Plagiarism is Dead

Jonathan Lethem was interviewed by Terry Gross Monday on Fresh Air. He has a new book You Don't Love Me Yet in which he recasts plagiarism as "value-neutral." Issues of appropriation and attribution are not new in the arts, but have generally been given a context that allows for societal and legal assessment: students copy other works with the understanding that students are not assessed with the same expectations; "real" artists use appropriation as a means of commenting or elaborating on previous works. In today's mashup and mixdown culture, some are postulating that plagiarism of music and images is kind of over. But writers of scholarly or popular works are still held accountable for using their own original words.

Lathem is interested in creating a more communal approach to writing. His Promiscuous Materials Project puts his words out for others to adapt and adopt as they will. In his overview of this project, he states: "My thinking along these lines has been strongly influenced by Open Source theory and the Free Culture movement, and by Lewis Hyde's book, The Gift."

He points to the Wikipedia entry on Open Source Culture, which in turn points to a "mediography" on Open Source Culture. This list includes content related to Dangermouses' Grey Album, a the internationally-famous mashup of the Beatle's White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album. The battle over the copyright issues related to this groundbreaking musical re-use collage was intense, and involved many heavyweights bound to put a stop to the whole thing. But in the end, all efforts faded under the sheer demand for the re-mixed content. For those who want to mashup, this battle was a triumph. For those who want to guard, is any rock and roll song really original anyway? For everyone else: if you make anything digital today, be prepared to share...