Finding the Positive in Plagiarism
Good may still accrue from having your words kidnapped.
Plagiarists have been stealing credit from legitimate authors since before we had written words, co-opting the compositions of poets and balladeers. But with the advent of the printing press, and later, the internet, the pool of writers and readers expanded exponentially, providing more opportunities for appropriating the work of others.
Now Chatbots have joined the ranks of the lexicological larcenists to profit from stealing our words and thoughts. Will we be ravaged by a plague of plagiarism? Will AI sweep away all the weeping human writers? Can we find anything good about plagiarism?
Authors who slave over a work, only to discover that someone else has received payment or acclaim for lifting their phrases or purloining their ideas, feel violated. We should continue to strengthen the customs and laws to discourage such theft, even if they are unlikely to be completely effective. But if at least some plagiarism is likely to continue, shouldn’t we also find ways to extract something positive from the practice?
Inseparable from being an act of violation, plagiarism is also an act of validation. Someone else felt that your ideas were clever enough, bold enough, or profitable enough, to loot. Rather than mere piffle…
