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The Fall of Jonah Lehrer - Plagiarism Today

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The Fall of Jonah Lehrer - Plagiarism Today

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Last month, Jonah Lehrer found himself at the center of a journalism controversy regarding self-plagiarism and when, if ever, it was ethical to reuse your old content.

At the time Lehrer was a rising star in science journalism. At just 31 years old, Lehrer had published three books, had written for many of the country's most prestigious newspapers including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe, and had just landed a new full-time job writing for The New Yorker.

However, the allegations shook Lehrer's career in a major way. According to several reports, Lehrer had reused text in earlier books in articles for newer ones. This included text text written for other companies, raising potential copyright issues.

But while Lehrer survived the scandal, The New Yorker agreeing to keep him on so long as the error was not repeated, Lehrer had a bullseye placed on his back and others were already beginning to go through his work with a fine-tooth comb.

Inevitably they turned up something, something much worse.

Reporter Michael C. Moynihan turned up evidence that Lehrer, in his book "Imagine: How Creativity Works", had fabricated several quotes from musician Bob Dylan. Lehrer himself now admits this and has resigned from The New Yorker and made a promise to help fix any inaccuracies in his work.

The case is being likened to the Jayson Blair scandal from nine years ago. So much so that Jayson Blair himself has been asked to weigh in on Lehrer's case. There are many legitimate questions about what lies next for for Lehrer, as with other well-known plagiarists, but a lot more questions about what this means for journalism in general.

The issues of self-plagiarism and fabrication aren't going away, but they may be getting much more common and much more difficult to deal with.

On Self Plagiarism and Fabrication

Lehrer survived his first scandal almost completely unscathed. When it was discovered that he had reused words from his previous articles, the bulk of the online battle was drawn not to Lehrer himself, but to whether or not self plagiarism even exists.

For proof of that, look at the comments on my first article on Lehrer.

However, the scandal called into question Lehrer's journalistic ethics and that, in turn, opened him up to scrutiny. Others began trying to find out what, if any, other misdeeds he had done and they found something. Though it wasn't traditional plagiarism they found, fabrication is often considered to be one of the worst ethical violation a journalist (or researcher) can make. The reason is simple, journalists are supposed to be arbiters of the truth and fabrication is a form of lying in its most direct form.

In short, the self-plagiarism didn't end Lehrer's career, but it attracted the scrutiny that brought the larger issues to light.

However, it is very important to remember that this scandal is still very much unfolding and, like the Kaavya Viswanathan scandal before it, it's likely that additional details will trickle out over time, even though Lehrer has said that all of the secrets are out.

So, unless Lehrer is telling the truth, things may still get a lot worse for Lehrer, the New Yorker and the other publications he worked for.

The Missed Opportunities and Warnings

But even as Lehrer's world is crashing down around him, The New Yorker and the other publications Lehrer wrote for need to take a look at how they missed a very important warning sign and an important opportunity.

Whether or not you think that self plagiarism is an ethical violation, let alone one worth terminating a career over, it is definitely a warning sign. It's a sign that a journalist might be struggling with their work, that they might be having difficulties or are unclear on certain areas of ethics in journalism.

When the first scandal broke, Lehrer was able to duck under the crossfire about whether or not self plagiarism is even an ethical issue and he escaped without much more than a warning from his editors. No reprimand, no formal investigation.

If The New Yorker, or his other publications, had launched any investigation they might have been able to find these (and any other) issues before they were leaked by other publications. Now it appears as if The New Yorker gave a fabricator a second chance despite good reason to be wary.

Yes, investigations take time and money, but this news would sound much better coming from The New Yorker than The Tablet and it isn't as if there weren't other cases to look deeper into. The Tablet article cites questions raised by philosopher Jonathon Keats claiming inaccuracies in a narrative Lehrer published in his first book. Other allegations came from a the New Republic review of "Imagine" by Isaac Chotiner review that claimed Lehrer was playing with some of the facts when discussing Dylan's work.

Neither of these allegations alone prove anything but they are further warnings and, in the first case, came to light years before Lehrer began work at The New Yorker.

In short, The New Yorker almost gave an ethically-challenged journalist a free pass to write at one of the country's most prestigious publications and, if it hadn't been for other reporters doing what should have been their job, he might still be there today.

To Lehrer's (Former) Defenders

During the self-plagiarism scandal/controversy, Lehrer had more than his share of defenders and many of them attacked me for both my stance on self-plagiarism and for saying that, at the very least, there should be an investigation into Lehrer's work.

Though many simply wanted to let Lehrer go, the truth is that an investigation was warranted. Though I recognized that an investigation based on the allegations at hand may not have been practical without some kind of legal risk to provoke it, I, and others, called for it and it seems we were right to do so.

Obviously, Lehrer's defenders have backed away now and I doubt that the comments/feedback to this post will be as divisive. But the issue of self plagiarism is going to come up again. This includes in journalism, academia and elsewhere.

Hopefully this case will show that, even if you don't think self-plagiarism by itself is an issue or even something that exists, this case does highlight it as a warning sign. This isn't a slippery-slope argument nor even a correlation one, but an acknowledgement that people who are trying to do good, ethical work in their field will usually work to avoid unacknowledged reuse of their old work.

Those who engage in self-plagiarism, at the very least are getting dangerously close to larger ethical issue and it's worth examining to make sure that things haven't gone farther and that they don't in the future.

Ignoring it outright is simply inviting greater disaster.

Bottom Line

In the end, the real lesson of the Lehrer case is this: If you are a prominent figure and you are accused of self plagiarism, or any other ethical violation, even if you escape the initial scandal, there WILL be an investigation.

The question is where will that investigation come from. Will it be your employers or the media? Will it be your boss or a reporter miles away from you? Will it be a friend or a stranger?

The tools for looking into ethics violations are much more widespread, easier to use and less expensive. If there is enough interest in tracking your errors and misdeeds, someone will do it.

So while you may be able to build a career on plagiarism and dishonesty, you probably can't build a grand one, at least not long term.

If you do, it's not long before the attacks against you begin to stick and, once that happens, it's not long before your defenses crumble, not due to any single revelation, but a barrage of people wanting to find the next piece of the puzzle.

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The Fall of Jonah Lehrer - Plagiarism Today

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Last month, Jonah Lehrer found himself at the center of a journalism controversy regarding self-plagiarism and when, if ever, it was ethical to reuse your old content. At the time Lehrer was a rising star in science journalism.

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Trump national security spokeswoman Monica Crowley to forgo post amid plagiarism charges - The Washington Post

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Trump national security spokeswoman Monica Crowley to forgo post amid plagiarism charges - The Washington Post

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Report Accuses Mexico’s President of Plagiarism in Law School Thesis - The New York Times

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Report Accuses Mexico’s President of Plagiarism in Law School Thesis - The New York Times

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Already reeling from corruption scandals and a de clining security situation, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico was accused on Sunday of plagiarizing nearly a third of his law school thesis, according to a report by an investigative journalist.

The journalist, Carmen Aristegui, has reported on several articles that have contributed to the president's declining public approval ratings, including the disclosure in 2014 of his wife's questionable real estate dealings with major government contractors.

Ms. Aristegui lost her job in 2015 after her reporting on the Mexico City mansion built for the president's wife, Angélica Rivera, by a firm that had received hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts. Since then, Ms. Aristegui has been publishing her work on her own website.

Her latest article, published on the website aristeguinoticias.com, cited a report by a group of specialists and academics who reviewed Mr. Peña Nieto's roughly 200-page thesis on the Mexican presidency, which he submitted in 1991 and wrote while studying for his degree at the Panamerican University from 1984 to 1989.

The report says that the young Mr. Peña Nieto appropriated the work of at least 10 authors without attribution, including parts that were apparently taken from the work of a former president of Mexico.

Mr. Peña Nieto's spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez, issued a brief statement on Monday characterizing any similarities between the president's thesis and earlier work as "style errors," such as forgetting to quote passages correctly or cite original authors mentioned in the bibliography.

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Report Accuses Mexico's President of Plagiarism in Law School Thesis

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Already reeling from corruption scandals and a de clining security situation, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico was accused on Sunday of plagiarizing nearly a third of his law school thesis, according to a report by an investigative journalist.

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Ariana Grande Hit with Plagiarism Suit by Canadian Songwriter | FYIMusicNews

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Ariana Grande Hit with Plagiarism Suit by Canadian Songwriter | FYIMusicNews

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Plagiarism Rap (Cite Your Sources) - YouTube

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Plagiarism Rap (Cite Your Sources) - YouTube

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To learn more about citing sources properly, check out the U of A Libraries research, writing and citing resource links: http://bit.ly/K74Gjk Produced by the Office of Student Judicial Affairs, University of Alberta, and Townend Films Written and Performed by Mitchmatic and Mikey Maybe Director and Editor: Scott Townend Assistant Director and Audio Technician: Tyler Fraser Executive Producers: Deb Eerkes and Chris Hackett

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Cultural Differences

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When Duke University found 34 first-year business school students guilty of collaborating on a take-home test late last month, officials announced a variety of penalties: Pending appeals, nine of the Fuqua School of Business M.B.A. students would be expelled, 15 would receive a one-year suspension and a failing grade in the required course, nine would simply fail the class and one would fail the assignment alone.

Not surprisingly, some of the students are contesting their sentences. This week, a Durham lawyer who's filed appeals on behalf of 16 of the students cried foul to the Associated Press, arguing that all nine of the expelled students were from Asian countries, and that the students in question failed to fully understand the honor code and the judicial proceedings.

Excuses, excuses? Maybe; maybe not. Regardless, the complaints serve to spotlight some of the particular challenges inherent in addressing issues of academic integrity involving international students, many of whom come to American colleges with different conceptions of cheating. As the number of international students has increased in recent years -- and the number of academic misconduct incidents involving international students has risen accordingly -- educators have increasingly embraced the need to address academic integrity concerns proactively, recognizing in their actions the various cultural influences that can help cause one to cheat.

"These issues come up in unusual ways. It doesn't mean there isn't cheating in China [for instance]. There is," says Sidney L. Greenblatt, senior assistant director of advising and counseling at Syracuse University and an expert on China (he's currently writing an essay for a collection on cultural aspects of academic integrity, and has co-authored a publication on " U.S. Classroom Culture " highlighting these issues). "People present false credentials to the American embassy and corruption in the system is about what it is here."

"These things do exist, but very good, very committed students are caught up in plagiarism for cultural reasons, and splitting those up is no easy trick."

Most of the concerns surrounding international students and cheating center around plagiarism, a form of cheating that's all too common among American undergraduates, some of whom say they were never taught what was legitimate and what wasn't. But while international students certainly are far from alone in cheating, their circumstances are often unique, and international student advisors and experts cite a whole host of specific reasons why international students might knowingly or unknowingly circumvent the system.

Foremost among them is that the Western style of citing sources isn't universal: Greenblatt points out that many Asian students, for instance, come from educational systems in which the norm is to repeat back a textbook or a professor verbatim (without a citation), as a sign of respect to the source of knowledge. In collectivist cultures, adds Petra Crosby, director of international student programs and a lecturer in the cross-cultural studies concentration at Carleton College, knowledge is often viewed as a shared endeavor, so "copying" doesn't always encapsulate the same connotation. Not to mention that knowledge itself can be defined differently, at least as far as what's common and doesn't need to be cited: What's common knowledge in Indiana can, after all, be substantially different than what's common knowledge in India.

Language barriers can also prevent students from fully understanding codes of conduct, and students feeling isolated in their classrooms not only by language but also by different teaching and learning styles may not be so inclined to contact faculty or other academic resources with their concerns about proper practices until it's too late. Plus, of course, desperation can feed into cheating, and the stakes for international students struggling in their courses are often particularly high. "In addition to understanding that international students may be somewhat confused about the norms of scholarship, that international dimension may also play out as the added pressure of doing well so they will not lose their visas," says Timothy Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity, at Duke.

