Not Every Reuse of Ideas is Plagiarism
Everything has been said and done before
A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise, he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century.
Imagine having found the perfect writing group. You can't wait for the first meeting. You are excited to learn all about writing and make some new friends. You arrive at the meetup; you introduce yourself and you take a seat. The host comes and gives a long-winded speech about plagiarism, all the ways it's wrong, and how it's not tolerated in the group. The meeting is almost over and another person comes and talks more about the consequences.
You promise yourself never to fall into the plagiarism trap. You go home and begin doing your research to write. As a new writer, you need to research the things you want to write about because you don't know everything yet. You realize everything you want to say has already been said and you aren't sure how to proceed. You don't want to plagiarise or patch write but after your research, the knowledge in your head isn't yours. You just learned it. You are confused. If you write what you just researched, is it considered plagiarism? Patch writing, maybe?
It’s the following week and you attend the meeting. The same thing happens. The host talks more about the consequences of plagiarism and patchwriting for 30 mins, and another comes and talks about the dangers of copying other people's work. All this talk is making you worried and you feel uneasy. They also failed to offer solutions. You thought joining this group would be fun, but so far it isn't. It all feels too much and you don’t want any troubles, so you put off writing for now until you can figure out how to write safely.
Ideas come to us based on the ideas all around us. Ideas are a mixture of one’s own ideas, those we read and those we discuss with friends — making it hard or even impossible to sort out who owns what. It’s impossible to separate your thoughts and ideas from those of others after days and days of research.
Plagiarism is wrong.
If another writer copied and pasted this article and put his name on it, that is stealing and would have consequences. Stealing means replicating someone’s work. The website that was taking Medium writer’s work and making it their own was stealing. Stealing is an attempt at taking what’s not yours in hopes of not being caught. But if another writer read this article and went “Hmm, this gives me an idea” and he goes and writes an article about how new writers can handle “plagiarism overwhelm”, will that be considered plagiarism?
No.
What the second writer did was merge his ideas and mine to create new content. He is not required to give me credit unless he chooses to because it is his own creation and has nothing to do with me. Copying is different. It pays no tribute to the original creator.
Babies grow up copying everything their parents do. Nobody asks children to give credit. It’s how they learn.
By copying, we are influenced by an original idea, acknowledging the idea, building on it, and recreating a new idea.
When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it — Anatole France.
As writers, it is very easy to fall into the trap of constantly complaining about other people copying our work. We waste our energy complaining that others are plagiarising. We point fingers thinking it will make us look good, being the ones to say others have broken the rules. But what this does is instill fear in others and deter them from mastering their skill. Instead of encouraging new writers to write, we make them afraid to do so.
When great masters teach, they don’t forbid their students from also teaching others. Never happened before. Never will. Instead, they are fulfilled seeing their students imparting that same knowledge onto others. In college, we watch our professors give lectures that came straight from a textbook without citation. Is that considered plagiarism or just teaching?
When successful creators create, they are honored when others make new creations out of their work. That is their biggest compliment.
And when the first creator of the universe created trees, he made them available for us to turn into paper. He didn’t warn us to not create new things from trees. Without trees, we wouldn't have toilet paper and humanity would suffer!
One can steal everything from an artist except their talent― Marty Rubin.
Your greatest accomplishment is producing content that inspires others to produce content and so on and so forth. When it is time for us to leave the world, our families won't send us away with our words and sentences. It stays behind because it belongs here.
Our ideas will forever be our ideas, but others should be able to create based on our ideas. They shouldn't be labeled as plagiarists and must not be punished.
Writers can’t steal or reuse the exact words of another writer, but writers are allowed to recreate the ideas of others. If you write on the internet, it is going to happen and there is little you can do about it. That is how it’s always been, and that is how it’s supposed to be.
Not every reuse of ideas is plagiarism. It is a compliment, and we should learn to see it that way.
Imposing strict rules against word and idea reuse prevents new writers from learning to write. In fact, not only new writers but all writers patch together pieces of information from different sources and we use our own thoughts, words, expressions, and conceptions to make them our own.
While you may feel copying deserves punishment, I believe it is not necessarily deceitful or thievery. Rather than seeing it as “stealing”, we should view it as a sign of respect and admiration. Once you can look at it from a different perspective, you come to realize that all the articles panicking over copying and the constant talk of it make less sense. It is only a waste of time and energy.
When you have wit of your own, it’s a pleasure to credit other people for theirs ― Criss Jami, Killosophy.
Your greatest accomplishment is producing content that inspires others to produce content.
