Amidst the paper writing
season there is always much talk of plagiarism and what it means to steal
someone’s idea or words. Recently as I have begun embarking on the powerful
journey from brainstorm to final draft in some of my classes, the discussion
has started circling my consciousness. It finally connected in my head this
weekend the connection between today and the near paranoia against plagiarism
and the original printing days where the name of the game was share and share
alike. This switch is fascinating to me.
In the days of original
printing, according to the Book, people would see material that they liked and just
re-print it, whether that mean word for word, the abridged version, or in a new
translation. No permission was needed at all, and even more than that it was
seen as enriching the literary culture. The seemingly chaotic re-printing of
different pieces of literature was helpful when printing was first occurring because
there was a higher demand at the time for printed books than there was a
supply.
This is not the case today.
We have plenty of paper literature to read and independence is more and more
the theme of our lives as democracy and self-sustaining thought grow in power
on the global scene. With this system in place, you are rewarded for your
accomplishments and that is how you grow in status – through your deeds. I
think this plays into the idea of our focusing on what we did as opposed to what
someone else did. In meetings, executives are often heard to specify “Jim gave
a great idea, he said…” or “In our meeting, I suggested we…” instead of saying “In
our meeting, we discussed…”
It is the same way now with
literature now. Even in essays and creative writing now we make sure to
enunciate that Nancy wrote what Nancy wrote and not that someone else wrote it
for Nancy. This is not in any way my saying that it is bad that we are
accountable for what we write and that we earn the credit for it. I actually
love the fact that no one can take the credit for my hard work. Perhaps that is
because I was brought up in this age, and perhaps not, but the idea still
stands.
From what I understand in the
book, they didn’t like piracy of books either, but it was just not regulated or
watched in the way we are yet. Thus, my point in all of this is that it served
a purpose for the time. So even though it was not something that they liked or
a good thing (to steal books – or anything - is never a good thing really, is
it?), it served the purpose to make the written word more available at a time when
it was just starting out. It served to entice people to read. It served as a
way to answer the unquenchable demand.
