the more exposure they have to people who are likely to spot their wrong-doing.
As with Mr LeBeouf, Miss Hedgemann apologised but rather than showing remorse for her actions, in a statement released by her publisher, it is clear that Miss Hedgemann considers her plagiarising is just another tool.
"There is no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity."
After reading 'The Little Book of Plagiarism' by Richard A Posner, I am reminded of a quote from it, which I think perhaps Miss Hedgemann was trying to attribute to her work.
Mr Posner makes reference to a 'Classical doctrine'.
"True originality is achieved through an imitation which selects its models carefully, reinterprets them personally, and endeavours to surpass them gloriously."
Basically, (within the realms of the written world at least) it is possible for an author to take a story or idea that has come before and alter it in such a way as to improve upon the previous version. Making the situation or characters better suited to a more modern setting if, for example, the book/play/poem is some what dated or out of print and is now in the public domain. Shakespear done this with a number of his works and we still see evidence of this today, in the reworking or retelling of timeless tales like
Romeo and Juliet, this has been made many times in Hollywood in the form of musical
Westside story and even as a zombie flick,
Warm Bodies.
But simply, copying and pasting passages from works you happen to like, is not improving anything. It could be Miss Hedgemann's work was very good, but she risked it all for a quick easy solution to get it done.
It seems that this is the general view of a number of the worlds academic youth and perhaps age is a valid factor in the growing trend of plagiarism. Since the emergence of the internet the number of cases of plagiarism has grown. Is it because that information is so readily available? The answers to a question simply a google search away? Or is it because the internet and the vast amounts of people already connected, make is easier to spot it? A kind of Inter-hood Watch keeping a keen eye on our intellectual property? Its hard to know exactly why, the simple fact is, plagiarism could have been as wide spread before the internet came in to play, we just rarely heard about it.
As long as there have been people with ideas, there have been those who have stolen those ideas to make themselves seem better than they were. Indeed, even famous artists have been guilty of plagiarism, though in one such case, it was certainly an odd affair and leads one to question whether 'plagiarist' is even the right term.
Rembrandt has got to be one of the biggest names in the artistic community, even those who do not study art or have ever held a paintbrush know this name. It is synonymous with fine art. But Rembrandt seems to have been guilty of claiming other artists work as his own. Why he done this seems unclear, after all many of the works signed are thought lesser of and not up to the level of skill a master like Rembrandt was capable of. It then seems reasonable to believe that what he was doing, was a kind of endorsement for the artists in question.
No matter what the reason or motivations behind the act the fact remains that plagiarism is damaging to both parties. Those committing the act have a chance to further their own reputation and grow in stature in what ever field they practice in, but they run the greater risk of loosing everything. Why do people take such a large gamble with everything they may have already accomplished, for such a small probable gain? And what of the artist whose works were stolen? There is no benefit at all to them.
In the cases of the false Rembrandt's, if another name had not been signed to their work, there was a chance that they could have made their own name worth more than it actually did. If the work was good enough for Rembrandt to sign his own name against it, then it seems like a reasonable assumption to make that the work itself was genius and they lost their chance to make it work for them. Instead, it worked for another and while his reputation flourished, the original artists became cast in Rembrandt's shadow. There are still many of Rembrandt's works today that are being examined for authenticity, those that are discovered to not be by his hand, plummet in price, adding further insult to injury of the original creator.
