Plagiarism:

[billy]

How it affects the forum, poets and poetry in general?
This is a serious discussion, not a witch hunt or an excuse for finger pointing.
Hopefully people will read this post and know it's a bannable offence. In this thread we want to define, if can the act of plagiarism, the taboo of plagiarism and to some extent how poets got to this point in history. any nasty shit such as all plagiarist must die etc will be removed. by all means say why you don't like them but in the context of a really serious discussion.
if we have to, i'll move the goal post but let's try and stick to the discussion at hand, i'll go first.

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After doing quite a bit of reading up on the matter, i came to the conclusion that plagiarism as a moral crime is more of a modern phenomenon. before the 18oo's poets were enthused to copy the greats, to be as close to the masters works as possible in order to 'avoid unnecessary invention, (from a wiki) after that, plagiarism came to be, and all the nasty stuff connected with it grew out of poetry's romantic period, and here we are today.

i think in modern times of poetry, the poet found a unique voice and wanted to keep it. imagination began to rule the word and poets felt their imagination belonged to themselves; fuck off and get your own fucking imagination! now we guard what we have created, we have the right, maybe not legal but for the best part, moral and just.

we ask that poets quote other poets if they use their words. sadly it's not as clear cut as that. lot's of shakespearian sonnets are now cliche, widely used and abused. to use one of these cliche phrases is only classed as a sin against good poetry, yet should we use a lesser known phrase we run the risk of being called plagiarist. while a cliche is clearly not plagiarism, why would an unknown phrase be such?

then we move on to form. we've all tried our hands at a sonnet or two or a terza rima...thanks to the resident ma'am

by the very nature of doing so we commit an act of plagiarism! wtf you all cry and beat me senseless, we're not plaguing anything. the truth is stealing someone elses form is also classed as plagiarism.

the good thing though, is we ignore such thing in the circles of poetry, (the romantics came to like the forms of others so they decided that steal them we're in fact a really good thing to do. you can steal a form but not a phrase was the shout.

which is all good reading but does little for us here.
my idea of plagiarism is "i'm going to pass that persons work, or some that persons work as my own." and in committing such an act the guilty party crosses the line. sounds good but we hit a large problem. certain words a poet uses are common place. you fat bastard, for instance, is something i hear a lot. so for me it has to be a phrase with a palpable uniqueness.

the dog was licking his hairless balls, won't suffice for anyone but the lucky dog. cleaver rasped a testicle lovingly, on the other testicle, would.
so the phrase has to be unique. how many words should an offending phrase be! you shout, and i have no idea. i did read somewhere that if it's more than 6 it's plagiarism and i think that a good arbitrary number to work with. so for me a phrase with (more) than 6 words that are the same or too similar to be a coincidence does the trick.

after all that i have to admit to being a bit of a hypocrite. (to some extent) for me the crime isn't about stealing someone's work, that's really secondary and doesn't even come near to rocking my boat. the crime, the only crime for me is passing it off as your own. in a poetry community it shows every poet that you can't be trusted to acknowledge another poets work. that's the crime and in a closed community like ours it verges on being horrendous for some. people say, with a chance of publishing etc.

so fr the latter statements i gave plagiarists will be banned.

[Todd]

Plagiarism can be subjective it's more judging figure skating than judging track. I can almost understand the teenager that plagerizes to hand in a school assignment on a subject they can't stand (they almost always get caught). On sites like this it's just ego gratification. It's a bit pathetic. I support bans. I'm not to hung up if they use quotes or not though as long as it's evident that they mean us to know they are referencing the other person. Like if I wrote: it Does Not Depend on a Red Wheel Barrow...it would be pretty clear if I spoke of water glazing the donuts that it was parody not plagiarism.

[billy]

it wouldn't be clear to me seriously

so much so i had to look it up.

now i have, i agree, i think we have to uses common sense, which is probably the same as your 'subjective'
i think it has to be clear that is plagiarism, and not as you say unmarked parody. i have to be certain it's an act. that plagiarism has been committed.

[grannyjill]

I wrote something ages ago, but was troubled by my last line - it seemed so familiar to me....as if I had read it somewhere before. I did manage finally to solve the mystery and to my relief I found it was basically the rhythm of the line which was identical not the words.

And on here, Leanne showed me that I had practically lifted a line from a song by Hot Chocolate! So....what I am saying is, maybe some plagiarisms might be unconscious, especially if some one is a great reader of poetry.

(Hey, something strange has happened - it says I am a member now? Why is that?)

[Todd]

It was junior member before Jill (it's based on post count).

[Leanne]

I think you'll find Hot Chocolate lifted the line from somewhere else anyway Some phrases are in common usage -- those we generally refer to as cliches, which is why we crack down on them here. It's nice to keep your poetry fresh, though occasionally a cliche will creep into everyone's poems, it's hard to stop it. Extra eyes are very helpful. If it's unconscious, it's rarely more than a couple of words or sometimes a whole line, so what we really mean plagiarism to be is a conscious attempt to pass someone else's unique phrasing off as your own.

[grannyjill]

Thanks, Leanne...it is all clear to me now.

It's been a long day, and I'm up past my bedtime.

Good night, all
Hot cocoa here I come.

