There have been a number of cases in recent history of popular books turning out to have passages plagiarized from other books. Each time it happens, there is a nine-day-wonder of the press as readers and critics turn around and crucify the writer in question.
But it appears something else is happening this time. BoingBoing links to a New York Times story about Helene Hegemann, a 17-year-old German author who copied some parts of her debut novel from another writer named Airen. But far from trying to hide or being ashamed of it, Hegemann explains that what she was doing was not plagiarism, but remixing.
At first glimpse, this seems to be little more than an excuse, and a fairly threadbare one at that—like a child insisting, “I wasn’t lying, I was just fibbing.” Certainly the commenters at BoingBoing, ordinarily a bastion of remix culture, seem to see it that way. “Crime and misdemeanors are just that,” one anonymous poster scoffs. “You would get thrown out of university for this in Australia. She calls it ‘mixing’? How bout she grows up and learns the phrase ‘mea culpa’.”
But actually looking at the article reveals something a little more interesting going on. For example, the book is a finalist for a $20,000 prize in the Leipzig Book Fair—and one of the prize jurors has said the panel was fully aware of the plagiarism charges before making the selection.
What’s going on here? Taking a closer look, “remixing” is part of the entire theme of the novel. It is set against the backdrop of a German youth culture that celebrates the remix as one of its premier forms of creativity. As Edmond, a character from the book, says, “Berlin is here to mix everything with everything.” The Times article notes:
A powerful statement, but the line originally was written by Airen, on his blog. The plot thickens, however, and shows that perhaps more than simple cribbing is at work. When another character asks Edmond if he came up with that line himself, he replies, “I help myself everywhere I find inspiration.”
In short, the book is about remixers, so it is in keeping with that theme that it should be, in part, a remix itself. Unlike those who plagiarize because they cannot think of anything original, Hegemann did so as an intentional form of art—a literary expression of the same form of creativity that caused Jonathan Coulton to mix “When I’m 64” and “25 or 6 to 4” together into “When I’m 25 or 64”.
Certainly, Hegemann is not incapable of original creativity; she has already penned the scripts for a stage play and a movie that have both been popular in Germany—neither of which has been accused of plagiarizing anything else.
Of course, one difference between a musical remix and a more literary version is that nobody will mistake a Chicago or Beatles song for one originally created by Jonathan Coulton. In written literature, it’s not so easy to tell—which is why we have footnotes and citations.
Hegemann apologized for not being more clear in her acknowledgement of the borrowed material, but explained this was because she had not understood the acknowledgement process and it was being fixed in subsequent printings.
“I myself don’t feel it is stealing, because I put all the material into a completely different and unique context and from the outset consistently promoted the fact that none of that is actually by me,” Hegemann told the daily Berliner Morgenpost.
Her publisher is seeking an amicable settlement to continue publishing the book.
TechDirt’s Mike Masnick celebrates the literary remix as a new art form, and compares the controversies surrounding it to the same controversies that attended other art forms that have long since become part of our culture. Masnick also notes Amazon’s page shows a lot of people who bought Ms. Hegemann’s book also bought Airen’s lesser-known one.
Plagiarism has long been considered one of the Deadly Sins in writing, as it brings up trust issues: if a writer claims someone else’s work is his own, how can you trust that anything he writes is original? Promising young authors’ careers have been ruined by the discovery of rampant “borrowing” in their work.
Electronic media such as word processors and e-books make this sort of borrowing considerably easier, not to mention tempting—not just in writing books, but also in college term papers and other writing. Entire databases exist for the purpose of checking the originality of college papers.
But that does not seem to be the sort of “borrowing” that has happened in this case, and the fact that the novel is being considered for a $20,000 prize in spite of it is proof of that.
>Certainly, Hegemann is not incapable of original creativity; she has already penned the scripts for a stage play and a movie that have both been popular in Germany—neither of which has been accused of plagiarizing anything else.
The stage play and movie were not popular and yes, she has been accused of plagiarizing something else – “Try a little tenderness”, a movie she apparently ripped of in her short story “Die Spiegelung meines Gesichts in der Erschaffung der Welt”.
Talk of a slippery slope…
In an age that already undervalues creativity and exploration (witness the rise of the Pirate Party in Europe and the death of manned space exploration in the US), the mainstreaming of this kind of mix-n-match “self-expression” is just part of the ongoing decline of ethics in modern society.
Outright plagiarism might actually be preferable to this disingenuous “failed to properly attribute” scam, since the plagiarist is a sneak-thief who is consciously taking and exploitating another’s work for profit rather than pretending to be creating something new.
