Inspiration v. Plagiarism: A Historical Example

After reading various articles about the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration, I started thinking about how art has inspired further art throughout history and how this may/may not have changed since the development of the internet. My ponderings led me back to my high school creative writing class an one rather interesting assignment we had: Ekphrastic Poetry.

Before you say “gesundhiet,” let me provide an example. I’m sure at some point in your life or another, you’ve heard the song Vincent by Don McLean, an ode to the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. The song begins with these lines describing the painting Starry Night:

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

The song continues by describing numerous other works Van Gogh created while simultaneously describing his life struggle for recognition before he killed himself in 1890. This entire song is a wonderful work of Ekphrastic Poetry.

As a general definition, Ekphrasis refers to a work of art that comments on other works of art. It has been around for centuries, one of the early and quintessential examples of this is Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”. The website Ekphrastic Poetry provides numerous other examples of this written art form as well as the works that inspired them.

So, looking at the Ekphrastic form, it is very clear that this is a type of work that is heavily influenced by other works of art but is clearly not plagiarism. Thinking about this concept in terms of the internet, it allows people to experience such a vast variety of works that they may never be able to see in person. I personally think this is one of the ways the internet can hugely advance creativity: by bringing other influences to the forefront of your understanding and allowing you to explore a broader range of creative works and media. So long as you give credit where credit is due, I see this as a huge advantage today’s artists have over those of previous generations.

Guardrails

Today I found an interesting article by Michael Lynton, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures entertainment back in 2009 entitled Guardrails for the Internet: Preserving Creativity Online. Throughout the article, which appeared in May of that year in the Huffington Post, Lynton describes the detrimental effect the internet has on the entertainment industry and what needs to be done to turn the internet into a structured, right-conscious environment.

Lynton’s first claim in this article is that though the internet has enormous potential for good, as a whole it is harmful to anyone in the business of creativity. He supports this claim with the intriguing story of how a copy of the movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine was stolen and uploaded to the internet over a month before its release date and how it was illegally downloaded over four million times before the studio could stop it. He then goes on to detail how “the Internet has brought people with no regard for the intellectual property of others together with a technology that allows them to easily steal that property and sell or give it away to everyone, with little fear of being caught or prosecuted.” While he does go on to mention that the internet has great potential to improve society and humanity, it is clear that his opinion of the internet is severely skewed.

Lynton’s second major claim is that in order for the internet to help improve society, it needs some restrictions first. He cites the South Korean broadband network as an example here: though they have one of the most advanced internet networks, it has no restrictions and is crawling with pirates. Lynton explains his point extremely well when he contrasts the development of the internet to Eisenhower’s development of the Interstate Highway System. He says that the internet needs some basic forms of restriction comparable guardrails, speed and weight limits, and police men to ensure its safety and security.

Lynton’s argument is very strong and well supported but it includes a few interesting assumptions. It begins by assuming most internet related things are bad which is not always the case. People do use the internet for a number of productive things such as conducting business or networking with peers and co-workers. Additionally, he seems to assume that most of the people who use the internet have the intention to commit piracy which is not always the case.

Personally, I agree with this argument, but I don’t know how policy makers could go about implementing such changes. It is an interesting concept to think about, but I’m not sure if it is possible.

To Write or Not To Write? That is the Question

For this week’s post, I want to breach the subject of fanfiction. Even if most people don’t know all the ins and outs of the topic, I think that everyone can grasp the general topic by dissecting the name alone. To put it simply, fanfiction is a work of fiction written by amateur writers who are fans of the source material.

It’s interesting to see the actual numbers on some of these fandoms. Presently, the current number of fics in the largest fandom, Harry Potter, on fanfiction.net is 553,909. This ranges from very short one-off pieces of less than a thousand words to novel-length works that users can follow like old-time newspaper serials. This number doesn’t look so great in comparison to the fact that the seventh book sold “a record-setting 8.3 million copies in 24 hours” the first weekend it was released in the USA (USA Today). Even though there is almost no comparison between how many copies of the books are in print compared to how many fics there are floating around online, it’s amazing when you consider the time and effort thousands of people put into these works that will never get them any professional recognition.

The legality of it all is a bit fuzzy. Strictly speaking, every writer on these fanfiction cites is guilty of copywrite infringement. But honestly, when in the course of human history has legality stopped someone from doing what they want, particularly when they don’t feel there are immediate consequences. Personally, I see fanfiction as a positive thing. Its allows the fans a chance to give back and expand the genre further and to elaborate on characters and see how they react in different circumstances. That could just be my bias as a fanfiction writer talking, but without fanfiction, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as confident about my writing abilities as I am today.

The Blogs Outside This Blog

This week, I’d like to take a look at two blogs I found that pertain to creativity and intellectual property.

The first post comes from the blog Phosita, an intellectual property law blog. This post, entitled Facebook Shuts Down “Facebook Ultimate” iPad App, describes how some intellectual property laws can trip up new entrepreneurs trying to break into the market. In this case, the article uses sympathetic language by stating the offender as a mom and other words with negative connotation like “unhappy” and “shuts down” to appeal to the reader’s sense of pathos. The writer also appeals to narrative in the introduction by giving a short account of what happened. Later in the post, the writer uses some logical appeals to point out the flaws in the app-designers methodology and to highlight the importance of seeking legal assistance to ensure you aren’t infringing on copywrited work.

The second post comes from the blog Learning Today, a blog that focuses on child development and learning. The post, Spurring Creativity Online, begins by describing common childhood craft products to engage the reader. Once the reader’s emotions have been engaged, the author provides several online creativity options for children in a straightforward, informative tone. The author appeals to ethos twice, first by saying how much she “enjoyed playing” one of the Crayola online games, and again by describing a Lego game that also engaged her.

These posts are very different because they address entirely different audiences. The Phosita post reads more like a news blurb while the Learning Today article seems like an informational for parents and teachers. For the most part, they use entirely different rhetorical conventions, though both use pathos in some capacity or another. Personally, I feel that both posts achieve their ends. The Phosita blog is intended to inform the general public of instances in which intellectual property law has been used. The Learning Today post aims to provide new mediums for instructors to use.