Enlightened Librarian: Benighted copyright

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Benighted copyright · Nov 19, 02:25 PM

As the U.S. Congress debates an omnibus copyright bill that would make fast-forwarding through commercials illegal and have the U.S. Justice Department file civil suits on behalf of the recording industry (both articles require free registration) this week’s New Yorker offers a less bellicose take on copyright. In Something Borrowed, Malcolm Gladwell initially takes offense at finding significant passages from his profile of a psychiatrist turning up in a Broadway play. But he proceeds to ruminate thoughtfully on language, property and artistic borrowings, deciding that distinctions of intellectual ownership are not so nearly cut and dried:

The final dishonesty of the plagiarism fundamentalists is to encourage us to pretend that … chains of influence and evolution do not exist, and that a writer’s words have a virgin birth and an eternal life.

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