In Defense of Plagiarism
I own a fascinating collection
of treatises on plagiarism in the volume Perspectives
on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World published by
State University of New York Press. Beginning on page xv, the Introduction
makes the point:
“Plagiarism
is perceived as a problem but it is often discussed in simplistic terms:
"using someone else's words without telling whose they are or where you
got them"; "stealing other people's ideas or words." This basic
view of plagiarism comes directly from the Latin source of the word, which
meant to kidnap a person, referring only to children or servants or slaves:
people who could in some sense be owned...
A postmodern perspective of
plagiarism and intellectual property suggests that one cannot own ideas or
words. All we can do is honor and recompense the encoding of those ideas...”
I note (with considerable interest)
that these editors, themselves, did not hesitate to simply enclose particularly
apt phrases in quotes and move on.
