Plagiarism and Copyright

"The Rise of the Plagiosphere" presents a very daunting and bleak view of the future of writing. While the plagiarism software originated with the intention of protecting work, it seems apparent that the more advanced it gets, the more inadvertent plagiarism will occur. In relation to the class topic, this new software seems to question the definition of plagiarism. Every seemingly innovative and creative phrase of aspiring web writers can be drawn into question by MIT's new software that detects paraphrased sentences. The software seems to put a limit on creativity: if a phrase or sentence contain similar words as another publication on the internet, which the article points out contains billions of pages, that the utterance is no longer unique and fresh, but borrowed, illegal, and plagiarized. This new software threatens to put a damper on the creative works of writers in the whole wide world - their creativity will be stifled by the discovery that someone else has created a work with similar words and structures - each new idea will become old in a mere click of the mouse.

On the other hand, Lethem's article presents an entirely different perspective on plagiarism by suggesting that most artist's throughout history have purposefully or inadvertently plagiarized in some form or another. T. S. Eliot, for example, in one of his most renowned works "The Waste Land" borrows from so many different sources that it would be almost impossible for an ordinary reader to recognize the allusions without his personal notes detailing the original source. From this, Lethem questions the purpose of copyright in the century ruled by technology. What can we gain as a society from fining a 12-year-old boy thousands of dollars for downloading a song from the internet? With Lethem's perspective in mind, the idea of multimedia authorship and creativity grows exponentially. If every published work is allowed to be borrowed, recycled, and then spit out into an entirely new medium as it has been done for centuries, then how can plagiarism exist? The web has simply provided artists a new medium by which to create: the internet presents a boundless forum to present new ideas, borrowing from the old, and creating innovative pieces of creativity.