Worse, here we have somebody who might actually be capable of taking the same themes and elements and actually creating something new on her own taking, instead, the lazy path of appropriating somebody else’s work and not-too-thiny disguising it, to see how far she could get away with it.
And for this she was rewarded.
Derivative works are derivative works.
Copyright should be respected by all or it won’t be respected by any.
I sure hope an “amicable settlement” does *NOT* result. An example needs setting.
I wouldn’t call it a slippery slope… looks more like a cliff to me.
Especially since the author could have done what is traditionally done when you want to quote someone else’s work… put “quotation marks” around it, so it is obvious that it is taken from another source. (The Coulton example is written to suggest two other sources, without actually repeating them, so I’d consider that an acceptable use of referencing… maybe that’s just me.)
I’ve never been a fan of musical remixing, nor “sampling,” so I can’t say much for this “new art form” other than to question its sincerity and creativity, since all you seem to be doing is taking someone else’s art and carving it up for your own use. But the concept itself opens the floodgates for stealing anyone’s work, something that no self-respecting person should even consider… which is why it’s so frightening that so many people do.
Yeah somebody should really put a stop to that damn Bill Shakespeare and all of his piratin’! How many of Chris Marlowe’s works does he have to steal before somebody will do somethin’ about it?!?
So, if I were to write a murder mystery, it would be okay for me to murder? Just because the book is about remixing doesn’t seem to justify ripping off other authors. Of course, there is such a thing as permission. Perhaps if she’d asked first…
Rob Preece
Publisher
Josh, Shakespeare borrowed plots, and by today’s standard of copyright, plot can’t be copyrighted.
Copyright theft is the stealing of long series of words and expressions without attribution. Think of it as cut-and-paste theft.
If you want to remix, throw in a few scenes with zombies to some work that is out of copyright. That is legal, if not original.
@Marilyn
I’m using a bit of hyperbole here to illustrate my point. Copyright laws have been expanded and stretched to the point where they stifle new creativity. Look at Salinger’s successful lawsuit against Coming Through the Rye. I think we as a society have to look at returning to earlier copyright laws that struck a better balance between the economic protection of creators and the good of society.
@Marilynn
Apparently I can’t even cut-and-paste correctly, as it appears that I have misspelled your name. My apologies to you!
Quoting (quote marks and attribution) is NOT sufficient, in all cases. If you are writing a work you intend to release for sale (not a scholarly paper…which severely curtails “fair use,” as many people understand it), the quote/s are integral to the book and cannot be paraphrased or otherwise hinted at, even if you properly attribute them, the quotes are not so well known that they have become iconic/popular culture, and they are not public domain (use copyright law for that and not the idiotic excuse I’ve caught some kids at that finding it on the web makes it public domain, please), you can still be sued.
I don’t have the case in front of me, but there is a current case where an author wrote a book teaching people to work in stand-up comedy, including quoted jokes from well-known stand-up comedians, properly attributed. She’s still being sued, because those jokes are not her IP. They belong to the comedians and/or their writers and were used without permission (though properly attributed) in an endeavor that could make her money on their work.
Now, there are several nits to this. One of them is that the “borrower” believes that the use of a single joke out of thousands a comedian has told is not significant, but considering that single joke may be considered a stand-alone work or one joke in a set of ten or twenty told as a performance, that makes it significant to the whole of that joke or that performance.
From the author seat…no, plagiarism is not currently and is not likely to be widely-accepted anytime soon as acceptable practice. In general, when authors find another author plagiarizing, the responses range between: “What are you, stupid?” to “I hope you never sell another book, you fake.” It incenses me that someone that claims herself an author thinks this is acceptable behavior.
As someone else noted already, general story lines (Girl meets girl, loses girl, gets girl back from scumbag ex….) cannot be copyright, individual scenes are and individual quotes are. Even if you look at the music industry, there are limits (what is that old rule? 4 seconds) of music that can be remixed in without not ONLY attributing it but also getting the original artist’s permission to use it (often paid permission). That was decided in the courts long ago. In addition, legal decisions stand on the side of even a single line of a song being significant and therefore NOT fair use, unless it’s the title, which cannot be copyright protected.
If you’re making a music video for your own use…go to town, but the minute you try to make money off of it, you’re in the wrong. In the same way, you can write fan fic, but distributing it puts you in an actionable position, if the author chooses to follow that route. Any author that doesn’t follow this deserves to be sued for it.
