1. What is plagiarism?
|
Plagiarism, as defined in the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, is the "use or close imitation of the work or of thoughts of another author and the
representation of them as one's own original work."
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means
|
| |
• |
to steal and pass off (the ideas or works of another) as one's own |
| |
• |
to use (another's production) without crediting the source |
| |
• |
to commit intellectual theft |
| |
• |
to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
|
Plagiarism involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward, thus plagiarism is an act of fraud and treated as such by the law. The expression of
original ideas is considered intellectual property, and is protected by copyright laws. Almost all forms of expression fall under copyright protection as long as they are
recorded in some way.
|
2. What is the difference between an "original" and "plagiarism"?
|
The only difference between an original and plagiarism is the attribution of authorship.
|
3. Are there different types of plagiarism?
|
| So far, four different types of plagiarism can be distinguished: |
| |
• |
Total plagiarism, when a complete work of art is adopted without any changes being made |
| |
• |
Partial plagiarism, when parts of another artwork are integrated in a new work |
| |
• |
Plagiarism of ideas, when only ideas and concepts are adopted without giving credit to the author |
| |
• |
Self-plagiarism, when significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one's own work are reused without acknowledging that one is doing so or without citing the original work.
|
4. Where does plagiarism occur?
|
Basically, plagiarism can occur anywhere and at any time, particularly when somebody is creating something, be it a text, a visual
artwork, a piece of music or software! Be careful, everyone should be suspected.
It is DEJAVU®'s mission not to surveil and control, but to educate creators!
|
5. What does plagiarism have to do with kidnapping?
|
The term "plagiarism" is derived from the Latin expression "plagium" which means child abduction or the stealing
of slaves. It was the Roman poet Martial who first used this term in a metaphorical sense, when his rival poet Fidentinus mixed his own verses with of Martial's and circulated
them as his own. In the same way as children and slaves were considered as property in ancient Rome, from then on "intellectual products" were also considered as
property. However, it is questionable whether this metaphor is still makes sense today.
|
6. Why is plagiarism dangerous?
|
There are many dangers involved in plagiarism. First of all, plagiarism undermines professional artistic trust. Once an artist has
damaged his reputation because of cheating, it will be hard for him to recover; his fellow artists, curators, critics and collectors will no longer believe in his artistic
integrity. If an artist is able to get away with taking somebody else's work once, he might get used to it and thus - slowly but surely - lose his own ability for original
creation. Other dangers involve the incorrect writing of art history, when plagiarism in the arts is not detected and artworks are mistakenly not ascribed to the right artist.
|
7. Is there a way to prevent plagiarism?
|
The first step is to find out everything about plagiarism, what it is and what it is not. If you are not sure whether your new work is
plagiarized or not, to be on the safe side mention all the references and cite all sources you have used creating a new work. If you are not sure about your references, the
only option you have is to use the services of DEJAVU®. Only we can produce evidence and thus help avoiding plagiarism.
|
8. What does it mean to plagiarize oneself?
|
Self-plagiarism is a known subcategory of plagiarism; it basically means that an artist is producing or publishing the same work he
has already produced or published earlier, again pretending it is novel. Reasons for such incomprehensible behavior may simply be that the artist has run out of original ideas
and lost his potential for creative work. He might think that stealing his own ideas might be less reprehensible than stealing those of others, but the opposite is true. In
such case, a change of profession should be seriously considered.
|
9. Could plagiarism also have positive aspects?
|
Some people may say so. One of the most frequently used arguments is that plagiarism saves time and effort, that it improves results,
and that it purportedly shows considerable initiative on the part of the individual plagiarist. A few artists try to make a difference between stealing and copying or imitating
("Steal from everyone and copy no one", Charles Movalli), or stealing and borrowing ("Good artists borrow. Great artists steal", Pablo Picasso); some even
try to pass it off as a special gift ("Plagiarism is the privilege of the appreciative man", Oscar Wilde), while others even try to explain it as something
particularly attendant to the creative mind of artists: "Appropriation is for artists only, apparently; everyone else has to come up with their own ideas." (Tad Simons).
