the challenge of plagiarism in the digital

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world

perry

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share

march

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2004

plagiarism: it’s in the

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culture

all writers appropriate language from sources and reshape it as their own, but inexperienced writers don’t do that very well (Rebecca Moore Howard, quoted in Hansen, 2003: 777).

Writing in 2003 of Quentin Tarantino’s fourth film Kill Bill Vol. 1Jeff Shannon of Amazon.com remarked that it was ‘either brilliantly (and brutally) innovative or one of the most blatant acts of plagiarism ever conceived’. And if it was the latter – so what? Each option is seen as positive in its own way. For the reality is that plagiarism is a fundamental element of modern and (especially) postmodern popular culture.

In March 2002 US rap artist Eminem and his record company were sued by French jazz musician Jacques Loussier for allegedly infringing on the copyright of Loussier’s work Pulsion - in Eminem’s track ‘Kill You’. What was unusual was not that the action was taken – there are numerous such examples of (usually fairly obscure) artists taking on major cultural figures in such ways – but that numerous other artists did not follow suit. Eminem’s music, like that of many of his contemporaries, is essentially and purposively derivative.

Postmodern artists deliberately use techniques of reproduction as a way to ‘challenge the conception of originality underlying traditional conceptions of art’ (Pfohl, 2000: 193). The practice of ‘double-coding’ plays with the concepts of signifier and signified (Barthes, 1973) to evoke a response from an audience already located in a media and message-saturated world. It is almost as if everything and anything that can be said, has been said. The only remaining option is to rejig and manipulate existing images and texts.

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Fig 1. Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup
Plagiarism or satire?

Despite the explicit links between such ‘borrowing’ and postmodernism, such an approach is nothing new. Many notable creative people, from Andy Warhol (Fig. 1) to Alfred Hitchcock, have revelled in the magpie-like borrowing of images and symbols. Thus Païni and Cogeval (2000: 18-19) say of Hitchcock that his films:

resonate with numerous iconographic themes descended from Symbolism and Surrealism . . . in turn Hitchcock has become an extraordinary “purveyor of images” to late 20th century art. A great many contemporary visual artists have drawn on the filmmaker’s motifs to create artistic offspring that would doubtless have astounded him

Artists who provided visual inspiration for the filmmaker include Magritte, Munch and Duchamp, while those influenced by him include Cindy Sherman, Eldon Garnet and Willie Doherty. Contemporary artists who express the ‘sample culture’ include the British artistMark Leckey and the American DJ, composer, collagist and sculptor Christian Marclay (Tate Modern, 2003)

Other art forms have also embodied practices of ‘borrowing’ or plagiarism, such as the incorporation of ‘folk’ tunes in classical music by composers such as Dvorak or O’Riada (Swanson, 2000: 139). In literature and writing the ‘borrowing’ of plots, characters and lines was widespread amongst Shakespeare and his contemporaries, while more recently, the mythical events of the Harry Potter stories have been adapted from stories extant in western folklore, such as that of Cinderella (Wheeler, 2002).

Fashion is a field where inspiration is routinely drawn from the ‘looks’ of the past: perhaps no more so than in the current enthusiasm for ‘retro’ dressing. As the New York Metro on-line magazine notes:

it may come as a shock to customers, but most designers regularly dispatch staff worldwide to scour vintage depots in search of inspiration. (The fashion world is stalled in a staunch postmodernism, where success is measured in the ability to synthesize various influences and make them commercially viable.) These designers buy up bags, belts, or even a coat and then limit their pilfering to the details: the stitching here, perhaps, or a buttonhole there. But they usually stop a hemline short of producing a direct copy. (Larocca, 2002)

The practice is only condemned when the ‘borrowing’ is soon to go too far: as in French fashion designer Nicolas Ghesquiere’s blatant copying in 2002 of a 1973 work by the late Californian designer Kaisik Wong (Fig. 2). This is where, according to I.D. magazine (Chen, 2003: 79) ‘referencing something becomes ripping it off’. Ghesquiere was unperturbed by the expose of his plagiarism: reported as saying: “Yes, I made a mistake. Now my team and I laugh about it” (Garnett, 2003). It has had no negative impact on his career: indeed it has probably made a positive contribution to his profile.