"The concerns seem to have crystallized in probably the last five or six years," Dodd says of issues surrounding international students and academic integrity. "We have an instinctive sensitivity toward fairness.... Are they being inefficiently or insufficiently instructed?"

Dodd advocates specialized orientations for international students on the norms and practices of Western scholarship. In fact, though it's hard to know how many, it seems an increasing number of universities have begun incorporating sessions on academic integrity in their orientations for international students in recent years, and the topic has become a hot one at annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conferences. How to orient students to American norms surrounding academic integrity without scaring them has become a major point of interest among international educators, says Crosby of Carleton. "People are shell shocked. For many students it's the first time they've been away from home. You don't want to hit them with, 'If you do this, you're an evil person.' You just can't approach it that way."

Many of the practices being embraced involve reinforcing any messages sent to international students during orientation by pointing students to different resources -- including their professors -- that they can consult throughout their college careers.

The University of Denver, for instance, initiated a multi-faceted program several years ago to better advise international students and faculty members about the issue and develop a stronger network of resources, says Michael Elliott, director of international student and scholar services. "When we're working with new international students, we have discussions around what expectations they're coming with, what expectations they had in their own high schools and universities overseas, because some or none of their honor codes and codes of conduct will transfer over to the U.S.," says Elliott. "They need to understand that they may be learning from ground zero, that sanctions can be delivered and are delivered whether the violation was intentional or not."

In addition to recruiting international students to advise their peers on academic integrity issues - the University of Denver for instance has a brochure in which international students write about hypothetical scenarios and their solutions for the benefit of their peers - Elliott's office distributes a tips sheet for faculty. "You can consider it a two-way street," Elliott says.

One of the sides to this is, after all, "the culture of the receiving country," adds Syracuse's Greenblatt. "That's the whole question of who hears international students when they have concerns about these things. Who listens? Because listening is as important a skill as talking, and in the United States, talking is the preferred educational venture."

Ultimately, though, Elliott says that while educators should do their best to guide international students, orient them to the issue, and alert them to (hopefully more knowledgeable) resources, it's the student's responsibility to seek help before violating any academic codes of conduct -- by catching problems with citations, for instance, by working with faculty while in the draft-writing stage.

"Can it be a false claim," an excuse of sorts, Dodd of the Center for Academic Integrity asks about cultural misunderstandings causing cheating. "Absolutely, and that's why cases like [Duke's] are assessed carefully by an objective counsel or board and the evidence becomes the matter of the ruling - and not one's educational preparation or background."

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When Duke University found 34 first-year business school students guilty of collaborating on a take-home test late last month, officials announced a variety of penalties: Pending appeals, nine of the Fuqua School of Business M.B.A.

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Plagiarism quiz: Who were the caught-out copycats? - BBC News

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Plagiarism quiz: Who were the caught-out copycats? - BBC News

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Popular Culture

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Donald Trump's wife Melania has been accused of copying parts of her speech to the Republican Party Congress from a 2008 address by the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

Test your knowledge of other people who have been accused of - and caught out at - cheating:

Click to see content: plagiarismquiz
Picture question credits: Getty - 1, 3, 4; Alamy - 2; Associated Press - 6 Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

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Plagiarism quiz: Who were the caught-out copycats?

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Donald Trump's wife Melania has been accused of copying parts of her speech to the Republican Party Congress from a 2008 address by the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

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Melania Trump’s Speech Bears Striking Similarities to Michelle Obama’s in 2008 - The New York Times

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Melania Trump’s Speech Bears Striking Similarities to Michelle Obama’s in 2008 - The New York Times

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Popular Culture

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Describing it as "a great speech," Mr. Manafort said at a morning convention briefing that "obviously Michelle Obama feels very similar sentiments toward her family."

Deflecting questions about the passages themselves, Mr. Manafort instead attacked Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, for what he said was an effort to draw attention to the matter.

"This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, she seeks out to demean her and take her down," Mr. Manafort said on CNN. "It's not going to work against Melania Trump."

Surrogates for Mr. Trump mused aloud on Tuesday about what might have happened, raising questions about fissures within his team and allowing the controversy to drag on.

One adviser to Mr. Trump, who has assisted in the drafting of some of his speeches, acknowledged that Ms. Trump used words that were not her own. "I'm sure what happened is the person who was helping write this plucked something in there and probably an unfortunate oversight - and certainly Melania didn't have anything to do with it," the adviser, Sam Clovis, a Trump campaign co-chairman, said in an interview on MSNBC.

Katrina Pierson, another spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, acknowledged that Ms. Trump used phrases similar to those used by Mrs. Obama but insisted that the language was not copied verbatim.

She said in an interview with Sky News that Ms. Trump was trying to echo themes expressed publicly by prominent women including Laura Bush and Elizabeth Dole.

"She really wanted to communicate to Americans in phrases they've heard before," Ms. Pierson said.

Talk of who was to blame for the speech also buzzed among former advisers to Mr. Trump. Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager who was ousted in favor of Mr. Manafort, said that Mr. Manafort should take responsibility.

"Whoever signed off, the final signoff that allowed this to go forward, should be held accountable," Mr. Lewandowski said on CNN. "I think if it was Paul Manafort, he would do the right thing and resign."

Two people briefed on the process, who insisted on anonymity to discuss such a sensitive issue, said that Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law, had commissioned a draft of Ms. Trump's speech from two former speechwriters for George W. Bush.

Matthew Scully and John McConnell, who had worked together as speechwriters during Mr. Bush's first term, wrote a draft of Ms. Trump's speech in June, sending it to the campaign for review about a month ago.

The pair did not hear back from the campaign until about 10 days ago, according to one person familiar with the conversation, when they were told that the lineup of speeches and the timing of Ms. Trump's speech had been changed, leading to the speech having to be shortened. Ms. Trump then worked with a person from within the Trump organization to make substantial revisions.

The speech-writing duo was not aware that the speech had been significantly changed until Ms. Trump delivered it on Monday night. According to one source, the only parts that remained from the original draft were the introduction and a passage that included the phrase "a national campaign like no other."

Mr. Scully is a veteran Republican speechwriter who wrote an early draft of a speech for Senator John McCain's vice-presidential nominee in 2008. Mr. Scully had prepared a generic version of the speech and then rewrote it during an extended session with Sarah Palin, after he learned she was Mr. McCain's choice.

Mr. Scully also helped write the acceptance speech given by Paul Ryan when he was chosen as Mitt Romney's running mate in the 2012 presidential campaign.

Ms. Trump initially earned praise for her speech on the opening night of the convention, but her remarks almost immediately came under scrutiny when striking similarities were discovered between her speech and one delivered by Mrs. Obama

The phrases in question came when Ms. Trump - who told NBC News earlier on Monday that she had written her speech herself - was discussing her upbringing in Slovenia and her parents.

Here are the relevant passages:
Ms. Trump, Monday night:

From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son. And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

Mrs. Obama, in her 2008 speech:

"Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children - and all children in this nation - to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. "

"I was born in Slovenia, a small, beautiful and then-C ommunist country in Central Europe. My sister, Ines, who is an incredible woman and a friend, and I were raised by my wonderful parents. My elegant and hard-working mother, Amalija, introduced me to fashion and beauty. My father, Viktor, instilled in me a passion for business and travel. Their integrity, compassion and intelligence reflects to this day on me and for my love of family and America."
Mrs. Obama, in 2008:

"And I come here as a daughter - raised on the South Side of Chicago by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters. "

Mr. Trump's aides have thus far declined to identify who, if anyone, on the campaign helped in writing the speech

In a statement released hours after the speech, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, Jason Miller, was vague about how it was crafted.

"In writing her beautiful speech, Melania's team of writers took notes on her life's inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking," Mr. Miller said. "Melania's immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it a success."

Sarah Hurwitz, a White House speechwriter who composed Mrs. Obama's 2008 address, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, but Democrats were watching the fallout carefully.

Advisers to Hillary Clinton said they decided to take a restrained approach to the controversy. The Clinton campaign often challenges the integrity of the Trump campaign, but doing so over the speech could create an opening for Trump advisers to suggest that Mrs. Clinton was to blame for the furor.

After Mr. Manafort tried to do so anyway on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton's communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, replied "nice try, not true" on Twitter and added, "blaming Hillary Clinton isn't the answer" for every Trump campaign problem.

Stephanie Cutter, a Democratic strategist who has also been an Obama adviser, argued that the controversy revealed an inability among people closest to Mr. Trump to talk about his character.

"The person who is supposed to know the candidate best and can speak to his values and what drives him couldn't write her own speech on it," Ms. Cutter wrote in an email. "Instead, she lifted from a first lady who spoke from the heart about her husband."

At the White House, Josh Earnest, the press secretary, said he would leave the analysis of Ms. Trump's speech to reporters. But several times, he emphasized the positive reviews that Mrs. Obama received when she delivered her remarks in 2008.

"She received an enthusiastic reception and strong reviews because of her words and her life story and the values that she and her husband deeply believe in and try to instill in her kids," Mr. Earnest said.

A few minutes later, he emphasized that when it comes to Mrs. Obama, "her words and her values and her life story are quite powerful."

Accusations of plagiarism are not unknown in political speeches, although the consequences have varied.

In 2008, Mrs. Clinton criticized Mr. Obama for appearing to lift a passage from Deval Patrick, then the governor of Massachusetts, in a speech about how words matter. Mr. Obama, then a senator, said that he should have credited Mr. Patrick but that he did not consider it a case of plagiarism.

When Mr. Biden was running for president in the 1980s, he faced questions about plagiarizing speeches from Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert H. Humphrey and Neil Kinnock, a British Labour Party leader. Mr. Biden said at the time that it was "ludicrous" to expect a politician to attribute everything he said.

Jarrett Hill, a Twitter user whose biography describes him as an interior designer and journalist, apparently first noticed the resemblance between Ms. Trump's speech and Mrs. Obama's in 2008.

Mr. Hill, a television journalist who was recently laid off, said that one of Ms. Trump's lines - the words "strength of your dreams" - caught his attention as he was watching on his computer from a Starbucks in Los Angeles, juggling Facebook chats and browsing Twitter. He tracked down the clip of Mrs. Obama's speech online and noticed that parts of the two speeches were nearly the same.

"I thought, 'That's legit plagiarism,'" said Mr. Hill, who described himself as a supporter of President Obama. "'Someone took this piece and plugged in their own information.'"

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Maggie Haberman, Alan Rappeport, Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin

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Questions Over Melania Trump's Speech Set Off Finger-Pointing

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Describing it as "a great speech," Mr. Manafort said at a morning convention briefing that "obviously Michelle Obama feels very similar sentiments toward her family." Deflecting questions about the passages themselves, Mr. Manafort instead attacked Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, for what he said was an effort to draw attention to the matter.

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‘Blurred Lines’ In Music Copyright Fight | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

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‘Blurred Lines’ In Music Copyright Fight | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

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music, popular culture

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Music, copyright and the "Blurred Lines" verdict. How it may lock the music industry, and songwriting.

"Blurred lines" captures very well the confusion in the music business right now over what is protected by copyright law and what is not. Last week, a Los Angeles jury came down with a nearly $7.4 million judgment against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for their 2013 mega-hit "Blurred Lines. Said it stole from Marvin Gaye's 1977 song "Got to Give it Up." Gaye's family celebrated. But a lot of composers wondered if copyright is now being extended to cover not just lyrics and melody but a whole vibe. Rhythm. Timbre. This hour On Point: what's theft now when it comes to music? To song?
-- Tom Ashbrook

John Kellogg, entertainment lawyer and assistant chair of the music business management department at the Berklee College of Music. Author of " Take Care Of Your Music Business." (@kellogglaw)

Joanna Demers, forensic musicologist and chair of the department of musicology at the University of Southern California's Thorton School of Music. Author of " Steal This Music" and " Listening Through the Noise."