Artists (I mean graphic artists now) are taught to collage, with proper permission and attribution. Notice that permission is one of the main things this girl didn’t bother with…and I don’t buy that she didn’t know, if it’s her “chosen art form” nor do I excuse her publisher, since they should have known better…or checked for it, considering her subject matter. At the same time, an artist friend of mine that read this story said one thing: “Sure, I’ve made collage projects, but it’s not ORIGINAL art. I wouldn’t dream of entering it in a contest. How tacky.” (Quote used with permission, though she asked that I not use her name.)
Brenna
Josh said, “I’m using a bit of hyperbole here to illustrate my point. Copyright laws have been expanded and stretched to the point where they stifle new creativity. Look at Salinger’s successful lawsuit against Coming Through the Rye. I think we as a society have to look at returning to earlier copyright laws that struck a better balance between the economic protection of creators and the good of society.”
Copyright does not stiffle creativity. Anyone who is genuinely creative can tell you that is nonsense. The only people it stiffles are hacks.
Do you want to know what the real value of using someone else’s work like this guy did with his CATCHER IN THE RYE sequel? Marketing. They use someone else’s reputation and work to make their own work noticed in a world where marketing is of as great or greater importance than content.
It would have been simple enough to write a novel that is a sequel to CATCHER without messing with copyright. He could have changed the name of the character and enough about the character to make it his own then used CATCHER and Holden Caufield as illusions and references so that the reader would compare the two. That would have given the novel depth and resonance.
But depth and resonance aren’t marketing tools.
And, frankly, almost all books that are sequels to classics make a quick flash because of the marketing then disappear into well-deserved obscurity because they offer nothing new to the reader or to the classic.
The only sequels I can think of that truly have a life of their own are Gregory Maguire’s WIZARD OF OZ novels like WICKED which are as creatively original as Baum’s books.
The problem is that Helene Hegemann did NOT, in fact, remix anything. She did NOT, as she claims, put the passages she took from blogger Airen into a new context. The context remains untouched.
Airen chronciled his real-life experience as part of Berlin’s excessive underground party scene; Hegemann’s main character Mifti is a teenaged girl who gets mixed up that scene. Her novel is littered with passages, word plays, and scenes that are lifted directly from Airen. Hegemann herself admitted to copying an entire page almost completely at one point.
IMHO, Hegemann is simply invoking the ‘sharing culture of the internet’, as she puts it, in an attempt to save face. While she has offered a brief apology to blogger Airen for being “thoughtless and selfish”, the rest of her half-page stament consists of pseudo-intellectual justifications for cribbing his words. Make of that what you will.
Okay…this stinks. I wrote an entire reply that the blog ate. I hate days like this.
I have to agree with Marilynn. There are many legal ways to build on someone else’s work, so I can’t see that copyright stifles true creativity, at all.
1. You can parody. Consider Joy Nash’s story “Heroes, Inc.”, which is a parody of the Justice League. Consider EPIC MOVIE. Parody is legal and built into copyright law.
2. You can get permission or buy permission from the original copyright owner.
3. You can use a work that is truly in the public domain and do what you wish. That’s what Gregory Maguire (sp?) did with WICKED and SON OF THE WITCH. But, keep in mind that he could only use what was in the books…not the movie, which is NOT public domain. He used jeweled multicolor shoes instead of ruby slippers. Why? Ruby slippers were from the movie. Baum wrote silver. He couldn’t use ruby slippers without permission, but he could use silver or make something up.
Now, mind you that all the things he invented for WICKED and SON OF THE WITCH are HIS IP. The new characters, the new character twists, and those lovely jeweled slippers are his creations. If someone wants to write another Oz related story, he/she can, but the new author cannot use either the ruby slippers or the new things Macguire created, because neither are public domain.
And that new work doesn’t have to adhere to anything Macguire did, either. In fact, it’s better if it doesn’t. Someone else doing a story there does not make it world bible for the original creation Baum made, and someone using Baum’s public domain works can write something completely different than Macguire did…aliens, shifters, or whatever.
4. You can hint. Subtlety is a wonderful thing in the hands of a skillful author.
5. You can use the recognized icon/popular image to set a mood, opinion, mental image… If a character in your book calls another “a regular Superman” it has a very different connotation than calling the character “a regular Batman.” Think about the images each bring to mind.
6. “Loosely basing a story on…” is another common one. But it’s not a close resemblance. You have your six degrees of separation going here. Take one of mine that is “loosely based” on Victor/Victoria. The only thing I took from V/V was the idea of a woman hiding as a man pretending to be a woman and both the main characters having bodyguards or companions that become involved, as well. In my case, it was a female mage whose only chance of escape is hiding as a male mage, and all mages are effeminate in appearance. In anyone’s universe, that’s not a copy of V/V anymore. That’s the way the system is SUPPOSED to work.