Such is the ubiquity of intertextuality in contemporary culture that one critic (Petersen, 2000: 167) has remarked that:

the traditional distinction between originality – having ideas – and plagiarism – stealing them – privileges notions of authenticity, individual creativity, and, most especially, priority or precedence. Plagiarists are, by definition, second. Yet with the increasingly unchecked circulation of ideas, this all-or-nothing emphasis on having an idea first . . . [has] itself become pointless, except in the field of public relations

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Wong 1973 / Ghesquiere 2002

Fig 2. Ghesquiere’s ‘stitch-by-stitch’ copy of Wong’s 1973 vest
Seen even by the fashionistas as blatant copying

Contemporary postmodern culture rejects the tenets of the individually creative Romantic Author (Woodmansee & Jaszi cited in Livingston-Webber, 1999: 268) and, rather, is interested in the ‘realignment of [existing] elements in transformative recombination’ (Livingston-Webber, 1999: 265). Such recombinatory activity, whether in hip-hop music, TV advertising, zine culture or Hollywood film, is a key element of the cultural context within which contemporary discussions of plagiarism must be located. But, as we see in the next section, it is not only in entertainment and cultural production that such practices are institutionalised.

institutional

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copying

Outside of the field of art, copying is routinised in other aspects of culture. Government ministers give speeches – using the first person – that are written for them by civil servants or speechwriters; writers of leading textbooks add their name (or brand) to material written by research assistants. ‘Celebrities’ (eg columnist and celebrity adulterer Terri Keane) and sportstars (eg footballer and controversialist Roy Keane) routinely have their words or their lives recreated by ‘ghostwriters’. Most notorious, in recent history, was the admitted plagiarism of postgraduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi’s work on Iraqi intelligence forces by operatives of the British government in the compilation of their ‘Iraq dossier’ (‘UK dossier that lifted sections of thesis criticised’ Irish Times 6 Feb 2004).

None of these practices is viewed in a particularly negative way (except perhaps by subordinates whose efforts are unaccredited). This is what Martin (1994) calls ‘institutional plagiarism’. He sees it as ‘a feature of systems of formal hierarchy, in which credit for intellectual work is more a consequence than a cause of unequal power and position’. There are those that are in a position to get others to do some or all of their intellectual labour for them: just as they can get their housekeeping or nannying done by domestic staff.

At a more prosaic level it is obvious to anybody working in an Irish academic environment that copyright legislation is – notwithstanding the display of warning notices – being thwarted on a massive scale through bulk photocopying of images, sheet music, articles, chapters and often entire books. It is estimated by the global publishing industry that 300 billion pages of text are illegally photocopied per annum, representing a potential loss to publishers of over US$15 billion (PASA, nd). Such activity is clearly visible to students, as they are provided with such materials by tutors and lecturers. Unlike the primary and secondary sectors, no agreement on licensing of such activity has yet been agreed by tertiary educators.

Similarly, while an issue of copyright and piracy rather than of plagiarism, businesses in Ireland and elsewhere are known to engage extensively in unauthorised copying of software. It is estimated by the Business Software Alliance that 42% of software in use in Irish businesses is illegally copied: a loss of a potential US$44 million (BSA, 2003). Piracy on such a scale indicates that such copying is widely seen as an acceptable, perhaps economically necessary, practice.

Another ‘acceptable’ face of plagiarism can be found in the use of others’ materials in lectures and other teaching activities – often in the form of what Howard (1999: 89-91) calls ‘patchwriting’ – that is ‘copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym substitutes’. Lecturers commonly provide information in lectures, and in associated handouts or webpages, that is not adequately sourced, or referenced at all. At primary or secondary level attribution is even less likely. The process is accentuated when students slavishly copy material from overheads or, as happened in one case that I experienced, a secondary school teacher handed completed student ‘projects’ to her pupils to memorise, for exam purposes, as a record of their own ‘research’ activities.

