Writing with Integrity Pt. 2: Plagiarism & Libel (my rant for the weekend)
When I was in college, there was a huge emphasis on the consequences of plagiarism. And I don’t mean, “If you steal someone’s essay, you’ll get reported for cheating and you’ll fail the class.”
No. If you got caught plagiarizing, you were expelled. Period.
It didn’t matter if you claimed it was accidental. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t verbatim. If you took something and didn’t cite it properly, you were done.
I loved that.
When I was a teenager, I joined an online writing community where I posted my melodramatic poetry. It was always appearing in other places by people who’d steal it. It wasn’t even that good, but having it stolen made me feel vulnerable and outraged. I can’t imagine how much worse I would have felt had someone plagiarized an entire novel of mine. But the fact is that most unscrupulous people don’t plagiarize whole works. They steal little bits. They’re sneaky like that.
But little bits can matter a lot. If someone steals your character names and the basic premise of your story, that can really kill your original work. Even if the thief’s prose is original, the ideas are stolen.
As an editor, this drives me crazy. Receiving plagiarized submissions is utterly offensive to me. I’d like not to have to Google everyone’s stories. I’d like people, in general, to be more ethical. In short, I’d like to be able to expel people from the universal writing community if they’re caught plagiarizing.
Another problem is libel. As writers, we often base our stories off personal experiences and our characters off real people. But this isn’t acceptable when you purposely create a fictional character to perfectly mimic someone you despise so you can harm their reputation through your writing. Um, duh.
Are these really such fine lines? Is this not common sense?
Sometimes I have to wonder.
Posted on 2011 Nov 19, in Ramblings and tagged Academic dishonesty, Editing, Education, fiction, Google, Libel, Online Writing, Originality, Plagiarism, stories, Writers Resources, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
Did you hear about the QR Markham drama a week (maybe two) ago? It’s CRAZY.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/11/q-r-markham-plagiarism.html
I did not! Wow. Those are some thought-provoking speculations.
I like what it states here:
“Rowan wouldn’t be the only writer in recent years—the era of redefining what is meant by “intellectual property”—to use plagiarism to make a statement. Those whose points have been well-taken, however, have generally been up-front about their borrowing.”
This reminds me of one of Jonathan Safran Foer’s projects where he actually cut out his favorite book by his favorite author to reveal an entirely different story using words from the original work:
That’s some artistic theft, but again, that’s the point of the project.
I can’t help but wonder that, even if Rowan was deliberately plagiarizing, if such a statement would be worth the consequential infamy. How could he ever expect to be published in the future?
I don’t see how he could believe this would be beneficial for his career. Unless he plans on self-pubbing from now on, I can’t imagine another publisher taking a chance on him.
This blog shows the passages in “his” book and the original text. It’s UNBELIEVABLE. And mind-boggling. Okay, I’ll breathe. But, here’s the link if you want to see it:
http://www.edrants.com/q-r-markham-plagiarist/
That’s crazy. Looks like he stole more than he wrote, and consequently his novel became a collection of tributes to other novels.
Would have been nice if he actually cited those tributes. Although I suppose that would have made for some awkward reading.
He’s now claiming he was addicted. To plagiarism.
http://bit.ly/tpGHd3
Wow. Pathetic.
So glad his girlfriend left him and he lost his job.
This is a very interesting question. Obviously, stealing someone else’s sentences and pretending they’re your own sentences is bad, and it must be very difficult to manage this in schools these days (plagiarism was never mentioned when I was in college, as far as I can remember, because — pre-Internet — it was pretty difficult to do).
I can only imagine how annoying it must be to have to screen submissions for originality.
I hadn’t read the Markham story either, so thanks, Kerri. I have a sub to the NYer, but don’t often read their online content because I find their website annoying. It would seem that his biggest mistake, if this was a deliberate stunt, was not letting his publisher know in advance. If he was hoping for a career, that’s what will probably ruin it.
On the other hand, cutting up (and folding in, etc.) other people’s writing has a long and honorable history (even apart from taking other people’s plots, which Shakespeare did all the time). But Tristan Tzara and William Burroughs were always very open about their methods (in fact, the method was part of the point — Tzara did it as a performance, and Burroughs filmed himself working on the cut-ups):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-ups
I have always followed that example with my own cut-ups, as I talked about here:
http://u-town.com/collins/?p=706
Something tells me that if the publisher had an idea of his intentions, he might not have been published.
More likely, as you mentioned in your other reply (and has happened to the writer I wrote about) they would have insisted in citations.
That’s what happened in music after all. People weren’t stopped from sampling, they were forced to give credit.
There are so many instances of plagiarism in this case, though. I think citations would seem random and messy. And then what would it be? A collection of citations that somehow string together, interlaced with original prose, to form a story arc. Well, that would be interesting at least.
I don’t understand it at all, but then again, people do a LOT of weird things I don’t see the point of.
Oh, so true, so true.