Adrian Monroe

Argument the Ecstasy of Influence A Plagiarism

By Jonathan Lethem

Plagiarism is defined as the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. However, the closer meaning to that in the digital age is “Repurposing”. Any person irrespective of their interest would be influenced by some other person’s work and their own work will have many similarities with it. Nonetheless, it cannot be termed as Plagiarism and the author of this article Jonathan Lethem tries to explain it.

Jonathan Lethem, the author has expressed his thoughts on adapting ideas from other sources in their own work and the way people call this plagiarism. He supports the concept of sharing ideas and using influences that promotes creativity and next generation development. I particularly liked his argument on the concept of “usemonopoly” and its effects on the society. In today’s world, every intangible assets like literature work, research findings and similar are copy righted, giving it a government granted monopoly on the use of their finding results. Therefore, Lethem has termed this as usemonopoly. Even the history supports this claim. Andrew Carnegie controlled the steel prices in the entire United States, using the copyrights he got for steel manufacturing. Similarly, Walt Disney managed the Mickey Mouse cartoon and its reproduction and others have followed the same. Monopolizing is advantageous only for the artist or corporation but overall the loser is the community that is not benefiting from the findings.

President Thomas Jefferson also thought the same and said, “Copyright is a necessary evil”[1]. He supported providing just enough benefits for the creators and after a period allowed free usage of ideas for the benefit of society. He carried this objective by drafting the constitution that gave the Congress the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective findings.” [1]. This became a balancing act between creators and the society, benefitting all in the end. However, in the recent times, the modern American copyright law has changed its scope and duration. First copyright law gave the inventors fourteen years of initial term, and allowed extension for another fourteen years if the person is alive. However, the current law sets the term to be the life of the author plus seventy years. Hence, copyrights law should be reformed in a way that benefits the inventor and community as a whole.

New findings by the inventors or artists have an inspiration. There is a difference between the use of one’s idea to copying it. The thin line difference will credit the work of an artist as a plagiarized one or not accordingly. Most of the artists have an inclination for their idol and tries to follow their footsteps while delivering their work. The modern technological inventions in the globalized world have made it easy to use others work and to find whether it was copied.

However, this thin line is making the inventors and artists anxious about contamination. One example for this claim is the ongoing tussle over the ownership of the animated characters Itchy and Scratchy that questions the very nature of cartoons. Most of the cartoons have many similarities of the past ones and they act as an inspiration for creation of new ones. This is often considered as plagiarism and in those terms, all cartoons have one or other feature having a similar feature and can be labeled as plagiarized.

Lethem has rightly said any creative property, after the end of its commercial life; our tradition uses it for another purpose that it is not intended for and can be termed as “Second Use”. Example for this is newspapers that are used for other purposes like wrapping any delicate items, after passing the published date. Even books after first use, are sold in used bookstores, stored in libraries, can be quoted in reviews and other similar uses. There is a very thin line between the possible uses and are hard to define, therefore the artifacts user scope changes depending upon the culture of the receipting audience. Artists and their associates who seek to ask a compensation for every possible second use are ending up attacking their own audience and losing a chance to improve their work by rejecting a next generation artist to work on. By doing this, they are taking away a chance that can offers the society a better work that can entertain the audience better than the former. The existing ideas can be improved with plagiarism. As Guy Debord notes “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.”( BrainyQuote)

In recent times, technological company Apple has attracted lot of its customers with its simple and effective design features. However, the designer’s inspiration were Braun Products and some had a lot of resemblance to the latter yet people accepted them with more interest than one from which those were inspired. Therefore, if we go with critical viewpoint we can say it was plagiarized but it was more than that. The framework may have be similar but Apple have made many improvements and adapted to the modern needs. Hence, the quote of John Donne sums up the argument, that “All mankind is one of the author, and is one volume; when one dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated….”.

Work Cited

[1] Argument The Ecstasy of Influence A Plagiarism By Jonathan

Lethem"Guy Debord Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2016.

Professor comments in overall

This paper has some good moments. Overall, you seem to understand what Lethem is saying. But you need to do more than just tell me what Lethem says. What are the implications of his argument?  What CHANGES when you think of plagiarism in this way?