Aspects of what might be called plagiarism also constitute a fundamental aspect of the academic writing process as described by Haviland and Mullin (1999). In the production of academic papers and grant applications academics routinely draw on the input of others – circulating drafts; incorporating comments made at seminar presentations; making use of the amendments suggested by anonymous referees; treating already successful papers or funding submissions as templates. Researchers often deliver a similar paper in a number of contexts – without necessarily drawing attention to the lack of originality. Such activities are not only seen as legitimate, but are rewarded in a competitive academic context. When such actions are carried out by students they may well be defined as plagiarism.

We can see that in many institutional spheres of contemporary life: in entertainment, art, politics, business and academia, activities that could be labelled plagiarism are recognised as acceptable, even necessary. The challenge for educators is to provide a rationale for their claim that plagiarism by students is a deviant act, when those same students can easily see that numerous others – perhaps even their own lecturers and tutors – engage quite shamelessly in the exercise.

theincreasing value of

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ideas

Whilst many artists have made free with the world of signs, and others have routinely ‘borrowed’ material for their own purposes, countercurrents have been developing amongst those who make their money from intellectual property [IP]: particularly those who own and control global consumer brands. In her best-selling book No logo Naomi Klein (2000: 176) points out:

we have almost two centuries worth of brand-name history under our collective belt, coalescing to create a sort of global pop-cultural Morse code. But there is just one catch: while we may all have the code implanted in our brains, we’re not really allowed to use it. In the name of protecting the brand from dilution, artists and activists who try to engage with the brand as equal partners in their “relationships” are routinely dragged into court for violating trademark, copyright, libel or “brand disparagement” laws – easily abused statutes that form an airtight protective seal around the brand, allowing it to brand us, but prohibiting us from so much as scuffing it.

In a world where intellectual property – from one’s personal image to computer code – is becoming ever more central to commerce, companies such as Disney, McDonalds and Mattel (makers of Barbie dolls, Fig 3) are acting to exert greater control over what they regard as their exclusive property(Klein, 2000: 177-178; Rand, 1995: 76; Livingston-Webber, 1999: 268).

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Fig 3. Barbie the suicide bomber.
The sort of cultural appropriation not appreciated by Mattel – the doll’s manufacturers. But do they have a right to threaten artists with legal action for subverting their brand image?

In 2003 British artist James Cauty was the subject of ‘cease and desist’ letter from the Royal Mail due to his use of images from postage stamps in his Black smoke, stamps of mass destruction exhibition. Music star Madonna is the subject of a lawsuit from Samuel Bourdin, son of late French photographer Guy Bourdin, alleging that she used images from the photographer’s works in her video Hollywood (Beck, 2004) (Fig. 4). In possibly the most bizarre such case musician Mike Batt (onetime songwriter to the Wombles) paid over stg£100,000 to settle an action by the John Cage Trust that Batt’s work One minute silence (which ‘sounded’ as suggested in the title) infringed on the copyright of Cage’s similarly silent (but longer) 1952 piece 4’33” (‘Copycat commandoes’ The Age (Melbourne) 25 September 2003).


Bourdin /  /
Madonna

Bourdin /  /
Madonna

Fig. 4 Madonna’s images
do they do more than ‘refer to Bourdin’? (Beck, 2004: 46)
Image source:

According to Pfohl (2000: 196) ‘copyright law reifies existing ways of perceiving art, and in so doing, stifles, rather than encourages, creativity’. Conversely ‘[the means of] self-expression is often appropriation and redefinition of the images of popular culture’. Indeed there is merit in the use and reuse of ideas, concepts, knowledge, language and symbols: according to Moulton and Robinson (2002) ‘building new ideas from old ideas, using existing components and combining them in new ways, might be creativity, not plagiarism’. This is certainly what Tarantino, Warhol and Eminem believe. But what you can do depends on the discursive field within which you operate. What might be admired in the realm of a reflexive and winkingly-ironic postmodern popular culture may elicit a very different response in the rather more rarefied (but, significantly increasingly marketised) world of academia (LaFollette, 1992). It may also raise the ire of IP owners and their legal representatives.

