Fame and recognition is something we all crave. While some of us exploit the creativity in them to get accorded fame and recognition, others spin off others’ ideas while others result to absolute verbatim of intellectual property. It is for these reasons that there are copyright laws to crack down on ‘thieves’ of intellectual property. The three essays from the weeks reading presented hard evidence of plagiarism in the writing of literary work.
The extent to which work from famous writers was plagiarized was shameful. I agree with the authors of the essays in that intellectual property ought to be protected, and that creativity is more reputable than plagiarism. Nevertheless, I also relate with the concerns of the authors as to whether all human utterances whether in writing or spoken are not plagiarized. Most of our ideas are secondary in that they are either borrowed from other individuals or inspired of them. Even where these ideas are paraphrased, their originality is of doubt. This begs the question whether anything is original.
In writing, we quote captions from other peoples’ work to enrich our own. Researchers seek secondary information from respondents in order to give their findings a representative value. Their final products are copyrighted as original work yet most of them are dependent on secondary sources of information. In my opinion, this is food for thought for the copyright lawmakers.
Creative minds come up with ideas that are new and unique. These individuals have implemented these ideas to come up state of the art market ready products. It is remarkable that some of these ideas and products have been copyrighted. This means that these ideas or products cannot be replicated elsewhere without permission from their ‘owner’. I am left wondering whether this is a little too much even in the name of creative licensing. My opinion is that innovations improve on inventions in order to come up with products that respond better to the needs of the changing world. It is through such efforts that we have faster and more efficient vehicles when compared to the first prototypes.
Many creative artists enjoy the grey area between originality and imitation. For instance, painters exhibit their artistic nature through monograms and pictorial compositions of many aspects of society. Yet there is conspicuous resemblance between the pieces of art in galleries and exhibitions. The same happens in the fashion industry, automobile assembling industry and the movie and teleplay making industries. Inasmuch as I do not condone plagiarism, I think it is time we redefined what originality is.