@Josh Haney:
Whether copyright has been stretched or not elsewhere is irrelevant in this case because this is about the *core* of copyright.
Copyright exists to protect the entirety of a work from precisely this kind of unauthorized exploitation.
If this isn’t a copyrht violation, we might as well abolish copyright altogeher. Which would doubtless please talentless/lazy hacks and parasites the world over.
This is what happens when creator interests are protected at the expense of the intent of copyright, which is not merely to reward creators, but to insure that created works enter into the culture so that further creative works can build off of them.
Between the extension of the lifespan of copyright, and the draconian impact of DRM, and a legal environment in which the claim of copyright is costly to the alleged violator even in the presence of fair use, the cultural synergy that copyright was supposed to foster has been destroyed.
So I don’t have any particular concern about protecting the monopoly that creators are trying to claim, and hope that somehow, Hegemann prevails.
I LOVE how some people try to bring DRM into every discussion. DRM has nothing to do with this. You can plagiarize a book protected by DRM, as easily as you can plagiarize one that is not protected by it…or a print book that has never been scanned in. It means typing in what you intend to quote…or heist. Nothing more. DRM is no more a magic shield against plagiarism than it is against other infringement.
And as an author, I would rather see DRM gone. Not every author out there supports DRM. In fact, you’ll find many indie authors don’t support it, because we understand it and understand how useless and problematic it is…for us and for readers, both. And since authors are often readers, from the reader seat, I have an intense dislike for it and how it curtails my reading pleasure.
As for the rest of your post, harmon, it’s nothing but a troll. I’m sorry, but it has already been shown that copyright does not stifle true creative expression. There is no monopoly, save in certain minds. The point is to build your six degrees of separation skillfully, to attribute where necessary, and to paraphrase or get permission where necessary. It’s that simple. If you are truly creating something new, you won’t be running afoul of the meager prohibitions copyright places on you.
The major problem is that a lot of people are not learning skillful and subtle uses of popular culture in their books; they beat readers over the head with it instead. That’s lamentable.
Brenna
She remixed stuff — she made no attempt to hide what she was doing. She made no attempt to escape scrutiny, in fact by choosing this type of project and admitting in the text, she was openly inviting scrutiny.
There is no intention to fool anyone here — whatever you think of this, it isn’t plagiarism. The sight of creative people bashing other people for being creative and not making much attempt to hide their influences, however, is much uglier to me than anything Ms. Hegemann has done.
In fact, I find all of you writers who go to great lengths to disguise your influences to be arguably more ethically questionable as artists than Ms. Hegemann.
Think for yourselves, don’t think out of copyright, as if this two hundred year old exception to the public domain gives you any kind of moral authority over anyone else’s kind of creativity.
Sorry, Laroquod, but I cannot agree with your take on this, at all.
She never asked for permission (which is part of the legal requirement for what she attempted, which you should know if you are using your chosen art form as a business…no excuses for lazy execution), and she never publicly proclaimed where she took the plagiarized pieces from (it IS plagiarism, by the mere definition of it), which is required attribution…until she was caught at it and had to pony up and find a seemingly plausible excuse for her actions. That’s reprehensible to me. That’s not copyright talking for me, though it is illegal. That’s pride in REALLY creating something and not ripping off hunks of other people’s work and passing it off as my own. My personal opinion is, “If you aren’t willing to do something right, don’t do it at all.”
If you ask your average author where her six degrees of separation came from, she will gladly tell you. Most of us aren’t hiding anything. In fact, I have even thanked a few of my guiding lights in the foreword of the book in question. I don’t use someone else’s words, characters, or scenes, unless I am building off of something public domain (like Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales or Edith Hamilton’s Mythology) or I’m using materials that can’t be protected by copyright, like a song title (in which case, I probably name the artist as well as the song). I may take one concept from a movie or book and then build an entirely new world around it, and that’s perfectly legal and ethical. When I do, I’m willing to tell you where it came from, and I often write blog posts about it or bits on my site or talk about it in interviews. So my sense of ethics is quite intact, thanks.
I know the legal line. I know the personal line (which I don’t believe should cross the legal line, unless you WANT to spend a lot of time in litigation, and you have to think about this, because it’s not just creative…it’s a BUSINESS when you set out to sell the work). I don’t cross those lines.
For the record, the six degrees of separation is neither illegal nor plagiarism. It’s the way the system is supposed to work, so that you can LEGALLY build off ideas others have advanced. We have people on here complaining that copyright stifles creativity, but the truth is…it doesn’t, if you are skillful and able to allude or use imagery without infringing, and that’s not difficult to do.
