Utopian Plagiarism, Hypertextuality, and Electronic Cultural Production

I found this article to be interesting in particular because the stance it took on how plagiarism is viewed. The author acknowledged that plagiarism is often viewed in a negative light, but that it is actually a necessity:

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

The author notes that a plagiarist sees all objects as equal and that, usable and reusable. While we in fact do not own words and no words belong to us, I might disagree that the way in which we arrange words is particular to an individual and therefore using these same words, in the same order, and justifying them as your own seems to be problematic. Hypertext is a method of storing data through a computer program that lets a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially. In this way, credit can be paid to the original creator. I think the main thing to consider when speaking about plagiarism is the difference between appropriation and plagiarism. Appropriation borrows from other people’s ideas or concepts but essentially creates new meaning. Language and works of art are inherit with the author’s personality imposed upon. In addition, I think the question of inspiration comes in to play. How far are we allowed to replicate a work of art before inspiration is trumped by exactness? What does it mean to take inspiration from something?

 

While the author may contest, “what is the point of saving language when there is no longer anything to say”, I would refute by saying there are still a million ways in which to say it.

Source: http://www.adamncompany.com/inspiration-vs-appropriation/