Bonnie McKee, singer and songwriter. (@bonniemckee)

Los Angeles Times: Jurors hit Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams with $7.4-million verdict - "A federal jury found last Tuesday that the 2013 hit song 'Blurred Lines' infringed on the Marvin Gaye chart-topper 'Got to Give It Up,' awarding nearly $7.4 million to Gaye's children. Jurors found against singer-songwriters Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke, but held harmless the record company and rapper T.I."

Hollywood Reporter: 'Blurred Lines' Jury Orders Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams to Pay $7.4 Million -- "In what might now be the landmark legal controversy over songcraft, the jury decided that Thicke and Williams infringed both songs and had to pay $4 million in damages (essentially accepting the Gaye family's contention that if 'Got to Give It Up' was properly licensed, the family would have gotten a 50 percent cut of the $8 million in 'Blurred Lines' publishing revenue). On top of that, the two songwriters had to hand back nearly $3.4 million of their profits on 'Blurred Lines.' The verdict will echo through the ages."

Washington Post: Blurred lines and copyright infringement - "To my ear, the (a) lyrics are different, the (b) rhythms of the two songs are different, and the (c) harmonies are different. The similarity, like I (and others) have said, is just in 'the sound' - the groove, the vibe, call it what you will that we don't have a really good name for but which is largely the engineer's doing."

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'Blurred Lines' In Music Copyright Fight

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Music, copyright and the "Blurred Lines" verdict. How it may lock the music industry, and songwriting. "Blurred lines" captures very well the confusion in the music business right now over what is protected by copyright law and what is not.

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Plagiarism is Dead; Long Live the Retweet: Unpacking an Identity Crisis in Digital Content - Hybrid Pedagogy

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Plagiarism is Dead; Long Live the Retweet: Unpacking an Identity Crisis in Digital Content - Hybrid Pedagogy

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Fareed Zakaria Never Stopped Plagiarizing: How Dozens Of Episodes Of His CNN Show Ripped Others Off | Our Bad Media

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Fareed Zakaria Never Stopped Plagiarizing: How Dozens Of Episodes Of His CNN Show Ripped Others Off | Our Bad Media

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Fareed Zakaria Never Stopped Plagiarizing: How Dozens Of Episodes Of His CNN Show Ripped Others Off

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Earlier this year, a certain CNN employee specializing in international news was caught red-handed plagiarizing dozens of instances of reporting. What did the network do? The answer depends on which CNN staff member we're talking about. If it was Marie Louise Gumuchian, whose "repeated plagiarism offenses" were discovered this May, the network fired her and...

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Stop Internet Plagiarism | Plagiarism Today

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Stop Internet Plagiarism | Plagiarism Today

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Stopping Internet Plagiarism may seem to be a daunting challenge at first, however, the process is extremely simple and can be broken down into a series of steps.

Below are the six steps to detecting and stopping misuse of your content on the Web:

How to Find Plagiarism - How to detect plagiarism in nearly all content types.

Contacting a Plagiarist - An overview of how to contact an infringer.

Finding the Host - Information on how to find the host of any Web site.

Contacting the Host - How to contact the host and get infringing content removed.

When All Else Fails - What to do when the other approaches don't work.

The Long Haul - How to develop a long-term content protection strategy.

In addition to those articles, you may be interested in the following general articles about copyright:

What is a Copyright? - The very basics of copyright.

Limitations of Copyright - What copyright can't do or protect.

Copyright Myths - Various myths and misunderstandings about copyright.

If you wish to hire someone to help you through this process, either on a long-term basis or to help guide you through it the first few times, please take a look at my consulting site and see if I can be of service.

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Stop Internet Plagiarism - Plagiarism Today

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Stopping Internet Plagiarism may seem to be a daunting challenge at first, however, the process is extremely simple and can be broken down into a series of steps. Below are the six steps to detecting and stopping misuse of your content on the Web: How to Find Plagiarism - How to detect plagiarism in nearly ...

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Anatomy of a Serial-Plagiarism Charge - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Anatomy of a Serial-Plagiarism Charge - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Mustapha Marrouchi 's extensive body of work includes books, peer-reviewed articles, and online essays; literary criticism and sociocultural analysis; commentary and memoir. It's a diverse portfolio, but if you track it closely enough, a through line emerges: Passages from other authors regularly appear, nearly verbatim, without attribution.

With a sample size so large, and the echoes of other writers so resonant, his work provides a rare glimpse into the modus operandi of a scholar who fails to credit his sources. Some passages seem noteworthy for their brazenness; others just come across as kind of odd. Here's a short guide to some of the most striking examples:

Bringing Out the Big Guns

Browse Mr. Marrouchi's published work, and you'll find turns of phrase drawn from of a Murderers' Row of writers, critics, and scholars: Salman Rushdie. Colm Tóibín. Edward Said. Louis Menand. Terry Eagleton and John Updike-more on them later. Slavoj Zizek. (Of course, Slavoj Zizek.) Here's one of many Zizek parallels:

And here's some text that seems to come from Rushdie. Oddly, Marrouchi used this passage in "On Algeria: Childhood and Fear," a work that is presented as memoir: On the professor's webpage, it is described as tracing "his childhood experiences in a small town in the High Atlas in the 1960s."

Strange Substitutions

In some cases, Mr. Marrouchi's prose is virtually identical to that of another author, with one major exception: He applies the language to an entirely new topic. For example, a passage questioning Immanuel Kant's interest in the arts is transmuted into a suggestion that Kant lacked a feel for the proletariat:

Even more strikingly, an examination of Samuel Beckett's beyond-his-years froideur (!) is repurposed to refer instead to Kazuo Ishiguro. (In the process, some gramatically odd things seem to have happened: Try making sense of those em dashes.)

Suspicious Mash-Ups

Occasionally two apparently repurposed texts are fused into one. Here, Terry Eagleton's exegesis of Waiting for Godot -Beckett again!-combines with John Updike's appreciation of R.K. Narayan to become grist for Marrouchi's book-length examination of "ethnic force fields."

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Mustapha Marrouchi 's extensive body of work includes books, peer-reviewed articles, and online essays; literary criticism and sociocultural analysis; commentary and memoir. It's a diverse portfolio, but if you track it closely enough, a through line emerges: Passages from other authors regularly appear, nearly verbatim, without attribution.

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Pete Seeger on Combinatorial Creativity, Originality, Equality, and the Art of Dot-Connecting | Brain Pickings

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Pete Seeger on Combinatorial Creativity, Originality, Equality, and the Art of Dot-Connecting | Brain Pickings

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Popular culture, music

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In 1987, shortly after being appointed editor of SongTalk, the journal of the National Academy of Songwriters, Paul Zollo began interviewing some of the greatest songwriters alive - Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Madonna, Frank Zappa, David Byrne, and dozens more - "always with the assurance that my focus is strictly on songwriting and the creative process, as opposed to the celebrity-oriented queries often directed to them by the press." These remarkably candid and wide-ranging conversations, collected in the impressive tome Songwriters On Songwriting (public library), transcend the realm of songwriting to unmask the essential elements of ideation in just about every creative discipline, from writing to illustration to design. Indeed, Zollo's most striking realization from the series was that despite writing songs that are "infinite and eternal - everywhere at once, untouched by time," these songwriters themselves are deeply human, "as finite and earthbound as the rest of us." Zollo, a songwriter himself, reflects:

[This] underscores the knowledge that all songwriters are in the same boat, and that even the most enduring and magical of their songs began where all songs begin - with a single spark of inspiration that is balanced with the mastery of craft that comes from years of work.

Among the most spectacular conversations in the volume, conducted in 1988, is that with beloved folk musician and activist Pete Seeger (May 3, 1919-January 27, 2014), one of the most prolific songwriters of the past century. In reflecting on his ample creative output, Seeger echoes Henry Miller on originality and speaks to the combinatorial nature of creativity and the idea that everything is a remix:

Don't be so all-fired concerned about being original. You hear an old song you like but you'd like to change a little, there's no crime in changing a little.

[...]

It's a process. It's not any particular song, it's not any particular singer. It's a process by which ordinary people take over old songs and make them their own.

He later adds a remark that applies just as much to creators of all stripes - artists, writers, inventors - as it does to songwriters:

I look upon myself and other songwriters as links in a long chain. All of us, we're links in a chain. And if we do our job right, there will be many, many links to come.

Pointing to the legacy and spirit of jazz as a perfectly illustrative example, where "the melody which you sing the first time is just considered as the bare bones" and improvisation builds upon it, Seeger echoes Virginia Woolf's famous assertion that "words belong to each other" and adds:

Even the most original song you can think of is liable to have a good deal of tradition in it. After all, the major scale and the minor scale were invented thousands of years ago... And the English language was invented a long time ago, and the phrases that we use. And we're just rearranging these ancient elements.

Seeger later revisits how this layering of ideas and language fuels the creative process and the circumventive quest for Truth:

The nice thing about poetry is that you're always stretching the definitions of words. Lawyers and scientists and scholars of one sort or another try to restrict the definitions, hoping that they can prevent people from fooling each other. But that doesn't stop people from lying.

Cezanne painted a red barn by painting it ten shades of color: purple to yellow. And he got a red barn. Similarly, a poet will describe things many different ways, circling around it, to get to the truth.

My father also had a nice little simile. He said, "The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. And you can't lay your hand on it. All you do is circle around and point, and say, 'It's in there somewhere.'"

In discussing how his Vietnam War song "Our Generation" was born, Seeger once again acknowledges the combinatorial nature of creativity - that slot-machine quality of ideation that Paula Scher so memorably described, which David Lynch has also echoed. Seeger tells Zollo:

I [came] across the phrase in some little radical magazine: "Our generation wears sandals like the Vietnamese." And I took that line and built a song out of it.

That quite often happens to me. I'll read one phrase somewhere. A middle-aged woman in Ohio wrote a poem that said, "The month of April, when we pay for the burning of the children." Talking about the income tax, of course. That's where we pay for the burning of the children. So I built a whole song around that, called "The Calendar."

To further illustrate this unconscious connection-making, Seeger recounts reading a short passage in a chapter of a famous novel about Czarist Russia, which gave him the basic idea for a song. He diligently copied the passage in his pocket notebook but, true to the pivotal role of unconscious idea-incubation in the creative process, it was another two or three years until he revisited it - unconsciously:

I'm sitting in a plane, kind of dozing. And you know, when you're dozing, that's when the creative ideas come.

Suddenly, the passage from the novel came to mind, as did a line he had written five years earlier but never used in a song. His unconscious mind brought the two together - for isn't that capacity the definition of the creative mind? - and his beloved song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" was born.

Later, in discussing his famous anthem "Rainbow Race," a song that had come to him at six in the morning, Seeger echoes Stephen King's belief in wakeful dreaming and the power of "creative sleep," considering the conditions most conducive to such unconscious dot-connecting:

I don't know how other people are, but a number of my ideas come early in the morning or late at night. When the brain is somehow released from the pressures of the day.

He goes on to elaborate:

In solving a problem, you often have to make connections between two things that aren't usually connected. You know, E.M. Forster, the novelist, was asked, "What are your words of wisdom for future generations?" He said, "Only connect."

[...]

Your brain often suppresses such idle connections because you're busy with the business of the day. You're doing whatever you're supposed to do. But there come times when you're no longer doing what you're supposed to do and you're just kind of rambling, making strange connections.

(A photographer whose work I admire tremendously, for its ability to connect place and presence with unparalleled emotional resonance, recently used the phrase "mumble with my eyes" to describe her work - a phrase that inadvertently captures what Seeger is describing with wonderfully poetic elegance.)