Brenna
“expression, you see—with me—is far easier than invention.” — Jack London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London
I don’t know much about him myself but it seems plagiarism didn’t do this guy so much harm.
@Felix Torres: She did cross a line, but I don’t think that this problem is very much related to an ongoing loss of respect for copyright. Plagiarism has always been a problem, and it is different from piracy, remixing and space exploration (amazing how you managed to fit this one in!).
To the remixers: IMHO, she really did not remix here, but simply lifted, quite certainly hoping that the sources would not be discovered. It would have been an interesting precedent if she had indeed remixed. Then we could have a real fight between copy culture and rights holder culture!
Here are some examples (discovered here and roughly translated by yours truly):
Axolotl Roadkill, p 74:
“I take three steps forward and smash backwards into some Langnese advertising implement that is obstructing the public space. I turn and smash backwards against some large pored guy in green clothing. He [the police man] puts me into a taxi…”
Original:
“I get out, take three steps forward and smash backwards against the train. Then I get up, take three steps forwards and smash backwards against the train. Eventually, two large pored train cops appear and shove me into a taxi.”
Axolotl Roadkill, p 80:
“Instead of answering me, she strips down the plastic sheet. Eventually, a pinch of brownish powder remains on the mahogany table, looking like instant tea and smelling of a mixture of cigarette butts, garbage and vinegar. From a piece of silver paper she’s rolling herself a small tube, on another she places half of the powder. When she holds a lighter below the foil, the heroin melts and a small wisp of smoke trails from it. This steam is inhaled by Ophelia with the aid of said aluminum tube, until only something very dirty, small and evil remains and she asks: “And, what do my pupils look like now?”
Original:
“Layer by layer I strip down the plastic foil, until a good pinch of brownish powder appears in the middle. Looks roughly like instant tea, and smells acidic, like a mixture of cigarette butts, garbage and vinegar. Diacetylmorphine. Then I get aluminum foil. From one piece I roll myself a small tube. On another I place a quarter of the powder. As soon as I hold a lighter below the aluminum foil, the Heroin melts (…) and a small wisp of smoke trails from it. With the tube in my mouth I try to catch it. (…) When everything is evaporated, leaving only dirty trace on the aluminum foil, I go to the bathroom to examine my pupils.”
>>Plagiarism has long been considered one of the Deadly Sins in writing, as it brings up trust issues: if a writer claims someone else’s work is his own, how can you trust that anything he writes is original? Promising young authors’ careers have been ruined by the discovery of rampant “borrowing” in their work.>>
I’m going to give a writer’s answer to this. A writer, such as Airen, is compelled to write. He’s got something to say. He’s been saying it.
Helene wanted to say something. She could think of nothing on her own to fill an entire book, because she’s SEVENTEEN, and so she copied the work of a person who in her mind, got attention, and whose words appealed to her. Why those images would appeal to somebody is a different question.
Now they are all lying about it and making feeble intellectualized excuses, and she really is a minor. Her father is responsible and should talk to her about the choices she’s made, why, and what she can do to develop her abilities in the future, without plagiarism and lying, arrogance and greed. I would not let my daughter do any of these things. If she published a book that made her out to be an opium-smoking dope fiend teen club whore – it would NOT HAPPEN because I wouldn’t let her. Here, some people are celebrating a young woman presenting a false image of who she is, celebrating negative/self-harming activity, and at bottom, not even being honest about it, stealing descriptions and words from someone else.
This has nothing to do with copyright, more to do with greed, amorality and exploitation.
Some general thoughts:
1. I wonder – does bitching about ‘slippery slopes’, or the ‘the thin end of the wedge’ make you sound like an up-tight closet McCarthyist? Whatever next?:
* “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together.. mass hysteria!” – Dr. Peter Venkman
* “Hey, how come Andrew gets to get up? If he gets up, we’ll all get up, it’ll be anarchy!” – John Bender
2. “Copyright should be respected by all or it won’t be respected by any.” I tell you what, I forsee that going on a t-shirt. And on the back will be “I neither respect Copyright – or you, cultural dinosaur.”
3. Everything gets soiled as soon as money is involved.
4. If someone just doesn’t get art / processes like remixing, I guess they can always g.t.f.o teh Tubular Internets and stick with reading nice, safe, corporate-commissioned works(C) about shiny happy people who always do as their told, go to church on sunday.. and are always ready to aggressively ‘defend'(TM) true Originality(R) from the young imagined barbarians at the gateway to their law-abiding paradise
Cuttin’ it up like uncle Burroughs
a Henry Swanson