Copy Right!

by Neil Thomas
May 16th, 2011

Back in March this year, the German Defence Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (pictured above) resigned after it was revealed that he had copied a quarter of his PhD thesis. He was duly stripped of his doctorate by the University of Bayreuth.

Being accused of lifting chunks of text (the German media labelled him Baron zu Googleberg) has finished his career. He clearly didn’t understand the difference between plagiarism and the bona fide use of other people’s material. As the old saying goes, ‘copying from one person is plagiarism, copying from many is research’.

If you acknowledge your sources when quoting, provided you do not breach copyright laws, you are deemed to be copying in the ‘right’ way.

Quoting and using larger extracts is seen as OK then, so long as adequate references are made and footnotes are placed to show where you have lifted the stuff from. That is part of the academic culture and is totally acceptable. But cutting and pasting and passing off the thoughts of others as your own is a cultural no-no.

A great many PhDs must be suspect (and not just those submitted by obvious rogues; witness the recently cited Saif Gaddafi and his London School of Economics thesis).

In music, sampling is culturally acceptable, trying to sound exactly like someone else (as in tribute bands) is seen as naff (even if enjoyable!), but doing your own cover version is viewed as creatively ‘sound’.

So, imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery but in cultural terms it doesn’t apply across the board.

It’s OK for music it seems, perhaps less so for books (or theses at German universities). What about architecture? I don’t think anyone lambasted Palladio for mimicking the Romans. And yet, in contrast, ‘copying’ in contemporary visual art is seen as unoriginal. Finally, what of new technology in a cultural context – perhaps retweeting could be described as plagiarism masquerading as talent spotting, or perhaps you could even say that retweeting is the insincerest form of flattery.