In considering the relationship between creative integrity and commercial success - a question increasingly timely in our age of vacant made-to-sell pop hits - Seeger contradicts Picasso and speaks unambiguously of commercial culture:

Bless my stars that I met people who had nothing but contempt for the commercial world... I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you're starting to kill yourself artistically.

When asked about his relationship with the Bible, Seeger - a longtime proponent of gender equality - offers a wonderfully wise lament on the role of organized religion in the history of gender relations:

I don't read the Bible that often. I leaf through it occasionally and I'm amazed by the foolishness at times and the wisdom at other times. I call it the greatest book of folklore ever given. Not that there isn't a lot of wisdom in it. You can trace the history of people poetically.

It's quite obvious that once upon a time the human race shared everything equally; it was like living in a garden. And then we got smart and invented farming. And all of a sudden we had class society and injustice and male supremacy and a whole lot of other cruddy things.

But the priests wanted to keep women in their place. So they invented the story about Eve and the apple. You can see that was invented by a bunch of male supremacists: "These women are misleading you. They are evil. They misled you before; don't let them do it again." Women threatened the power of the priest. They undermined the priests' power with their husbands: "Oh, don't listen to that priest. Listen to me, honey."

But cultural conflict, for Seeger, has its silver lining. In talking about his song "Last Train to Nuremberg," he echoes Anaïs Nin on the role of emotional turbulence and tells Zollo:

Crisis brings out some of the best art the world has ever known. Whether it's somebody being in love or a country at war or revolution.

Songwriters On Songwriting is absolutely fantastic in its hefty 750-page entirety, featuring fifty-one more equally dimensional and insightful conversations with such icons as Suzanne Vega, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, k.d. lang, David Byrne, and Neil Young. Complement it with writers on writing.

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Pete Seeger on Combinatorial Creativity, Originality, Equality, and the Art of Dot-Connecting

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In 1987, shortly after being appointed editor of SongTalk, the journal of the National Academy of Songwriters, Paul Zollo began interviewing some of the greatest songwriters alive - Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Madonna, Frank Zappa, David Byrne, and dozens more - "always with the assurance that my focus is strictly on songwriting and the creative process, as opposed to the celebrity-oriented queries often directed to them by the press."

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The Psychology of Cryptomnesia: How We Unconsciously Plagiarize Existing Ideas | Brain Pickings

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The Psychology of Cryptomnesia: How We Unconsciously Plagiarize Existing Ideas | Brain Pickings

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"Any experience the writer has ever suffered," William Faulkner told a university audience in 1958, "is going to influence what he does, and that is not only what he's read, but the music he's heard, the pictures he's seen." This notion - that "our" ideas are the combinatorial product of all kinds of existing ideas we've absorbed in the course of being alive and awake to the world - is something many creators have articulated, perhaps none more succinctly than Paula Scher. This fusion of existing bits into new combinations is a largely unconscious process, and for all its miraculous machinery, one serious downside is that it often obliterates the traces of the original sources we unconsciously fold into our "new" ideas. Helen Keller experienced the repercussions of this phenomenon when she was accused of plagiarism, Henry Miller questioned it when he wrote "And your way, is it really your way?" and Coleridge often tripped over the fine line between unconscious borrowing and deliberate theft.

In 1989, decades before legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks explored why the mind is susceptible to this, psychologists Alan Brown and Dana Murphy coined a term for this phenomenon: cryptomnesia.

In the altogether illuminating 1994 volume The Psychology of Writing (public library) - which also gave us the conditions of the perfect daily routine and ideal creative environment - cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg defines cryptomnesia as "the belief that a thought is novel when in fact it is a memory" and examines how it arises.

Noting that writers frequently draw upon existing sources in a conscious way - "including verbatim quotations, expansions or summarizations, presentations of alternative points of view that differ from those of the writer, and mimicking the stylistic voice of another" - Kellogg turns to the unconscious mechanisms that drive cryptomnesia:

Much of what a writer knows, particularly discourse and sociocultural knowledge, exists only in tacit form. For example, sentence patterns as well as cultural beliefs are shared by members of the same discourse community and are drawn upon freely by all, without conscious awareness. The same sort of unconscious copying may also occur with specific sentences, facts, and arguments - forms of domain-specific knowledge. When it does, however, the author is subject to the charge of plagiarism... [Cryptomnesia] can lead to inadvertent plagiarism if a writer fails to acknowledge unwittingly an earlier source due to the failure to recognize his or her own thoughts and words as unoriginal.

In other cases, Kellogg notes, "the writer borrows unknowingly from his or her own published work" - the kind of inadvertent autoplagiarism to which today's overly prolific writers are especially susceptible as they scramble to churn out large volumes of work with great regularity under the tyrannical industrialism of modern publishing, online and off. Indeed, the notion of cryptomnesia, in all of its permutations, seems even more uncomfortable two decades later: The expansion of the web, particularly of the social web, has resulted in far greater connectivity and faster flow of ideas between originator and recipient, followed by ever-speedier absorption of those ideas into the common pool - or what Vannevar Bush so poetically called "the common record" in 1945 - in which all of us are increasingly immersed. Under these conditions, cryptomnesia invariably becomes our collective creative pathology.

Kellogg illustrates the cognitive mechanisms of this deeply human phenomenon with empirical evidence:

In a seminal laboratory analogue of cryptomnesia, Brown and Murphy (1989) had groups of four students take turns generating examples of categories (generate). Then each student in the group tried to recall the examples that he or she generated (recall old), under instructions to not name items generated by others. Finally, they generated additional examples (recall new), again with instructions to duplicate neither their own nor others' earlier responses. On the recall old test, 75% of the participants produced at least one plagiarized item and, on the recall-new test, 70% did so. Self-plagiarized items ... were rare in the laboratory task; nearly all items were lifted from other students.

The pattern of results in the three experiments reported by Brown and Murphy indicated that plagiarism occurred more frequently in written tasks than in oral tasks. Having heard material, one is more likely to plagiarize it when writing than when speaking. Whether the reverse pattern occurs after having read material remains to be seen. But based on their results alone, writers may be especially susceptible to borrowing unknowingly ideas they have gained through lectures, discussions, and other forms of aural input... Ideas that are expressed frequently - that are "in the air" - are especially open to borrowing.

As the web increasingly becomes "the air," one can't help but wonder - and worry - about how the growing threat of a cryptomnesia epidemic will impact the health of creative culture.

But then again, perhaps this is the fate of creativity and has always been a part of its essential nature - as Pete Seeger put it long before the social web existed and a year before Brown and Murphy's study, "All of us, we're links in a chain. And if we do our job right, there will be many, many links to come."

The Psychology of Writing is, sadly, long out of print but well worth the hunt and is also available on Kindle. Complement it with the relationship between memory and creativity.

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The Psychology of Cryptomnesia: How We Unconsciously Plagiarize Existing Ideas

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"Any experience the writer has ever suffered," William Faulkner told a university audience in 1958, "is going to influence what he does, and that is not only what he's read, but the music he's heard, the pictures he's seen."

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JK Rowling 'plagiarism' case fails - BBC News

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JK Rowling 'plagiarism' case fails - BBC News

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Popular culture

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A legal claim that JK Rowling lifted the plot of one of her Harry Potter books from the work of another writer is to go no further.

The estate of late author Adrian Jacobs had claimed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire plagiarised parts of his book, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard.

The Court of Appeal had ordered the estate to pay the first stage of £1.5m as security for costs by last Friday.

Because no payment was made to the court, the claim has now failed.

It marks the end of a seven-year attempt by Paul Allen, the trustee of the estate of Adrian Jacobs, to win the case against Rowling and her publisher Bloomsbury.

"The whole thing is a scandal," said David Hooper, a solicitor for Bloomsbury. "It was an absolutely ludicrous case."

Rowling had described the claim as "not only unfounded but absurd", saying she had not seen the book until the claim was launched in 2004.

Children's author Jacobs died in 1997.
'No chance of success'
"An enormous amount of time has been wasted having to defend against this claim, when it was quite obvious to us from the outset that it had no chance of success," said Rowling's solicitor Gideon Benaim.

"We are glad that the substantive action is now at an end."

In March, Mr Justice Kitchin ordered the estate of Jacobs to make a payment into court to pay security for 65% of the costs faced by Rowling and Bloomsbury.

The first payment, originally due in April, was delayed after Jacobs's estate appealed against the decision.

Last Thursday the Court of Appeal rejected that appeal, ordering Mr Allen to pay the money within 24 hours.

Mr Allen had brought the same claim in the US against Rowling and her US publisher Scholastic. That claim was rejected earlier this year.

It alleged Rowling copied elements of Jacobs' 1987 book, among them a wizard contest and the notion of wizards travelling on trains.

But a New York district judge ruled "the contrast between the total concept and feel of the works [was] so stark" that "any serious comparison of the two strains credulity".

The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997 and the series has sold more than 400 million copies worldwide.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the last film in the series inspired by Rowling's novels, is now in cinemas.

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A legal claim that JK Rowling lifted the plot of one of her Harry Potter books from the work of another writer is to go no further. The estate of late author Adrian Jacobs had claimed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire plagiarised parts of his book, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard.

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Jane Goodall blames 'chaotic note taking' for plagiarism controversy | Environment | The Guardian

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Jane Goodall blames 'chaotic note taking' for plagiarism controversy | Environment | The Guardian

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Leading primatologist Jane Goodall has blamed a "hectic work schedule" and her "chaotic method of note taking" for a plagarism controversy surrounding her reissued book.

Speaking ahead of the publication of a revised edition of Seeds of Hope, first published in August 2013, Goodall, said she had learned lessons following reports in the Washington Post last year that at least 12 sections of the book were lifted from other websites including Wikipedia.

"I am not methodical enough, I guess," she said in an interview with online magazine Mosaic. "In some cases, you look at my notebooks, there's no way you can tell whether this is from talking to somebody or whether it was something I read on the internet."

Last year an expert asked by the Washington Post to review Seeds of Hope spotted that some passages in the book echoed various other sources. The paper then published a report that claimed that at least 12 sections in the book were lifted from other websites, and which included an admission from Goodall of her failure correctly to cite her sources.

Examples cited by the paper included a sentence on organic farming that also appears on the website Choice Organic Teas, word for word.

Wikipedia also appears to have been used for a source: talking about the American botanist John Bartram, who lived during the 1700s and shipped seeds to Europe, Goodall informs her readers that "'Bartram's Boxes,' as they came to be known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson for distribution to a wide list of European clients." The Wikipedia entry on Bartram contains a virtually identical sentence.

Speaking in detail about the row for the first time Goodall told Mosaic that she had been naive.

"I have learned. In the future, I shall be more organised even if I don't have time. I shall certainly make sure I know who said something or what I read or where I read it."

The scientist who came to prominence researching the behaviour of chimpanzees insisted she had not intentionally tried to pass off anyone else's words as her own. "I don't think anybody who knows me would accuse me of deliberate plagiarism," she added.

In the revised edition of Seeds of Hope, to be published this month [April], Goodall said she had made minor changes to the text to address the book's critics and added a lengthy notes section. "I don't think a book has ever been more researched than this one. The notes at the end are about as long as the book."

And she claimed the controversy had turned out to be a "godsend."

"I am really happy for the sake of the plants that we've got it right now. I feel this is a book we can really be proud of now."
Topics

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Jane Goodall blames 'chaotic note taking' for plagiarism controversy

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Leading primatologist Jane Goodall has blamed a "hectic work schedule" and her "chaotic method of note taking" for a plagarism controversy surrounding her reissued book. Speaking ahead of the publication of a revised edition of Seeds of Hope, first published in August 2013, Goodall, said she had learned lessons following reports in the Washington Post last year that at least 12 sections of the book were lifted from other websites including Wikipedia.