The vigorous pursuit of intellectual property rights on a global level, finding its ultimate expression in the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights)agreement, has led to an equally vigorous @nticopyright movement (Livingstone-Webber, 1999). Combatants include the band Negativland, who famously took on U2 and their record company Island Records (negativland.com) and the ‘authors’ of numerous print and web-based zines who routinely take existing text and images (otherwise known as ‘intellectual property’) and recombine them into new forms – usually critical in some way of the original source (Livingston-Webber, 1999). The @nticopyright movement has increasingly moved away from ultimately fruitless confrontation with multinational owners of IP towards more creative solutions such as the Creative Commons initiative (Fig 5) that is developing new types of licensing to facilitate collaborative creativity. Their slogan ‘skip the intermediaries’ aims to allow direct contact between IP owners without the involvement of lawyers or licensing bodies. The outcome has, it is claimed, been a new type of collaborative creativity (creativecommons.org).

Fig. 5 Creative Commons
‘creative works set free for certain uses’

The IP environment has been fundamentally challenged by digital technology and modern media structures. The convergence between both media forms (all of which – whether painting, film or song - can be converted to a stream of binary code) and media industries (companies such as Vivendi or TimeWarner span numerous industries) has dissolved many of the boundaries that were created and sustained by specific technologies and business forms (Tovey & Share, 2003: 429-430). Indeed Mirow and Shore (1997, cited in Carroll, 2002: 15) suggest that the process of digitalisation has altered the nature of the ‘ownership’ of texts. Web-based material exists in a blurred space between ‘public’ and ‘private’, challenging former notions of intellectual property (Turnitin.com, nd, a). This is the environment within which media-savvy students live: one where downloading music is an ubiquitous activity of debatable legal status; where weblogs incorporate masses of ‘copyrighted’ material and where amateur designers and visual artists gleefully alter images with Photoshop ( Once again, there is a challenge in trying to evolve a relevant discussion of academic plagiarism within this dynamic environment.

plagiarism: good or

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bad?

whether theft, lie, fraud, freeloading, deafness to the voice of God, cultural vandalism, or whatever combination, plagiarism is a falsification of self (Swanson, 2000: 141)

We have seen that on the hand plagiarism is ubiquitous within western culture. On the other hand we recognise, in some quarters, an increasing realisation of the value of ‘intellectual property’ and attempts to enforce (and resist) exclusive ownership and control over ideas and images. But this does not really help us to address the question: is plagiarism a good or a bad thing? As Moulton and Robinson (2002) point out, this is an area of considerable ethical complexity. We have seen that the unattributed use of others’ words or ideas is not universally perceived as a bad thing within our culture. Indeed there is a strong argument that our notions of intellectual property and the ownership of ideas is a culturally specific one. Swanson (2000: 136) suggests that ‘in much of the world the idea of collective accretion of ideas and form is dominant, and the construct of individual creativity that dominates in the US and Europe is not emphasized’.

Permission, under specific circumstances, to borrow, adapt and reuse ideas is entrenched within intellectual property legislation, such as copyright and patenting law. The process of using others’ ideas or words then is not morally circumspect in itself. Rather, as Swanson argues (2000: 133) ‘plagiarism is an ethical question (in the sense that it pertains to prohibitions of specific groups)’. But ethics are a social construct, developed within specific social and historical contexts. Thus to recognise an ethical basis for our judgements about plagiarism is to admit that the concept itself is contingent and open to critique: it is not a moral absolute.

Consciousness of plagiarism, and the extent to which it is seen to be problematic, varies according to a number of institutional factors. Thus in relation to the field of design, Swanson (2000: 136) remarks that: