Sunday, February 28, 2010

extra creditt!!

After reading these two articles about plagiarism, I have the fear that plagiarism won’t even exist anymore. It would cease to be called plagiarism and instead of replaced by the word “mixing.” It’s surprising that even though Helene Hegemann was found to have plagiarized a full page from another book to her novel, she was still chosen as a finalist for the Lepzig Book Fair. The prize was $20,000. If I could copy one of the Harry Potter Books and still qualify for $20,000, I would do it.

I do not think that I could choose whether Hegemann was plagiarizing or mixing because I know that articles are bias toward the situation. In the article, “ Author,17, Says It’s ‘Mixing,’ Not Plagiarism,” by Nicolas Kulish he writes that, “In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes.” But what does he mean when he says with few changes? If she had copied the page word for word and just changed a few transitions, that’s messed up that she did not get punished at all. But if she changed the page so that a paragraph was different, not too bad, she should get reprimanded for it, but an apology would do. However, if she reworded half the page, I would say she could get away with it.

What am I kidding? There is no such thing as mixing unless you reword. If you copy the words to the dotted i and crossed t. You are plagiarizing. I find it utterly surprising that Volker Weidermann, book critic said, “I believe it’s part of the concept of the book.” So the concept of the book is plagiarizing?

It’s unfair that Hegemann did not respectively give her inspirations to the author she stole from. Perhaps, she did mix a lot of the ideas from the author but if she did take a full page, that’s just being plain lazy. I think that it also comes from her age that her book did not receive any of the consequences. It is the story that because she is 17 and able to write a successful novel that wows the whole country of Germany instead of the fact that she plagiarized she would be hated by the whole nation. It feels like because she is younger, she should be let off this time until when she’s older and expected to know what she’s doing.

It would be different if she took the concept of the book she read, and used the same concept but made her book into a whole different world. An example is Lord of the Rings and the book the Sword of Shanhara. They both featured an unlikely character being the savior of the world and they must find a certain object or protect it because they are destined to. The names are different, the place is different, the object is different, the experiences are different but overall the concept is still the same. If Hegemann truly stole, she should be kicked out of her stardom.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that it's hard to say whether it's "plagiarizing" or "mixing" without having read the book -- and the book the author "borrowed" from! It's certainly an interesting dilemma.

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