The Little Book of Plagiarism [Hardcover]

Plagiarism is not a legal offense in itself. Thus, you might think that Judge Richard Posner might not be the best of guides to it, even though he has written books about non-legal issues before. But plagiarism does sometimes include fraud, copyright infringement, theft, and unfair competition, issues that are clearly legal in nature. In _The Little Book of Plagiarism_ (Pantheon), Posner has turned a legal view onto the very gray areas of plagiarism, an offense that everyone thinks is bad, but which comes in many forms, each with variants that are not offenses at all. Plagiarism has been in the news a lot lately, with famous (or potentially famous) people damaged by the charge. In the digital age, plagiarism is easier, and so Posner has written a useful volume to guide logical thinking on a hot issue. It is indeed a little book, 109 pages of text, but there are plenty of big ideas here, expressed in pithy prose that calls out for re-reading just to appreciate its clarity and lack of superfluity.

People weren't always so picky. One of Posner's examples is that of Shakespeare's use of Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's description of Cleopatra's barge, which shows up in blank-verse paraphrase in _Antony and Cleopatra_. Posner includes both passages here, and it clear that Shakespeare really did borrow North, and also clear that Shakespeare's description is more colorful and fun to read. ("If this is plagiarism," jokes Posner, "we need more plagiarism.") If Shakespeare were writing today, he'd probably be in trouble for all his borrowed plots and characters. Plagiarism changes depending upon time, locale, and profession. So, how do we know when something is plagiarism and when it isn't? Posner suggests, among other things, that we evaluate the harm done. An example Posner returns to repeatedly is that of Kaavya Viswanathan whose novel _How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life_ came out in April 2006. She was a sophomore at Harvard University (Posner gives many examples from Harvard here, and maintains that plagiarism is no more common in that estimable school, just more conspicuous, and more enjoyed by the public when revealed). She got a half million dollar advance for her work and a film deal with DreamWorks. Attentive readers, however, found that there were passages that had been lifted from the work of a fellow "chick-lit" author Megan McCafferty. Viswanathan didn't do her readers any real harm; her book is as good as they found it. She didn't harm her publisher (until she was caught), and she herself brought any harmful consequences to herself. The harm is done to McCafferty, and not simply because McCafferty's words were lifted and re-used, but because by doing so, Viswanathan boosted herself up as a competitor within the chick-lit field, an unfair advantage.

So a key for finding plagiarism is finding that harm has been done, but Posner does not wish to see it among the harms dealt with by the criminal courts: "The harms it causes are too slight to warrant cranking up the costly and clumsy machinery of the criminal law", and often the harm is insufficient to crank up the civil courts, either. Viswanathan got her measure of "... disgrace, humiliation, ostracism, and other shaming penalties imposed by public opinion on people who violate social norms whether or not they are also legal norms." So did Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose, and Alan Dershowitz, whose cases are examined here. That high-profile authors would risk getting caught in such thefts is something that Posner cannot explain, but he does make the case that the digital technology which makes plagiarism particularly easy these days is also going to make it more detectable. There are programs on the market like Turnitin which are doing better sleuthing for plagiarism than any professor or general reader. Thousands of colleges license the program; Harvard doesn't, and Posner accuses it of being naïve. Turnitin looks for similar passages in previous works, especially those on the web (and remember that many quotations from modern books are found on the web, even if full books are not). The program also looks for similarities within papers that have been submitted to it for inspection before. Publishers aren't themselves using such programs much yet, because they would simply rather not know beforehand, but Little, Brown lost plenty on the Viswanathan affair. Posner says, "We may be entering the twilight of plagiarism." It is a rewarding intellectual amusement to share Posner's thinking about the subject, which presents plagiarism with penetrating originality.

For those of us who enjoyed Judge Posner's Public Intellectuals or Law & Literature, this very little book fits in that niche -- easy to read, full of charming bits, grindingly rational. The book's topic and brevity will give it a natural market among school administrators and teachers. Maybe a private school or two will make it required reading for students. Students in particular need to know that schools now are using an internet software service to catch plagiarists.

But like Posner's other books, this one asks a deep and haunting question. Why do we prize originality so much? The best writers (Posner cites Shakespeare) copied extensively, improving as they went. The ancient Egyptians went thousands of years painting the same odd figures on their tombs; they disdained originality. Ironically, Posner explains, student textbooks may be the least original of modern writings.

The book is well worth $[...], an evening's reading, and further reflection.

Posner is an accomplished federal judge and author. As a judge Posner adeptly distinguishes subtle differences in the way ideas are copied. What is plagiarism? - Posner asks. Posner give his full answer at the book's end: "Plagiarism is a species of intellectual fraud. It consists of unauthorized copying that the copier claims (whether explicitly or implicitly, and whether deliberately or carelessly) is original with him and the claims causes the copier's audience to behave otherwise than it would if it knew the truth" (pg. 106).

Posner not only discusses contemporary plagiarism but gives a history of the topic that places the modern version in its context. The first recorded usage of modern sense of plagiarism was in the Roman Empire by the poet Martial who claimed his work was plagiarized, Posner continues by giving additional examples which complicate our notions and require distinctions on terms such as "copy", "fraud", "plagiarism", "imitation", "copyright infringement", etc. Gathering together his ideas in the last chapter, Posner writes, "The vagueness of the concept of plagiarism should be acknowledged and thus a gray area recognized in which creative imitation produces value that should undercut a judgment of plagiarism - indeed an imitator may produce greater value than an originator, once 'originality' is understood, as it should be if we are to understand plagiarism in properly relativistic terms, just to mean difference, not necessarily creativity. In modern commercial society, which places the stamp of personality on goods both physical and intellectual for economic reasons unrelated to high culture, a verdict of plagiarism is pronounced without regard to the quality of the plagiarized original or, for that matter, of the plagiarizing copy" (pg. 108-109).

This book is short, fun, written clearly, intelligent, and a challenge. It challenges the definition of plagiarism as "literary theft" and instead emphasizes "reliance, detectability, and the extent of the market for expressive works as keys to defining plagiarism and calibrating the different types of plagiarism by their gravity" (pg. 109). Unfortunately, Posner gives us only one court case in his brief history of plagiarism (Rogers v. Koons).

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