The needless provincialism of writers
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Maybe it's just me, but I think this is getting really silly.
Let me get this straight: Stylistically, there are many similar passages, but the story itself is different?
No offense, but this is fiction we're talking about here. So fucking what?
I don't give a damn what she did or didn't copy so long as the book is good. Frankly, I don't even care if she wrote the thing - it could be done by a robot, for all I care. If the book provides me with enjoyment, it has achieved its stated objective.
Hell, what about Mash-ups? Mash-ups are where a DJ takes the background instrumentals of one song and the vocal track of another and puts them together - making a whole new song, the DJ's own work really, that is often better than either of the songs put together. Case in point: I just got a mix of Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" and Enya's "Orinoco Flow". It's great. Also, "Holiday Milkshake", a mixing of Kelis and Madonna songs of the same names, is a classic.
Do I care that the DJ wasn't the one singing the vocals or playing the instruments? Of course not.
If this Harvard girl was really only a literary DJ, good for her - whether on the dance floor or the bookshelf, those who manipulate other's work to make something new are a consumer's best friend.
This whole "I've done this style so no one else can" idea is patently anti-consumerist and pro-writer; it allows them to "stake their claim" to a style and make a name off of it, but it's not in the best interest of those of us who don't give a damn who wrote a piece of fiction, so long as it's entertaining.
Let me get this straight: Stylistically, there are many similar passages, but the story itself is different?
No offense, but this is fiction we're talking about here. So fucking what?
I don't give a damn what she did or didn't copy so long as the book is good. Frankly, I don't even care if she wrote the thing - it could be done by a robot, for all I care. If the book provides me with enjoyment, it has achieved its stated objective.
Hell, what about Mash-ups? Mash-ups are where a DJ takes the background instrumentals of one song and the vocal track of another and puts them together - making a whole new song, the DJ's own work really, that is often better than either of the songs put together. Case in point: I just got a mix of Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" and Enya's "Orinoco Flow". It's great. Also, "Holiday Milkshake", a mixing of Kelis and Madonna songs of the same names, is a classic.
Do I care that the DJ wasn't the one singing the vocals or playing the instruments? Of course not.
If this Harvard girl was really only a literary DJ, good for her - whether on the dance floor or the bookshelf, those who manipulate other's work to make something new are a consumer's best friend.
This whole "I've done this style so no one else can" idea is patently anti-consumerist and pro-writer; it allows them to "stake their claim" to a style and make a name off of it, but it's not in the best interest of those of us who don't give a damn who wrote a piece of fiction, so long as it's entertaining.
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As for a literary mash-up, I've heard of the idea: an entire novel created from sentences and paragraphs from other books. As long as the whole thing is cited, it'd be legal and probably be considered fair use. It would be a damn taxing exercise though and it might read rather peculiarly.
Both Prodigy and Enya's label would have every right to sue and/or send a C&D letter to the producer of the mashup you acquired.
So, I think defending her with an analogy of illegal activity isn't exactly the best defense.
But wrong? Not at all. IP law as it currently exists is a dinosaur, and not worthy of our respect.
A Night at the Hip-Hopera doesn't exactly hide the fact that they're remixing songs. In some sites I've actually seen the annotated lists of every source used. Some mashup artists go as far as to specifically thank the artists they sampled from. Viswanathan didn't "sample" other writers, she took their writing and pretended it was hers. That's not just immoral, it's a sign of a bad writer and a bad journalist.
I, myself, am a copyright holder of published work. If someone samples my work or parodies it in a way that cleary identifies as such, there's no problem. If someone started cutting panels of my strips and pasting them in the middle of another and saying it's their cartoon, there would be problems. (In fact, someone did this a few months ago with Garfield strips and got shut down rather quickly. The quality of the product has no bearing on the legality.)
I think the coverage, and subsequent reprimand, is without a doubt over-covered and possibly overbearing, but I don't see how you can defend the moral element of this, regardless of your opinion of IP law. She stole material. Theft means taking and not giving back. It wasn't borrowed, sampled, or mashed-up. It was taken.
I will share my opinion with Salman Rushdie: "The passages are too many and the similarities are too extensive. And I'm sorry that this young girl, pushed by the needs of a publishing machine and, no doubt, by her own ambition, should have fallen into this trap so early in her career. I hope she can recover from it."
(Please note I cited the source.)
I see the argument for nonfiction, sure. But for fiction, I'm not seeing the issue. If someone gives me a pirated copy of Harry Potter that says it's written by R.E. Feist, and it's still a good book - what do I care?
Perhaps the only reason you'd care for the name on the cover of a fiction book to be correct is so you could find and read more work by the same author if you wanted to.
But how is that inhibited here? Assuming she's allowed to continue to make her literary mash-ups, you'd still be able to do that - if you like her Opal book, there's no reason she wouldn't be able to pop out more just like it.
I agree that it's right to judge the girl harshly on this.
More than anything, I'm upset that this means the book is getting pulled from store shelves; sure, there's the legal issue involved, but I'd hope that the other authors involved would be willing to let it slide by mutual consent - after all, if it's a good book, then it's one more good book for people to enjoy.
