Monday, October 1, 2007
Ghostwritting or Plagerizing?
After Friday's discussion about ghostwritting, I spent a few minutes over the weekend looking and thinking further about the issue. The distinction between ghostwritting versus plagerizing is a difficult one to define and may differ somewhat depending on the media form involved. For example, we talked briefly about music and plagerism in class. Artists are invarriably influenced by musicians before them. There are a large number of lawsuits dealing with an artist who claims that another took a portion of their own song. In some cases the lyrics of a part of the song are the same or very similar. Other times the controvercy involves the instramental rather than lyrical attributions of a song being too similar. How can we determine if an artist deliberately took a part of another person's song when there are so many songs that have been created already? I think that it is inevitable that there will be some repetition in music eventually. Sometimes this could easily occur on an unintentional level as musicians are probably not aware of all of the people and things that influence their music. I guess certain cases could be more visibly be defined as plagerism, but more ambiguious examples complicate our views of plagerism.
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2 comments:
As someone who has never played an instrument I don't know if I'd catch anything but the most blatant of musical plagiarisms. That said, I think there are only a certain number of cords, etc. and after awhile can anyone really claim ownership to some such combination? Just how much has to be the same before it becomes suspicious? I honestly have no idea. I think with ghostwriting I'm not so much concerned with the practice in business or government, but in creativity. I really hate the idea of people creating something and someone else assuming control over it. As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between plagiarism and ghostwriting in most cases is that the "author" pays off the writer for his work, while the plagiarist just tries to get away with it.
Are you sure you mean "ghostwriting?" Ghostwriting is when a writer is hired to write something on behalf of another. Plagerizing is when someone takes something already written and puts it out as their own.
There is a clear distinction, not a grey line, between the two.
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