[billy]

hi member,
it's so easy to remember something and subconsciously use it, often it's as Leanne says 'a cliche', some phrase thats's crept into the common language. "i love you wit all my heart" being a particularly well used one.
usually with plagiarism, the phrase that's been lifted is too unique to be cliche. before saying it's plagiarism we'd google the phrase, if it showed up in a song and a poem or two then the odds are it's just a phrase that stuck in someone's head and a possible cliche. jmo

[grannyjill]

Thank you Billy,

I'm puzzled by plagiarists...why would anyone want to take the cream of some-one else's creativity and claim it as their own? The joy of creating a piece of poetry worthy of admiration must lie in the knowledge that it is one's own?

What say you?

Bye, grannyjill

[billy]

for some the joy of being thought of as good can be better than the joy of writing ones own work.

[Wildcard]

Or maybe insecurity makes them feel they will never create anything worthy of acclaim so they 'must' resort to theft in order to gain the respect of their peers.

[abu nuwas]

It is a little mysterious that a person would deliberately indulge in whole-sale plagiarism on here. Then again, people are a little mysterious. In practical terms, I should have thought the offence would be in proportion to the length of the piece; six words would be a big chunk of a haiku, but lost in an epic.

On the subject of epics, Virgil would have to be banned, I am afraid. Wanting to create a great national poem for Rome, he took Homer as his model. Homer uses 12 books, Virgil divide his 'Aeneid' into 12 books. Homer uses hexameter, so does Virgil. He has a good bit of swishing around the Med, like Ulysses. He has Aeneas take revenge on account of his slain friend, just as Homer has Achilles stop sulking, and bump off Hector to avenge his friend Patroclus. And he uses lines from earlier Roman poets, like Ennius, sometimes altering them a bit, sometimes not. Perhaps the Greco-Roman world was deficient in the law of Intellectual Property, but I think it would be as well to make it plain, that should Virgil's ghost re-appear, he would not be welcome here. He may have fooled the Italians, but here--- out he will go, kit and caboodle --esp the caboodle!

[billy]

and Shakespeare too, god knows how many times and in how many forms have Romeo and Jules were write or Tony and Cleo., but back in the day it was the expected done thing.

[Aish]

Back in high school when we were assigned various poetry styles to emulate or re-construct it didn't feel like stealing, merely learning a poetry form. It's an interesting line, however, like Calder mobiles are now called 'kinetic sculpture' and many people make them, although it is in truth stealing someone else's art form they created.

As someone who has been plagiarized, I would just like to say I did not find it flattering whatsoever. It enraged me.

[billy]

i think there's a difference in learning and even copying someone's style and learning and copying someone's exact phrases and passing them off as your own work. through out life (all walks of it) we see and emulate, it's a natural thing to do. what isn't okay to do is steal someone's skirt and wear it. or sing someone's song and say you wrote it. as the creator of something you at least deserve the recognition of creating it. we don't download films or songs and say "i wrote this bob dylan song: thing is, with net art and net poetry, most of the creators aren't so globally known or well read. in relation to the internet population the odds of having such a well read plath or sexton member on your site would be extremely minimal, lot's of us have read their works but few of us have read it enough to remember it all or even most, verbatim. we were just lucky jack is so into them i would never know the difference.

[rowens]

I think cliche and blatant or subtle plagiarism are as useful techniques as allusions and quotations. Poets live and die with their poems, and that includes revisions, mistakes and down right crimes. Mutation in language and poetry is a theme as well as a form. A living form. If you are a poet, and you want to tattoo the body of your poem with someone else's stamp, that's perfectly fine with me. And if the poem stands on its own despite being exposed or it doesn't, if it lives or dies by the effect of its mutations, it's all right by me.

[billy]

do you think blatant quotations used by another poet in their poem should be credited to the original poet in some way; maybe in a footnote?

for example; if i take a large verse or stanza of yours, and slot it between two of my own, is that okay?

[rowens]

Yes. And if you were exposed for stealing my poetry, I'd get attention in the scandal. And if you get away with it, good for you. Other than money or moral issues, it would be a ego boost too for the poet that's been robbed.

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And I think that if the quotation is blatant, it should be obvious that it's being used because it wants the specific mood it creates to be cast over that part of the poem. Risky sometimes, but I don't have a problem with it.

[Todd]

Well, in fairness it's poetry...I doubt there would be any money in it.

[Bronte]

just you try to
crack down on my cliche lady and I will box both your ears.. I'm not that kind of girl .

ideas are what inspire. I would rather inspire a great writer to move onwards than be the great writer.. but lifting full verses is another matter. so steal away folkes just make sure you make it yours

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i think there's a difference in learning and even copying someone's style and learning and copying someone's exact phrases and passing them off as your own work. through out life (all walks of it) we see and emulate, it's a natural thing to do. what isn't okay to do is steal someone's skirt and wear it. or sing someone's song and say you wrote it. as the creator of something you at least deserve the recognition of creating it. we don't download films or songs and say "i wrote this bob dylan song: thing is, with net art and net poetry, most of the creators aren't so globally known or well read. in relation to the internet population the odds of having such a well read plath or sexton member on your site would be extremely minimal, lot's of us have read their works but few of us have read it enough to remember it all or even most, verbatim. we were just lucky jack is so into them i would never know the difference.

good baby ! you tell em