Awhile back I snagged a .JPG of a pencil drawing to use in one of my posts. It was original artwork, so I made the image a hyperlink, back to the site I snagged it from.
The artist, having spied my link via his referral logs, wasn't pleased. Not mad, mind you, but he sent me a note saying that while he appreciated the link, he would've appreciated asking permission and actual name attribution more. So I did the latter, adding his name with a proper © symbol. I also apologized, because it was a naughty thing to do. Since then I've made proper attribution wherever possible (which isn't very often), and I check for Creative Commons or other usage directives (which aren't very common). I know that I've missed some, or grabbed a graphic that someone lifted from someone else. Content undergoes its own evolution and migration once it's been released into the wilds of the Internet, and it's often difficult to keep track of what came from where.
This, however, is a different order of business:
I have a project I'm working on. It's a first person narrative about a fellow who thinks he's Nick Carraway, to the point that he's written a novel that is a word-for-word copy of The Great Gatsby. But I'll make it clear in my press releases that it's not me writing, it's this deluded guy who thinks he's Nick Carraway.
Genius!
I understand how easy it is to run afoul of someone else's copyright. I also understand that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. But to claim that there's no such thing as originality? To hide behind a fictional construct as justification for your ignorance?
Ex post facto bullshit.
It's true that the lines of creative ownership are blurring, but in this case they're clear and bold.
RELATED:
The Online Photographer hears from Harlan Ellison. [Via @neilhimself.]
The artist, having spied my link via his referral logs, wasn't pleased. Not mad, mind you, but he sent me a note saying that while he appreciated the link, he would've appreciated asking permission and actual name attribution more. So I did the latter, adding his name with a proper © symbol. I also apologized, because it was a naughty thing to do. Since then I've made proper attribution wherever possible (which isn't very often), and I check for Creative Commons or other usage directives (which aren't very common). I know that I've missed some, or grabbed a graphic that someone lifted from someone else. Content undergoes its own evolution and migration once it's been released into the wilds of the Internet, and it's often difficult to keep track of what came from where.
This, however, is a different order of business:
It usually takes an author decades to win fawning reviews, march up the best-seller list and become a finalist for a major book prize. Helene Hegemann, just 17, did it with her first book, all in the space of a few weeks, and despite a savaging from critics over plagiarism.The author has apologized for not being "more open about her sources" (in German, here), and acknowledgments have been added to the second edition. But she has also
The publication last month of her novel about a 16-year-old exploring Berlin’s drug and club scene after the death of her mother, called “Axolotl Roadkill,” was heralded far and wide in German newspapers and magazines as a tremendous debut, particularly for such a young author. The book shot to No. 5 this week on the magazine Spiegel’s hardcover best-seller list.
For the obviously gifted Ms. Hegemann, who already had a play (written and staged) and a movie (written, directed and released in theaters) to her credit, it was an early ascension to the ranks of artistic stardom. That is, until a blogger last week uncovered material in the novel taken from the less-well-known novel “Strobo,” by an author writing under the nom de plume Airen. In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes
...defended herself as the representative of a different generation, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher after the scandal broke.How, exactly, does one go about creating something new when originality does not exist? Granted, Ms. Hegemann herself doesn't use the phrase "something new," that's an interpretation by the New York Times reporter. But what she does say is this:
“I myself don’t feel it is stealing, because I put all the material into a completely different and unique context and from the outset consistently promoted the fact that none of that is actually by me.”So you're not the plagiarist...your narrator is.
I have a project I'm working on. It's a first person narrative about a fellow who thinks he's Nick Carraway, to the point that he's written a novel that is a word-for-word copy of The Great Gatsby. But I'll make it clear in my press releases that it's not me writing, it's this deluded guy who thinks he's Nick Carraway.
Genius!
I understand how easy it is to run afoul of someone else's copyright. I also understand that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. But to claim that there's no such thing as originality? To hide behind a fictional construct as justification for your ignorance?
Ex post facto bullshit.
It's true that the lines of creative ownership are blurring, but in this case they're clear and bold.
RELATED:
The Online Photographer hears from Harlan Ellison. [Via @neilhimself.]
How like a teenager to invoke the "everybody's doing it" defense. If I were the writer she'd stolen from, I'd have sicced a whole battalion of flesh-eating lawyers on her.
And frankly, if I were the artist you nicked that drawing from, I'd have been rather more than hopping mad.
Of course originality exists, just not in her excuse. If I read this correctly she wasn't even asking forgiveness, forget about permission.
The generation thing might explain a wretched lip piercing or questionable taste in music, but stealing is stealing, no matter how old you are.
Not to say that I was in the right, but I do think creatives who post their content on the Internet have a certain responsibility to spell out their terms. In the absence of explicit terms I chose to define what I thought was fair (a link back to the source). He didn't agree. But he also acknowledged that the whole process could've been streamlined had he defined his terms on his site, which he eventually did.
That's the idea behind Creative Commons. It spells out terms that account for the wide range of intellectual property ownership possibilities created by the Internet, where it's very easy to move content around. My own terms for Writebastard are Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. The lines of IP ownership are blurring, but there are options out there. If Frank Zappa could figure out that sampling was going to be an issue and specifically include it in his copyright notice before anybody else, the collective mob of the Internet ought to be able to figure out something similar.
What Hegemann did, though, is flat-out indefensible. Copyright for printed works is well-established and very clear. A book is not the Internet. Flesh-eating? I'd hire Wolfram and Hart.