[lbo-talk] RE: condemn a little more (was plagiarism epidemic)

[Michael Dawson]

Wow, it's bracing to get your consistently weird and dogmatic
interpretations back.  Pat Boone stole songs in the 1950s from Little
Richard and, in LR's words, "never sent [him] so much as a Christmas card."
Apparently, that was OK with you.  And how would writers, musicians, and
scholars publishing for popular audiences (a group that tellingly does not
include you) live in your fantasy world?  Are you dreaming that in 50 years,
we'll have full-blown communism, and nobody will have to worry about getting
paid for artistic and intellectual labors?  That's a truly laughable
hypothesis, but I can't think of one that's less unrealistic that would also
support your "so what" theory of intellectual theft.

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 1:12 PM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] RE: condemn a little more (was plagiarism epidemic)

One of the greatest works of literature, the Iliad, was probably over
half "plagiarized," and could not have been produced without plagiarism.
It plagiarized _on principle_; once a thing has been well said one
should not monkey around with it.

Of course the Iliad arose from an oral tradition, i.e. a highly fluid
and easily reproducible medium (quite unlike the onerous business of
setting type, etc., or of retyping everything one wants to copy. In
other words, the oral tradition of Homer was very much like the internet
tradition that is now developing. What should be of interest is the
content and style of a given text; who cares who wrote it? Shakespeare
also plagiarized shamelessly from his sources without giving credit. (He
also usually improved on them, and an honest plagiarist should strive to
make his/her plagiarism an improvement, at least in terms of immediate
purposes, over its source.)

The campaign against plagiarism arose in the 17th century; it was part
of print culture on the one hand and of growing commodification on the
other hand, as well as on the absurd concerns with "self-expression" and
"sincerity" that emerged in the 19th century. I would expect it to be a
dead concern in another half century or so.

Carrol

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