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Did Trevor Noah steal Dave Chappelle’s joke? Noah’s bit on the “racism connoisseur” is too close for comfort - Salon.com

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Did Trevor Noah steal Dave Chappelle’s joke? Noah’s bit on the “racism connoisseur” is too close for comfort - Salon.com

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Popular culture

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A new piece in The Hollywood Reporter points out remarkable similarities between a joke that Trevor Noah told at L.A.'s Politicon this Saturday and a bit that Dave Chappelle did on HBO in 1998.

While it's possible that great minds just think alike - or, more likely, that Noah heard the bit long ago and subconsciously internalized it - there are some egregious similarities between the bits, from an identical premise to the use of the unusual phrase "racism connoisseur." While the observation about the difference between Northern and Southern racism certainly isn't unique, the structure and wording of the bits are a little too close for comfort, down to the punchline which has both Chappelle and Noah greeted by a man using the n-word.

You can read THR's full transcripts and watch videos of the segments below:
Noah:

Before I came to America, I thought I knew all kinds of racism. I've always considered myself something of a racism connoisseur. I appreciate the finer racism. Not to say I appreciate all racism, but a finer racism. Before I came here, blatant racism was my favorite. Blatant racism, where you know exactly where you stand, often perpetrated by old people, which I have always appreciated. They'll just tell it to you like it is. 'This is what I think about you!' Yeah, you're going to die soon. ... Charming racism in America changed my life. I discovered it in a place called Lexington, Kentucky. Probably one of the most wonderful places I've ever been - charming, friendly people. Racism with a smile and a tip of the hat. ... I was walking through the streets, a man walked up to me, didn't know me from a bar of soap, came straight up to me and looked me dead in the eye, and he was like, 'Good afternoon, n-er.' 'Good afternoon.' I've never seen racism with a smile. I didn't know what to do. He just said it like it was a fact. As if I fought him, he would have been like, 'What, didn't you know?'

Chappelle:

Traveling has made me a racism connoisseur, if you will. You know, it's different region to region. Anyone ever been down South? So you guys know what I'm talking about. The racism down there is just f-ing - it's perfect. Stewed to a perfection. It's conformable. It's out in the open. There are no secrets in Mississippi. Everybody knows the deal. "Morning, n-er!" "Morning, sir!" Not up here. Here in the big cities, it's a secret. And we should be like them. We should keep our shit out in the open and vent a little - I mean with limits. You don't want to say whatever comes to your mind, that might be a little much. White dude be walking down the street minding his business and a brother walk up to him: "Hello, you white oppressor, you slave-master rapist of Africa." "Why hello, my big-lips, spear-chucking friend."

This isn't the first time Noah has been accused of stealing jokes. Russell Peters called Noah a joke thief in an interview earlier this year, before later backtracking and saying it was a "prank." Back in 2013, comic David Kau made similar allegations, to which Noah responded: "Comedy is your personal take on a thing. Do you get what I'm saying? Like half the jokes young black comedians are doing in America right now, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy were doing 20 years ago."

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Did Trevor Noah steal Dave Chappelle's joke? Noah's bit on the "racism connoisseur" is to...

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A new piece in The Hollywood Reporter points out remarkable similarities between a joke that Trevor Noah told at L.A.'s Politicon this Saturday and a bit that Dave Chappelle did on HBO in 1998.

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Allergy to Originality: Mark Twain and the Remix Nature of All Creative Work, Animated | Brain Pickings

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Allergy to Originality: Mark Twain and the Remix Nature of All Creative Work, Animated | Brain Pickings

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Popular culture

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Why why all creative culture is built on "plagiarism, literary debt, appropriation, incorporation, retelling, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, reprise..."

When Helen Keller was accused of plagiarism, her dear friend Mark Twain wrote her a heartfelt and lively letter of support, in which he asserted that "all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources" and that "the kernel, the soul ... the actual and valuable material of all human utterances [is] plagiarism." Despite Twain's characteristically colorful language, the idea that everything is a remix is far from radical - it was pondered by Henry Miller, used by Johannes Gutenberg, abused by Duke Ellington, and championed by Pete Seeger, among countless other instances revealing that all creative work builds on what came before.

Animator Drew Christie brings Twain's pioneering advocacy of remix culture to life in this delightful illustrated op-doc for The New York Times, titled Allergy to Originality, exploring why all creative culture is built on "plagiarism, literary debt, appropriation, incorporation, retelling, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, reprise, thematic creation, ironic retake, parody, imitation, stylistic debt, pastiches, collages, and deliberate assemblages."

Complement with the story of how Mark Twain became the Steve Jobs of his day (the latter being in no small part a creative remixer) and young Twain's irreverent 1865 advice to little girls.

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Allergy to Originality: Mark Twain and the Remix Nature of All Creative Work, Animated

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When Helen Keller was accused of plagiarism, her dear friend Mark Twain wrote her a heartfelt and lively letter of support, in which he asserted that "all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources" and that "the kernel, the soul ...

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Writing Center, Ethics, and Excessive Research

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Writing Center, Ethics, and Excessive Research

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Academic article

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It is commonly accepted that tutors should intervene in students' writing processes (see for example Geller, et. al., 2007; Harris, 1986); however, I intend to argue that the easy availability of and students' dependence on digital sources necessitates that we include students' research practices as our territory as well.

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Why Stephen Ambrose's plagiarism matters.

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Why Stephen Ambrose's plagiarism matters.

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Stephen Ambrose handled his first plagiarism scandal of the week with the graceful humility you'd expect from America's Uncle History. Over the weekend, the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes nailed Ambrose for heisting several passages of The Wild Blue, his recent best seller about World War II B-24 bomber crews, from historian Thomas Childers. Ambrose had footnoted Childers but still passed off Childers' elegant prose as his own. Ambrose apologized immediately for the "mistake," blamed it on faulty attribution, and promised to place the text in quotations in future editions.

Barnes and Childers quickly pardoned Ambrose, and the only chiding Ambrose received was for his haste: He has written eight books in five years. He's a history factory, using his five kids as researchers and assistants to streamline the production process. "He writes so many books. I don't know how he can avoid making some mistakes," says former Sen. George McGovern, whose B-24 exploits are the chief subject of The Wild Blue. (Running a history-book mill can raise other complications besides bad attribution. Click for the disturbing story of how Ambrose got the idea for The Wild Blue.)

Ambrose ducked plagiarism No. 1, but then Forbes.com's Mark Lewis started digging. On Monday, Lewis revealed that Ambrose lifted sentences from Jay Monaghan's Custer biography in his 1975 book Crazy Horse and Custer.Two days later, Lewis exposed Cases 3 and 4-pilferage in 1997's best seller Citizen Soldiers and 1991's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery.And today the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick discovered five more swiped phrases and passages in The Wild Blue.Ambrose's patriots can't fall back on the factory defense anymore: Two of the cases occurred when Ambrose was an obscure professor, before he became Stephen Ambrose Industries. Ambrose is more defiant than apologetic. Though he says he'll correct the books, he insists to the that, "I am not out there stealing other people's writings. If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I went to tell and this story fits and a part of it is from other people's writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote."

Ambrose's assertion that he's not a thief is ludicrous. One plagiarism is careless. Two is a pattern. Four, five, or more is pathology. You can bet that historians jealous of Ambrose (that is, all historians) are this minute combing the rest of his corpus for more evidence of sticky fingers.

Plagiarism bloodlettings occur with a dreary regularity. Every few months, a reporter or writer is caught copying a dozen paragraphs from a newspaper here or stealing a few choice lines from an obscure magazine there. (Every time it happens, colleagues throw up their hands and say, "You moron-didn't you know that people read [the Washington Post, the National Journal, Martin Amis ...]")

The list of writers snared over the years is long and depressingly impressive: NPR's Nina Totenberg, who plagiarized a Washington Post story about Tip O'Neill when she was a young print reporter; the New York Times' Fox Butterfield, who rooked several paragraphs of a Boston Globe story-a story about plagiarism; Alex Haley, who settled with a writer he ripped off for Roots; hot young novelist Jacob Epstein, who took 53 passages from a Martin Amis novel; the New Republic's Ruth Shalit, caught snipping sentences hither and thither for five different stories; Martin Luther King Jr., who lifted much of his dissertation; Sen. Joe Biden, forced out of the 1988 presidential campaign for serial plagiarism-he then plagiarized his withdrawal speech-etc., etc.

Plagiarists steal good stuff and they steal garbage. Some of the liveliest writing in Epstein's novel Wild Oats was embezzled from Amis. Ambrose misappropriated many vivid sentences. Newspaper plagiarists generally pirate boilerplate quotes and analysis that would have been easy for them to gather on their own.

No matter what they steal, they fall back on the same excuses, as Thomas Mallon shows in his wonderful plagiarism book Stolen Words. Before the computer age, they blamed their confusing "notebooks," where they allegedly mixed up their own notes with passages recorded elsewhere. These days, plagiarists claim they mistake electronic files of notes with their own writing.

Plagiarists steal for reasons both profound and mundane. In a few cases, plagiarism flows from some deep psychological wellspring: Epstein, the son of eminent literary parents, stole so much and from such an obvious source that he was clearly "committing literary suicide," writes Mallon. Some writers plagiarize because they are rushing a project through and probably don't think they'll get caught. Some are just exceptionally careless. (Plagiarists do not transgress for the same reasons that fabulists such as Stephen Glass or Patricia Smith do. Click for why.)

Plagiarists are almost always bright, Mallon notes, and they often write better than those they rob. Shalit, for example, writes like a sparkler, yet stole routine material to fill out her pieces. Ambrose's books are gripping. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the English language's masters, thieved huge parcels from German writers.

As the Columbia Journalism Review chronicled in 1995, plagiarists suffer vastly different punishments for similar offenses. Some are sacked for a single misdemeanor shoplifting. Some keep their jobs after numerous felonies. Some are briefly suspended; others sidelined for months. Some pay huge settlements to the writers they have ripped off; most don't pay a penny. This variation, says Mallon, indicates our deep confusion about plagiarism. "We don't have a clear set of sanctions for it. We don't even have a clear idea what it is," he says. "Thinking about it is really intellectually unformed, even my thinking, and I wrote a book. It is extremely elusive."

It's so difficult to think about plagiarism for several reasons. First, all writers, especially good writers, borrow and imitate. That's how we learn. We are constantly influenced unconsciously by things we read. And it can be hard to distinguish an homage from an imitation from a borrowing from a bank robbery.

Writers are uncertain about plagiarism because none of us are certain that we are innocent. I frequently imitate the style of writers I admire. I surely have recycled snappy phrases I've read. I can't tell you what they are, but I bet they're out there. I have a fear-which I suspect is shared by most writers-that somewhere, in something I wrote, I may have even stolen a sentence. I don't remember doing it. I would never do it intentionally. But could I swear that it never happened? No. This is-to steal a phrase-our anxiety of influence.

Plagiarism is also confusing because we don't know whom it hurts. Plagiarism doesn't harm readers. They rarely know that something they read is ripped off. If anything, readers of The Wild Blue benefit from Ambrose's jacking Childers, because they get to read some of Childers' glowing sentences. ( The Wild Blue does commit a crime against readers, but it's not plagiarism. The book is slapdash. Ambrose seems to have written it between lunch and dinner one day. The Wild Blue bears almost no resemblance to Undaunted Courage or Band of Brothers or Ambrose's other marvelous pop histories. The Wild Blue exploits Ambrose's name for a distinctly un-Ambrosial project.)

