Featured in Haper’s magazine, a left-wing perspective monthly magazine featuring various topics, Jonatham Lethem, a novelist wrote his perspective on plagiarism. \u00a0He is more than qualified to write on this topic because he is an artist and has to deal with various influences and plagiarism all the time. \u00a0The main point of the article was that influence is everything. \u00a0Sometimes it is hard to tell where someone else’s work ends and yours begins. \u00a0I completely agree because with so many ideas in the world already thought, how is anyone supposed to keep track which was original. \u00a0There are four quotes from the article that I liked in particular. \u00a0The first one is:<\/p>\n
“For a car or a handbag, once stolen, no longer is available to its owner, while the appropriation of an article of ‘intellectual property’ leaves the original untouched. As Jefferson wrote, \u201cHe who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This easily\u00a0distinguishes\u00a0the difference between stealing a concrete item and an intellectual one. \u00a0The next quote is:<\/p>\n
“That a language is a commons doesn’t mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This was in the commons section stating that a language is\u00a0something\u00a0that people can contribute to and is not “owned” by anyone. \u00a0The next quote solidifies the fact that no idea is original.<\/p>\n
“…all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This last quote is interesting because it is saying that corporations are controlling artists from showcasing their true potential and contribution to the world.<\/p>\n
“But the truth is that with artists pulling on one side and corporations pulling on the other, the loser is the collective public imagination from which we were nourished in the first place, and whose existence as the ultimate repository of our offerings makes the work worth doing in the first place.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Overall, I enjoyed reading Lethem’s article. \u00a0I liked how he pulled in a lot of different sources together to be related to one another, especially the not-so-well known artists. \u00a0He kind of did a play on plagiarism by including all of these different works into his own.<\/p>\n
The full article can be read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Featured in Haper’s magazine, a left-wing perspective monthly magazine featuring various topics, Jonatham Lethem, a novelist wrote his perspective on plagiarism. \u00a0He is more than qualified to write on this topic because he is an artist and has to deal … Continue reading