I think Carrol raises a good question - i.e., from a utilitarian position, who cares about plagiarism?  Michael's response refers to copyright violation - denying income to the creator.  There's something in this, but for me the objection to plagiarism runs deeper than theft.  It's about people claiming authority and demanding recognition from the academic/cultural community on the basis of the work of others.  It is a fraud against us all.

Carrol's examples of Homer and Shakespeare are moot in this respect, because as she notes their work was created in a different time.  Nobody expected ideas to be referenced, and so borrowing from sources that the audience would have recognised does not carry the same connotations as attaching one's own name to another's writing. 

--James

James Greenstein



--- "Michael Dawson" <MDawson@pdx.edu> wrote:
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?