In a 1997 New Yorker essay, James Kincaid argued that plagiarism should not bother writers so much. Most journalism is mediocre, unoriginal prose, Kincaid says, so writers shouldn't mind if it gets recycled. Some literary theorists minimize plagiarism for a related reason. They are skeptical of the ideas of authorship and originality, contending that everything new is cobbled together from older sources.

But these scholars, you will note, publish their articles under their own bylines. And both they and Kincaid ignore what makes the plagiarist so sinister. For writers, the act of putting particular words in a particular order is our hard labor. Even when the result is mediocre and unoriginal, it is our own mediocrity. The words are our proof of life, the evidence we can present at heaven's gate that we have not frittered away our three score and ten.

The plagiarist is, in a minor way, the cop who frames innocents, the doctor who kills his patients. The plagiarist violates the essential rule of his trade. He steals the lifeblood of a colleague. A few paragraphs have made Stephen Ambrose a vampire.

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Why Stephen Ambrose's plagiarism matters.

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Stephen Ambrose handled his first plagiarism scandal of the week with the graceful humility you'd expect from America's Uncle History. Over the weekend, the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes nailed Ambrose for heisting several passages of The Wild Blue, his recent best seller about World War II B-24 bomber crews, from historian Thomas Childers.

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"Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism" by Rebecca Moore Howard

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"Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism" by Rebecca Moore Howard

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Academic article

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Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism

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Considers how plagiarism continues to elude definition because teachers cannot possibly formulate and act on a definition of plagiarism that articulates both its textual and sexual work. Discusses linking sexual property to textual transgression and rejecting metaphors in relationship to rejecting plagiarism.

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Academic Dishonesty, Plagiarism Included, in the Digital Age: A Literature Review

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Academic Dishonesty, Plagiarism Included, in the Digital Age: A Literature Review

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Academic Article

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Understanding "Internet plagiarism" by Rebecca Moore Howard

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Understanding "Internet plagiarism" by Rebecca Moore Howard

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Academic Article

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Double Quote Unquote: Scholarly Attribution as (a) Speculative Play in the Remix Academy | Ruth Walker | M/C Journal

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Double Quote Unquote: Scholarly Attribution as (a) Speculative Play in the Remix Academy | Ruth Walker | M/C Journal

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Academic article

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Many years ago, while studying in Paris as a novice postgraduate, I was invited to accompany a friend to a seminar with Jacques Derrida. I leapt at the chance even though I was only just learning French. Although I tried hard to follow the discussion, the extent of my participation was probably signing the attendance sheet. Afterwards, caught up on the edges of a small crowd of acolytes in the foyer as we waited out a sudden rainstorm, Derrida turned to me and charmingly complimented me on my forethought in predicting rain, pointing to my umbrella. Flustered, I garbled something in broken French about how I never forgot my umbrella, how desolated I was that he had mislaid his, and would he perhaps desire mine? After a small silence, where he and the other students side-eyed me warily, he declined. For years I dined on this story of meeting a celebrity academic, cheerfully re-enacting my linguistic ineptitude.

Nearly a decade later I was taken aback when I overheard a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney re-telling my encounter as a witty anecdote, where an early career academic teased Derrida with a masterful quip, quoting back to him his own attention to someone else's quote. It turned out that , one of Derrida's more obscure early essays, employs an extended riff on an inexplicable citation found in inverted commas in the margins of Nietzsche's papers: " J'ai oublié mon parapluie " ("I have forgotten my umbrella"). My clumsy response to a polite enquiry was recast in a process of Chinese whispers in my academic community as a snappy spur-of-the-moment witticism. This re-telling didn't just selectively edit my encounter, but remixed it with a meta-narrative that I had myself referenced, albeit unknowingly.

My ongoing interest in the more playful breaches of scholarly conventions of quotation and attribution can be traced back to this incident, where my own presentation of an academic self was appropriated and remixed from fumbler to quipster. I've also been struck throughout my teaching career by the seeming disconnect between the stringent academic rules for referencing and citation and the everyday strategies of appropriation that are inherent to popular remix culture. I'm taking the opportunity in this paper to reflect on the practice of scholarly quotation itself, before examining some recent creative provocations to the academic 'author' situated inventively at the crossroad between scholarly convention and remix culture.

Early in his own teaching career at Oxford University Lewis Carroll, wrote to his younger siblings describing the importance of maintaining his dignity as a new tutor. He outlines the distance his college was at pains to maintain between teachers and their students: "otherwise, you know, they are not humble enough". Carroll playfully describes the set-up of a tutor sitting at his desk, behind closed doors and without access to today's communication technologies, relying on a series of college 'scouts' to convey information down corridors and staircases to the confused student waiting for instruction below. The lectures, according to Carroll, went something like this:

Tutor: What is twice three?
Scout: What's a rice-tree?
Sub-scout: When is ice free?
Sub-sub-scout: What's a nice fee??
Student ( timidly): Half a guinea.
Sub-sub-scout: Can't forge any!
Sub-scout: Ho for jinny!
Scout: Don't be a ninny!
Tutor ( looking offended, tries another question): Divide a hundred by twelve.
Scout: Provide wonderful bells!
Sub-scout: Go ride under it yourself!
Sub-sub-scout: Deride the dunderhead elf!
Pupil ( surprised): What do you mean?
Sub-sub-scout: Doings between!
Sub-scout: Blue is the screen!
Scout: Soup tureen!
And so the lecture proceeds...

Carroll's parody of academic miscommunication and misquoting was reproduced by Pierre Bourdieu at the opening of the book Academic Discourse to illustrate the failures of pedagogical practice in higher education in the mid 1960s, when he found scholarly language relied on codes that were "destined to dazzle rather than to enlighten" (3). Bourdieu et al found that students struggled to reproduce appropriately scholarly discourse and were constrained to write in a badly understood and poorly mastered language, finding reassurance in what he called a 'rhetoric of despair':"through a kind of incantatory or sacrificial rite, they try to call up and reinstate the tropes, schemas or words which to them distinguish professorial language" (4). The result was bad writing that karaoke-ed a pseudo academic discourse, accompanied by a habit of thoughtlessly patching together other peoples' words and phrases.

Such sloppy quoting activities of course invite the scholarly taboo of plagiarism or its extreme opposite, hypercitation. Elsewhere, Jacques Derrida developed an important theory of citationality and language, but it is intriguing to note his own considerable unease with conventional acknowledgement practices, of quoting and being quoted:

I would like to spare you the tedium, the waste of time, and the subservience that always accompany the classic pedagogical procedures of forging links, referring back to past premises or arguments, justifying one's own trajectory, method, system, and more or less skilful transitions, re-establishing continuity, and so on. These are but some of the imperatives of classical pedagogy with which, to be sure, one can never break once and for all. Yet, if you were to submit to them rigorously, they would very soon reduce you to silence, tautology and tiresome repetition. ( The Ear of the Other, 3)

This weariness with a procedural hyper-focus on referencing conventions underlines Derrida's disquiet with the self-protecting, self-promoting and self-justifying practices that bolster pedagogical tradition and yet inhibit real scholarly work, and risk silencing the authorial voice.

Today, remix offers new life to quoting. Media theorist Lev Manovich resisted the notion that the practice of 'quotation' was the historical precedent for remixing, aligning it instead to the authorship practice of music 'sampling' made possible by new electronic and digital technology. Eduardo Navas agrees that sampling is the key element that makes the act of remixing possible, but links its principles not just to music but to the preoccupation with reading and writing as an extended cultural practice beyond textual writing onto all forms of media (8). A crucial point for Navas is that while remix appropriates and reworks its source material, it relies on the practice of citation to work properly: too close to the original means the remix risks being dismissed as derivative, but at the same time the remixer can't rely on a source always being known or recognised (7). In other words, the conceptual strategies of remix must rely on some form of referencing or citation of the ideas it sources.

It is inarguable that advances in digital technologies have expanded the capacity of scholars to search, cut/copy & paste, collate and link to their research sources. New theoretical and methodological frameworks are being developed to take account of these changing conditions of academic work. For instance, Annette Markham proposes a ' remix methodology ' for qualitative enquiry, arguing that remix is a powerful tool for thinking about an interpretive and adaptive research practice that takes account of the complexity of contemporary cultural contexts.

In a similar vein Cheré Harden Blair has used remix as a theoretical framework to grapple with the issue of plagiarism in the postmodern classroom. If, following Roland Barthes, all writing is "a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture" (146), and if all writing is therefore rewriting, then punishing students for plagiarism becomes problematic. Blair argues that since scholarly writing has become a mosaic of digital and textual productions, then teaching must follow suit, especially since teaching, as a dynamic, shifting and intertextual enterprise, is more suited to the digital revolution than traditional, fixed writing (175). She proposes that teachers provide a space in which remixing, appropriation, patch-writing and even piracy could be allowable, even useful and productive: "a space in which the line is blurry not because students are ignorant of what is right or appropriate, or because digital text somehow contains inherent temptations to plagiarise, but because digital media has, in fact, blurred the line" (183).

The clashes between remix and scholarly rules of attribution are directly addressed by the pedagogical provocations of conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith, who has developed a program of 'uncreative writing' at the University of Pennsylvania, where, among other plagiaristic tasks, he forces students to transcribe whole passages from books, or to download essays from online paper mills and defend them as their own, marking down students who show a 'shred of originality'. In his own writing and performances, which depend almost exclusively on strategies of appropriation, plagiarism and recontextualisation of often banal sources like traffic reports, Goldsmith says that he is working to de-familiarise normative structures of language. For Goldsmith, reframing language into another context allows it to become new again, so that "we don't need the new sentence, the old sentence re-framed is good enough".

Goldsmith argues for the role of the contemporary academic and creative writer as an intelligent agent in the management of masses of information. He describes his changing perception of his own work: "I used to be an artist, then I became a poet; then a writer. Now when asked, I simply refer to myself as a word processor" (Perloff 147). For him, what is of interest to the twenty-first century is not so much the quote that 'rips' or tears words out of their original context, but finding ways to make new 'wholes' out of the accumulations, filterings and remixing of existing words and sentences.

Another extraordinary example of the blurring of lines between text, author and the discursive peculiarities of digital media can be found in Jonathan Lethem's essay 'An Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism', which first appeared in Harpers Magazine in 2007. While this essay is about the topic of plagiarism, it is itself plagiarized, composed of quotes that have been woven seamlessly together into a composite whole. Although Lethem provides a key at the end with a list of his sources, he has removed in-text citations and quotation marks, even while directly discussing the practices of mis-quotation and mis-attribution throughout the essay itself. Towards the end of the essay can be found the paragraph:

Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism. ...
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself is stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste ourselves, might we not forgive it of our artworks? (68)

Overall, Lethem's self-reflexive pro-plagiarism essay reminds the reader not only of how ideas in literature have been continuously recycled, quoted, appropriated and remixed, but of how open-source cultures are vital for the creation of new works.

Lethem (re)produces rather than authors a body of text that is haunted by ever present/absent quotation marks and references. Zara Dinnen suggests that Lethem's essay, like almost all contemporary texts produced on a computer, is a provocation to once again re-theorise the notion of the author, as not a rigid point of origin but instead "a relay of alternative and composite modes of production" (212), extending Manovich's notion of the role of author in the digital age of being perhaps closest to that of a DJ. But Lethem's essay, however surprising and masterfully intertextual, was produced and disseminated as a linear 'static' text.