So basically you're just throwing out some kind of Zen morality analysis of copyright law. If I break into your house and steal your television, as long as I can watch some great shows with it what do I care where it came from? Sure, I don't care. You, and the police, probably do.
Of course it matters who the source is; that's the entire point. By definition, art is judged by the quality and talent of the artist and their product... if the artist is stealing then they're not actually creating anything It's neither a sign of their talent nor their own product. Again, you're trying to compare creative interpretation with plagiarism. Suggesting the two are the same is laughable.
The only other way I can interpret your logic is that you believe the artists does not create for themself or for any purpose but to provide entertainment to the people as a whole. If this is true, then I'm not trying to pull a Godwin here but that's essentially the mentality of a Fascist system, and most artists who endured Soviet film and television industry would attest that such a system hindered their creative ability, not advanced it.
Sure. Oh, and FWIW, the Harvard Crimson has just put up something similar: Link
By the quality and talent of the artist? Of course not! What do I care if he took 500 hours to make it or 5? If it makes me happy, it makes me happy.
Why should I give a damn how talented the artist is? They're making a product. When I buy a shirt, I don't care whether it was made by man or machine - just that it was a good shirt. Art is no different.
Uh, yeah. Exactly. Though they do, of course, aim personally for financial enrichment - whether our system decides to reward them with that is debatable; case in point, see the fights over the copyright to Mickey Mouse and when it will or won't enter the public domain.
-Adolf Hitler
The point, of course, not being that you are a fascist, but merely that claiming art as a product for your sake and not the artist's is counter to the point of art itself. You define art as a consumer commodity, while the artist understands that NOT being a mere commodity is what makes it art in the first place. Or, in broader terms, the world does not revolve around you ;)
And if you really do believe art is just a commodity and how it was procured is irrelevant to your personal enjoyment, we go beyond fascism and descend into anarchy! I repeat: I want to watch TV. Why am I not allowed to take your television?
Because a society where everyone was allowed to take one another's televisions would be worth off?
C'mon, this isn't hard. :)
Stealing my TV fails the same test that, say, stealing music passes.
In other words: There's a ton of music out there. People also love to create music and pass it on for free. Furthermore, the vast majority of people who create music for profit make their real living off of concerts and merchandise, not the music itself.
Society would be better off, I'd argue, if we made all music public domain and said that no music could ever again be protected by copyright. (We might quibble over the implementation of such a change, but the overall point stands)
However, I fail to see your argument as to how we're all better off if we can all take one another's TVs.
You realize of course, this makes no sense. How are quality and talent linked to the amount of time something takes to make? They're not.
Wait, so you are concerned with quality?
As for copying an artists work here's a serious question.
Should you be able-or would you have a problem with- taking my comics, redrawing the art to imitate it, and using the exact same words as I did, then putting your name on it, printing them in a book and selling them?....with no credit to or permission from me.
People might enjoy that product and laugh and not really care about the artist or where it came from. Do you see this as a problem in any way?
Well, that depends. Is that legal? No.
Should it be legal? That depends. As webcomics (I can't count how many webcomics I love on a regular basis) make plain, there are a lot of people out there who are willing to write damn good comics for free.
How much does society lose out if, as in your case, we essentially force anyone who's trying to make money off the thing out of the marketplace? (In a scenario like what you're describing, the price would soon drop to at-cost, i.e. 0 profit potential)
It's a marginal-cost, marginal-benefit equation.
The benefit being that society gains all comics being free/cheap.
The cost being that no for-profit comics production means there's fewer comics out there, and also less economic activity in general.
Personally... all told, I'm hard pressed to decide whether to legalize pirating your comics or not.
As YTMND.com demonstrates, intertextuality (which people will put lots of work into for free) provides a lot of the same enjoyment potential as straight-up content creation.
But then, are the comics currently being developed for-pay really that great that I would care if I could get them all for free? Aren't they so close to free already (mostly available online voluntarily by the author, or by a syndicate like ucomics) that I've already got a lot of options if I don't want to pay?
So, in the end, I could come down either way. But I don't see an overriding moral principle one way or another; it's intellectual property, not real property. A societal construct.
In the society we live in and have constructed you can't take someone elses work and claim it as your own. You mention it is illegal, but you don't seem to have a moral problem about people LYING to their audience about somnething they didn't create.
Also, it doesn't matter if the creator makes their comics, music, whatever for free or not. People still can't take them and say they made them.
I'm simply saying that we should go on a case-by-case basis, evaluating each to see where and how far it makes sense to extend intellectual property protections.
Case in point: You can't copyright a fragrance, and thus Designer Impostors carved out a nice little niche business for themselves offering "curiously similar" fragrances to Calvin Klein and the like at about half the price.
The world did not end.
Also, I'm loving your dichotomy between what's good for fiction and what's good for non-fiction, since I just found my copy of Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, which is solely devoted to the art of nonfiction writing, and has this to say:
Your premise seems to be that, since not ALL fiction involves the assimilation of words or ideas from prior authors, that fiction which does involve such assimilation is under no obligation to offer credit.
Bollocks, says I.
Because of course fiction has never served a higher purpose than to provide Joe with something to read while he sits on the toilet, after all.