THE SHOCK OF THE NEW!
Copyright, Plagiarism, and Craft
I’ll say it loud and at the outset: I don’t believe in copyright and I barely believe in plagiarism. That is in Mike’s world. In the real world, I believe in a very narrow interpretation of copyright and a very wide interpretation of plagiarism. So, one at a time.
The original Copyright Law of 1790 set a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive. After that, a works reverted to the Public Domain so that it could be accessible by all and add to the fund of public wisdom. I could live with this because the period was realistically brief and the point was to get the work into the public domain.
Unfortunately, current copyright law is designed to keep the work out of the public domain and feed corporate coffers. It states that a work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978 is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author’s life, plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death. In the case of “a joint work” prepared by two or more authors that was not a “work made for hire,” the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author’s death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author’s identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
That is a possible 28 versus a possible 120 years. This is absurd. This is not about protecting the author or her immediate heirs. Generally, nearly always in the case of music, corporations hold the overwhelming bulk of copyrights. And, of course, they never want to lose control of the profits.
The only reason I copyright my books is to get an ISBN number. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t. I write poetry. There is no money in poetry. My heirs are unlikely to suffer. But even if I worked in another form, I would still disdain copyright because I believe in the Public Domain. Adding to the fund of general knowledge is more important than enriching anyone, individual or corporation. I’ll be dead. I won’t care. The current copyright law is an abomination.
Plagiarism is a different and slipperier beast. Plagiarism is defined formally as: the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing it off as one’s own. There is a lot of room for interpretation in this.
I used to teach Freshman English. Plagiarism was the greatest bugaboo. My OCD junior colleagues (few of whom were writers or even readers) would go to any length to catch students out. They were bloodhounds. They used Google. They used proprietary software. If they found so much as a single burrowed phrase, the academic ax would fall. And they loved it. It aroused them. They would get all breathy and orgasmic whenever they caught some poor, semi-literate offender out and could crush them with a ZERO!
I do not believe in this extreme approach to plagiarism at all, not one bit.
I do believe that no one should take a complete work, be it poem, story, article, etc., and simply put their name to it. To me, that is the only true plagiarism.
But, sorry folks, your words, phrases, even sentences do not belong to you. Not even your ideas.
Assimilating bits of text is as old as poetry and can never stop being. The jumble of words and phrases in the air is a ubiquitous cartoon balloon, always hovering just overhead. It is an eternally mumbled conversation. You hear it even when you aren’t listening. It is the omnipresent whisper of the past calling to the future to be new. Its influence can’t be effectively ignored, even willfully. Complete originality is impossible.
The dream parade of the imagination belongs to all.
Language is a vast quarry dug back to the beginning of writing. You can go back and take any words or phrases or sentences and mine them for your own use as long as you make them new and better. To me, Pound’s dictum: MAKE IT NEW is all that matters.
I routinely use found language in my writing. I consider it fair game. Usually it is changed somehow. Always, I try to make it new and better.
I don’t quote sources. If I have borrowed a sentence and not changed anything, I may italicize it. But I leave it up to the reader to figure out what it is or where it came from. I expect literate readers. If they aren’t, that’s not my fault.
And if someone does the same with my work, I consider it a compliment. Thank you.
There it is. Reduce copyright to some rational length. Accept that you do not own your words and feel free to use the words of others within the limits I have described.
To do so won’t cost you anything substantial and it will set you on the continuum of language.
T. S. Eliot said, “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” He was absolutely right. It has always been and always will be. Tchaikovsky stole from Beethoven, Beethoven stole from Mozart, Mozart stole from Bach, Bach stole from God. Nothing created by Man or Woman is 100% original. Ever.
So get over it, and be thankful if someone ever loves your work enough to make it new.
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