On the other hand, Mark Amerika's remixthebook project first started out as a series of theoretical performances on his Professor VJ blog and was then extended into a multitrack composition of "applied remixology" that features sampled phrases and ideas from a range of artistic, literary, musical, theoretical and philosophical sources. Wanting his project to be received not as a book but as a hybridised publication and performance art project that appears in both print and digital forms, remixthebook was simultaneously published in a prestigious university press and a website that works as an online hub and teaching tool to test out the theories. In this way, Amerika expands the concept of writing to include multimedia forms composed for both networked environments and also experiments with what he terms "creative risk management" where the artist, also a scholar and a teacher, is "willing to drop all intellectual pretence and turn his theoretical agenda into (a) speculative play" (xi). He explains his process halfway through the print book:

Other times we who create innovative works of remix art
are fully self-conscious of the rival lineage
we spring forth from
and knowingly take on other remixological styles just to see
what happens when we move inside
other writers' bodies (of work)

This is when remixologically inhabiting
the spirit of another writer's stylistic tendencies
or at least the subconsciously imagined writerly gestures
that illuminate his or her live spontaneous performance
feels more like an embodied praxis

In some ways this all seems so obvious to me:
I mean what is a writer anyway but
a simultaneous and continuous fusion of
remixologically inhabited bodies of work? (109)

Amerika mashes up the jargon of academic writing with avant-pop forms of digital rhetoric in order to "move inside other writers' bodies (of work)" in order to test out his theoretical agenda in an "embodied praxis" at the same time that he shakes up the way that contemporary scholarship itself is performed.

The remixthebook project inevitably recalls one of the great early-twentieth century plays with scholarly quotation, Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project. Instead of avoiding conventional quoting, footnoting and referencing, these are the very fabric of Benjamin's sprawling project, composed entirely of quotes drawn from nineteenth century philosophy and literature. This early scholarly 'remixing' project has been described as bewildering and oppressive, but which others still find relevant and inspirational. Marjorie Perloff, for instance, finds the 'passages' in Benjamin's arcades have "become the digital passages we take through websites and YouTube videos, navigating our way from one Google link to another and over the bridges provided by our favourite search engines and web pages" (49).

For Benjamin, the process of collecting quotes was addictive. Hannah Arendt describes his habit of carrying little black notebooks in which "he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of 'pearls' and 'coral'. On occasion he read from them aloud, showed them around like items from a choice and precious collection" (45). A similar practice of everyday hypercitation can be found in the contemporary Australian performance artist Danielle Freakley's project, The Quote Generator. For what was intended in 2006 to be a three year project, but which is still ongoing, Freakley takes the delirious pleasure of finding and fitting the perfect quote to fit an occasion to an extreme. Unlike Benjamin, Freakley didn't collect and collate quotes, she then relied on them to navigate her way through her daily interactions. As The Quote Generator, Freakley spoke only in quotations drawn from film, literature and popular culture, immediately following each quote with its correct in-text reference, familiar to academic writers as the 'author/date' citation system.

The awkwardness and seeming artificiality of even short exchanges with someone who responds only in quotes might be bewildering enough, but the inclusion of the citation after the quote maddeningly interrupts and, at the same time, adds another metalevel to a conversation where even the simple platitude 'thank you' might be followed by an attribution to 'Deep Throat 1972'. Longer exchanges become increasingly overwhelming, as Freakley's piling of quote on quote, and sometimes repeating quotes, demands an attentive listener, as is evident in a 2008 interview with Andrew Denton on the ABC's Enough Rope:

Denton: So, you've been doing this for three years??
Freakley: Yes, Optus 1991
Denton: How do people respond to you speaking in such an unnatural way?
Freakley: It changes, David Bowie 1991. On the streets AKA Breakdance 1984, most people that I know think that I am crazy, Billy Thorpe 1972, a nigger like me is going insane, Cyprus Hill 1979, making as much sense as a Japanese instruction manual, Red Dwarf 1993.

Video documentation of Freakley's encounters with unsuspecting members of the public reveal how frustrating the inclusion of 'spoken' references can be, let alone how taken aback people are on realising they never get Freakley's own words, but are instead receiving layers of quotations. The frustration can quickly turn hostile (Denton at one point tells Freakley to "shut up") or can prove contaminatory, as people attempt to match or one-up her quotes (see Cook's interview 8). Apparently, when Freakley continued her commitment to the performance at a Perth Centerlink, the staff sent her to a psychiatrist and she was diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, then prescribed medication ( Schwartzkoff 4).

While Benjamin's The Arcades Project invites the reader to scroll through its pages as a kind of textual flaneur, Freakley herself becomes a walking and talking word processor, extending the possibilities of Amerika's "embodied praxis" in an inescapable remix of other people's words and phrases. At the beginning of the project, Freakley organised a card collection of quotes categorised into possible conversation topics, and devised a 'harness' for easy access.

Image: Danielle Freakley's The Quote Generator harness

Eventually, however, Freakley was able to rely on her own memory of an astounding number of quotations, becoming a "near mechanical vessel" ( Gottlieb 2009), or, according to her own manifesto, a "regurgitation library to live by":

The Quote Generator reads, and researches as it speaks. The Quote Generator is both the reader and composer/editor. The Quote Generator is not an actor spouting lines on a stage. The Quote Generator assimilates others lines into everyday social life ... The Quote Generator, tries to find its own voice, an understanding through throbbing collations of others, constantly gluttonously referencing. Much academic writing quotes/references ravenously. New things cannot be said without constant referral, acknowledgement to what has been already, the intricate detective work in the barking of the academic dog.

By her unrelenting appropriation and regurgitating of quotations, Freakley uses sampling as a technique for an extended performance that draws attention to the remixology of everyday life. By replacing conversation with a hyper-insistence on quotes and their simultaneous citation, she draws attention to the artificiality and inescapability of the 'codes' that make up not just ordinary conversations, but also conventional academic discourse, what she calls the "barking of the academic dog".

Freakley's performance has pushed the scholarly conventions of quoting and referencing to their furthest extreme, in what has been described by Daine Singer as a kind of "endurance art" that relies, in large part, on an antagonistic relationship to its audience. In his now legendary 1969 "Double Session" seminar, Derrida, too, experimented with the pedagogical performance of the (re)producing author, teasing his earnest academic audience. It is reported that the seminar began in a dimly lit room lined with blackboards covered with quotations that Derrida, for a while, simply "pointed to in silence" (177). In this seminar, Derrida put into play notions that can be understood to inform remix practices just as much as they do deconstruction: the author, originality, mimesis, imitation, representation and reference. Scholarly conventions, perhaps particularly the quotation practices that insist on the circulation of rigid codes of attribution, and are defended by increasingly out-of-date understandings of contemporary research, writing and teaching practices, are ripe to be played with. Remix offers an expanded discursive framework to do this in creative and entertaining ways.

References

Amerika, Mark. remixthebook. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. 29 July 2013 http://www.remixthebook.com/.

Arendt, Hannah. "Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940." In Illuminations. New York, NY: Shocken, 1969: 1-55.

Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." Image Music Text. Trans Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977: 142-148.

Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Blaire, Cheré Harden. "Panic and Plagiarism: Authorship and Academic Dishonesty in a Remix Culture." Media Tropes 2.1(2009): 159-192.

Bourdieu, Pierre, Jean-Claude Passeron, and Monique de Saint Martin. Academic Discourse: Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professorial Power. Trans. Richard Teese. Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 1965.

Carroll, Lewis (Charles Dodgson). "Letter to Henrietta and Edwin Dodgson 31 Jan 1855". 15 July 2013 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Letters_of_Lewis_Carroll.

Cook, Richard. "Don't Quote Me on That." Time Out Sydney (2008): 8. http://rgcooke.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/interview-danielle-freakley.

Denton, Andrew. "Interview: The Quote Generator." Enough Rope. 29 Feb. 2008. ABC TV. 15 July 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsrGvwXsenE.

Derrida, Jacques. Spurs, Nietzsche's Styles. Trans. Barbara Harlow. London: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Derrida, Jacques. The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Text, Transference. Trans Peggy Kampf. New York: Shocken Books, 1985.

Derrida, Jacques. "The Double Session". Dissemination. Trans Alan Bass, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Dinnen, Zara. "In the Mix: The Potential Convergence of Literature and New Media in Jonathan Letham's 'The Ecstasy of Influence'". Journal of Narrative Theory 42.2 (2012).

Freakley, Danielle. The Quote Generator. 2006 to present. 10 July 2013 http://www.thequotegenerator.com/.

Goldsmith, Kenneth. Uncreative Writing. New York: University of Colombia Press 2011.

Gottlieb, Benjamin. "You Shall Worship No Other Artist God." Art & Culture (2009). 15 July 2013 http://www.artandculture.com/feature/999.

Lethem, Jonathan. "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." Harper's Magazine, Feb. 2007: 59-71. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/.

Manovich, Lev. "What Comes after Remix?" 2007. 15 July 2013 http://manovich.net/LNM/index.html.

Markham, Annette. "Remix Methodology." 2013. 9July 2013 http://www.markham.internetinquiry.org/category/remix/.

Morris, Simon (dir.). Sucking on Words: Kenneth Goldsmith. 2007. http://www.ubu.com/film/goldsmith_sucking.html.

Navas, Eduardo. Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. New York: Springer Wein, 2012.

Perloff, Marjorie. Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Schwartzkoff, Louise. "Art Forms Spring into Life at Prima Vera." Sydney Morning Herald 19 Sep. 2008: Entertainment, 4. http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/art-forms-spring-into-life-at-primavera/2008/09/18/1221331045404.html.

Singer, Daine(cur.). "Pains in the Artists: Endurance and Suffering." Blindside Exhibition. 2007. 2 June 2013 http://www.blindside.org.au/2007/pains-in-the-artists.shtml.

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Double Quote Unquote: Scholarly Attribution as (a) Speculative Play in the Remix Academy | Walker | M/C Journal

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Many years ago, while studying in Paris as a novice postgraduate, I was invited to accompany a friend to a seminar with Jacques Derrida. I leapt at the chance even though I was only just learning French. Although I tried hard to follow the discussion, the extent of my participation was probably signing the attendance sheet.

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Panic and Plagiarism: Authorship and Academic Dishonesty in a Remix Culture | Blair | MediaTropes

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Panic and Plagiarism: Authorship and Academic Dishonesty in a Remix Culture | Blair | MediaTropes

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Academic Article

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plagiarism; remix; academic dishonesty; authorship; digital media; media studies

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Panic and Plagiarism: Authorship and Academic Dishonesty in a Remix Culture | Blair | MediaTropes

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Panic and Plagiarism: Authorship and Academic Dishonesty in a Remix Culture

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Popular culture, video

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In the five years since the series launched, Everything is a Remix has been viewed over two million times and produced a popular TED Talk. Amazingly, Remix continues to change the way people think about creativity, originality, and copyright. To celebrate the five year anniversary, I polished up the original four parts and merged them into a single video.

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Digital Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization

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Digital Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization

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Academic article

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Michelle Knobel, Montclair State University

Colin Lankshear, James Cook University

http://everydayliteracies.blogspot.com

Download Michele and Colin's paper remix.pdf

Lawrence Lessig (2005: np) defines remix as "someone mixing things together, and then someone else coming along and remixing that thing they have created". In this sense, remix is as old as human cultures, and human cultures are themselves products of remixing. Since the late 1960s, however, originating with highly contrived forms of music remix by dancehall DJs, diverse remix practices and cultures of diverse kinds have exploded worldwide. Some familiar contemporary forms include hiphop music, fanfiction writing, photoshopping, video mashup and fan animation. Remix practices have been greatly amplified in scope and sophistication by recent developments in digital technologies. These make it possible for home-based digital practitioners to produce high touch remixes across a range of media and cultural forms. This has in turn strengthened remix culture, encouraging seemingly endless hybridizations in language, genre, content, technique and the like, and raising questions of legal, ethical, educational and cultural import. This paper will sample remix culture and address some of its most pressing issues with particular reference to literacy.