We must state that we do not share these kinds of perspectives and regard these statements as grievous attempts to demolish serious culture.
|
10. Is there reason to panic?
|
Statistics about the pervasiveness of plagiarism have actually produced evidence of a significant rise in the number of recorded
incidents. The reason for this "epidemic problem" is the Internet itself. The easy-to-use technology to copy and paste information makes it tempting for artists to
avail themselves. It is not our intent to fuel fears, but the moral outrage that has been sparked by plagiarism is justified. Panic, however, should be avoided, as it may
reduce mindfulness and lead to undeliberated measures and, at the worst, even may endanger the security and the life of the one panicking.
|
11. Does intention matter?
|
Not knowing the law or ignoring it is not an excuse. So even if you did not realize you were plagiarizing, you may still be found
guilty. However, there are different punishments for willful infringement or deliberate plagiarism, innocent infringement or accidental plagiarism. To distinguish between
these, courts recognize what is called the good faith defense.
|
12. What if I can't remember? Cryptomnesia
|
This question is very near to the one preceding (#11). Actually, inadvertent plagiarism has even been scientifically investigated and
is called cryptomnesia. Researchers describe cryptomnesia as a memory bias whereby a person falsely recalls generating a thought, an idea, an artwork, when the thought was
actually generated by someone else. In these cases, the artist is not deliberately engaging in plagiarism, but is rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.
The two different kinds of cryptomnesia are firstly a kind of sleeper effect, whereby old ideas come to feel new, and secondly, when the ideas of others are remembered as one's
own. In this case, the plagiarizer correctly recognizes that the idea is from an earlier time, but falsely remembers having been the originator of the idea. Various terms have
been coined to distinguish these two forms of plagiarism - occurrence forgetting vs. source forgetting and generation errors vs. recognition errors. The two types of
cryptomnesia appear to be independent: no relationship has been found between error rates and the two types are precipitated by different causes.
|
13. Is there a difference between plagiarism and playgiarism?
|
Nice one! The author of the term Playgiarism is Ramond Federman. According to Federman there is a huge difference between the two terms
and what they stand for, but his explanations are not very precise and fail to exactly define what he means by the term Playgiarism. In any case, he considers playgiarism to be
something morally good while he condemns plagiarism.
"I cannot explain how Playgiarism works. You do it or you don't. You're born a Playgiarizer or you're not. It's as simple as that. The laws of Playgiarism are unwritten.
Like incest, it's a taboo. It cannot be authenticated. The great Playgiarizers of all time -- Homer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Diderot, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Proust, Beckett,
Federman -- have never pretended to do anything else. Inferior writers deny that they playgiarize because they confuse Plagiarism with Playgiarism. It's not the same. The
difference is enormous, but no one has yet been able to explain it. Playgiarism cannot be measured in weight or size. It is as elusive as what it playgiarizes. Plagiarism is
sad. It whines. It cries. It feels sorry for itself. It apologizes. It feels guilty. It hides behind itself. Playgiarism on the contrary laughs all the time. It exposes itself.
It is proud. It makes fun of what it does while doing it. It denounces itself. That does not mean that Playgiarism is self-reflexive. How could it be? How can something reflect
itself when that self has, so to speak, no self, but only a borrowed self. A displaced self. If this is getting too complicated, too intellectual, too abstract, then let me put
it in simpler terms -- on the Walt Disney mental level: Playgiarism is above all a game whose only rule is the game itself. The French would call that Plajeu."
Source: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/federman/shoes/plajeu.html
|
14. Are plagiarism and fake the same thing?
|
Definitely not! One could even say they are opposites. While a plagiarist claims authorship over a work that not he but somebody else
made, a person who creates a fake or an art forgery actually makes the work himself and declares it as somebody else's. And there can never be an act of forgery without intent.
|
15. Is there a gender aspect involved in plagiarism?
|
As the creation of original works of art has been traditionally ascribed to the male genius, it might suggest itself that strategies
that involve "appropriation", in the broadest sense, might be considered as female. Artists like Sherrie Levine or Elaine Sturtevant, for instance, have explained their
work as challenging ideas of originality, and drawing attention to relations between power, gender and creativity, which also suggests the gender-specificity of plagiarist
tendencies.
|