Presenter's Biographies

Michele Knobel is Professor of Literacy Education at Montclair State University, NJ. Colin Lankshear's affiliations are with James Cook University, McGill University, Central Queensland University, and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Colin and Michelle are co-authors of New Literacies: Everyday Practices & Classroom Learning (2nd ed.), co-editors of A New Literacies Sampler, and co-editors of the Handbook of New Literacies.

* Remix is "the practice of taking cultural artifacts and combining and manipulating them into a new kind of creative blend" (Lankshear & Knobel 2006: 105)

* The principle of remix has always been integral to cultural development, an invisible process through which cultures grow and evolve

* On top of this "organic process", however, self-conscious practices of remix have become popular cultural pursuits of cultural activity. Digital technologies have vastly amplified - in terms of quality and quantity - remixing options. Today, remixing cultural resources comprises what Lessig (2004) refers to as the new "alphabet" - that is, as the new building blocks of creative writing.

* Types of currently popular remix include:

Photoshopping remixes (e.g., Lostfrog.org)

Music and music video remixes (e.g., Danger Mouse's "Grey Album" and the Grey video)

Machinima remixes (e.g., Machinima.com)

Moving image remixes (e.g., Animemusicvideo.org)

Original manga and anime fan art (e.g., Deviantart.com)

Television, movie, book remixes (e.g., Fanfiction.net)

Serviceware mashups (e.g., Twittervision.com)

Modding toys and other objects (e.g., minifig modding, artists modding designer vinyl toys)

Reflection on remix: the concept

* Which of the above [or other] practices of remix are you familiar with?

* Which of them [or others] are you aware of your students being involved in?

* What do you know about their "relationships" to these practices - or, their investments in them - and how these compare to how they are "related to" or "invested in" formal learning?

* Aesthetics, composition, elegance, concept/design

* Art as graphics, moving image and animation

* Aesthetics and appreciation

Reflection on the art of remix

* What makes for good remix?

* How do fans recognize good remix?

* How do fans reward good remix?

* How do remixers learn what is good remix?

* Remixing requires technical know-how of different kinds (e.g., how to edit moving and still images, how to create a new storyline based on existing characters, how to edit sound and splice it into a stretch of video, how to record sound digitally, how to navigate timelines and synchronize sound and image, how to convert files from one format to another, how to maximize product quality while keeping bandwidth limitations in mind, knowing what's cool within certain groups-and what isn't, etc.)

* The craft of remix also includes risk-taking, experimentation, improvisation, getting around snags, developing hacks and making accidental discoveries through exploration and play.

Reflection on the craft of remix

* Gee (2007: 33-34) talks about the sense of expansion and empowerment humans feel when they can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.

How might this apply to remix practices?

How might we get from the literal tools of "remix" to the intellectual tools that come with academic forms of inquiry in the kind of way Gee describes by reference to Galileo?

The endlessness of remix as hybridization

* There is no "end to remixing; each new mix-or part of this new mix-becomes a meaning-making resource or affordance for another remix.

* Cultural evolution purposes

* Challenge to conventional "school" notions of reading and writing

* Medium/pretext for innovation

* Important for teachers to engage with intellectual property and copyright issues

* Potential for deep learning

* Taking notice of new forms of meaning making and social exchange or status

* Educational values inherent in social practices of remix (community building, intrinsic interest/values, humor, generosity, focus on design, etc.)

Reflection on why engage with remix?

* Gee (2007: 172-173) talks about education in terms of "deep learning" and says this involves moving from "learning about" to "learning to be".

To what extent might non-formal popular cultural participation in remix practices be seen as a form of learning to be?

What aspects of such "learning to be" might apply to how we might think of best trying to engage young people in formal educational learning?

How might we start to think about making such connections to formal educational practice?

* How well do the points Gee makes about "learning to be" mesh with your personal philosophy of education in general, and your view of literacy education specifically?

What are the main points of similarity?

What are the main points of difference?

* How do you see the kinds of education policies that impact most directly on your work as a teacher "sitting" with the concept of trying to build bridges between non formal practices of remix and formal educational practices in the classroom?

Web sites showcasing some form of remix

* Worth1000.com

* Fark.com (scroll down and look for "photoshop" labels" next to entries, then click on number in parentheses beside a relevant entry)

* Youtube.com (search for: remix, machinima, anime music video)

* Howtodrawmanga.com (select "forums")

* Lostfrog.com

* Fanfiction.net

* Machinima.com

* Animemusicvideo.com

* Toriyamaworld.com/fans/manga.html

* Templeotrunks.com/images/fan_manga/index.html

* Hfuff.stalo.com

* Antiwarposters.com

* Newgrounds.com

* Tfcog.net

* Jedimaster.net

* Break.com (search "remix")

Supplementary reading

From: Gee, J. (2007). Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy. New York: Peter Lang.

Excerpt 1, from pages 33-34

4. Manipulation and Distributed Knowledge

PRINCIPLE: As I suggested in the first part of this chapter, cognitive research suggests that, for humans, perception and action are deeply inter-connected (Barsalou 1999a, b; Clark 1997; Glenberg 1997; Glenberg & Robertson 1999). Thus, fine-grained action at a distance-for example, when a person is manipulating a robot at a distance or watering a garden via a web cam on the Internet-causes humans to feel as if their bodies and minds have stretched into a new space (Clark 2003). More generally, humans feel expanded and empowered when they can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.

GAMES: Computer and video games inherently involve action at a (albeit virtual) distance. The more and better a player can manipulate a character, the more the player invests in the game world. Good games offer characters that the player can move intricately, effectively, and easily through the world. Beyond characters, good games offer the player intricate, effective, and easy manipulation of the world's objects, objects which become tools for carrying out the player's goals.

EXAMPLE: Tomb Raider, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, and ICO allow such fine-grained and interesting manipulation of one's character that they achieve a strong effect of pulling the player into their worlds. Rise of Nations allows such effective control of buildings, landscapes, and whole armies as tools that the

player feels like "god." Prince of Persia excels both in terms of character manipulation and in terms of everything in its environment serving as effective tools for player action.

One key feature of the virtual characters and objects that game players manipulate is that they are "smart tools." The character the player controls- Lara Croft, for example-knows things the player doesn't, for instance, how to climb ropes, leap chasms, and scale walls. The player knows things the character doesn't, like when, where, and why to climb, leap, or scale. The player and the character each have knowledge that must be integrated together to play the game successfully. This is an example of distributed knowledge, knowledge split between two things (here a person and a virtual character) that must be integrated.

A game like Full Spectrum Warrior takes this principle much further. In this game, the player controls two squads of four soldiers each. The soldiers know lots and lots of things about professional military practice, for example, how to take various formations under fire and how to engage in various types of group movements in going safely from cover to cover. The player need not know these things. The player must learn other aspects of professional military practice, namely what formations and movements to order, when, where, and why. The real actor in this game is the player and the soldiers blended together through their shared, distributed, and integrated knowledge.

EDUCATION: What allows a learner to feel that his or her body and mind have extended into the world being studied or investigated, into the world of biology or physics, for example? Part of the answer here is "smart tools," that is, tools and technologies that allow the learner to manipulate that world in a fine-grained way. Such tools have their own in-built knowledge and skills that allow the learner much more power over the world being investigated than he or she has unaided by such tools.

Let me give one concrete example of what I am talking about. Galileo discovered the laws of the pendulum because he knew and applied geometry to the problem, not because he played around with pendulums or saw a church chandelier swinging (as myth has it). Yet is common for liberal educators to ask children innocent of geometry or any other such tool to play around with pendulums and discover for themselves the laws by which they work. This is actually a harder problem than the one Galileo confronted-geometry set possible solutions for him and led him to think about pendulums in certain ways and not others. Of course, today there are a great many technical tools available beyond geometry and algebra (though students usually don't even realize that geometry and algebra are smart tools, different from each other in the way they approach problems and the problems for which they are best suited).

Do students in the classroom share knowledge with smart tools? Do they become powerful actors by learning to integrate their own knowledge with the knowledge built into their tools? The real-world player and the virtual soldiers in Full Spectrum Warrior come to share a body of skills and knowledge that is constitutive of a certain type of professional practice. Do students engage in authentic professional practices in the classroom through such sharing? Professional practice is crucial here, because, remember, real learning in science, for example, is constituted by being a type of scientist doing a type of science not reciting a fact you don't understand. It is thinking, acting, and valuing like a scientist of a certain sort. It is "playing by the rules" of a certain sort of science.

Excerpt 2, from pages 172-173

For years now we have attempted to speak to the literacy gap in our schools-the fact that poorer children learn to read less quickly and less well than do better off children. But modern digital technologies are opening up possibilities for new gaps on top of this old one, gaps in knowledge and in access to tech-savvy skills and identities. This is happening at the same time as our country-along with other developed countries-faces a looming creativity/innovation crisis, especially in technical areas. At the same time, fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to become scientists, engineers, or computer scientists.

Deep learning-learning that can lead to real understanding, the ability to apply one's knowledge, and even to transform that knowledge for innovation-requires that we move beyond "learning about" and move to "learning to be."62 It requires that learning be not just about "belief" (what the facts are, where they came from, and who believes them) but also strongly about "design" (how, where, and why knowledge, including facts, are useful and adequate for specific purposes and goals).

Deep learning requires the learner being willing and able to take on a new identity in the world, to see the world and act on it in new ways. Learning a new domain, whether physics or furniture making, requires learners to see and value work and the world in new ways, in the ways in which physicists or furniture makers do. One deep reason this is so is because, in any domain, if knowledge is to be used, the learner must probe the world (act on it with a goal) and then evaluate the result. Is it "good" or "bad," "adequate" or "inadequate," "useful" or "not," "improvable" or "not"? Learners can only do this if they have developed a value system-what Donald Schon calls an "appreciative system"-in terms of which such judgments can be made. Such value systems are embedded in the identities, tools, technologies, and worldviews of distinctive groups of people-who share, sustain, and transform then-groups like doctors, carpenters, physicists, graphic artists, teachers, and so forth through a nearly endless list. A game like S.W.A.T.4 is all about such identities and values. In playing the game, the player comes to realize that S.W.A.T. team members look at and act on the world in quite distinctive ways because of their values and goals and that these values and goals are supported by and integrally expressed through distinctive tools, technologies, skills, and knowledge. So, too, with any type of science, for instance.

Good video games can offer people new experiences which can be interrogated inside good learning systems. They can offer problem sets integrated, worked, modeled, and ordered in intelligent ways. They can offer identities- new shoes to stand in from which to view the world, ready for action, in distinctive

ways-connected to powerful tools, knowledge, and technologies. They can create new forms of collaboration and communities of practice. They can create new roles and enrich old ones for teachers. They can create new gaps and make old ones worse, or they can be one tool among many for us to close old gaps and forestall new ones.

Some additional recommended reading

Gee, J. (2004). Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling. London: Routledge.

Gee, J. (2007). Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy. New York: Peter Lang.

Goldhaber, M. (1997). The attention economy and the net. First Monday. firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber (accessed 28 April 2007)

Knobel, M. and Lankshear, C. (eds.) (2007). A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang.

Note: Page proofs for A New Literacies Sampler can be accessed free online at: http://www.soe.jcu.edu.au/sampler/

Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006). New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. 2nd edition. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.

Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin.

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Digital Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization

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Michelle Knobel, Montclair State University Colin Lankshear, James Cook University http://everydayliteracies.blogspot.com Download Michele and Colin's paper remix.pdf Lawrence Lessig (2005: np) defines remix as "someone mixing things together, and then someone else coming along and remixing that thing they have created". In this sense, remix is as old as human cultures, and human cultures are themselves products of remixing.

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Theory, music

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For my most in-depth definition of Remix, read " Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture." What follows below are excerpts from numerous articles I published since 2006.

Grandmaster Flash
Hacks the DJ mixer. Mid to late seventies
(Image does not necessarily correspond with time period)

Generally speaking, remix culture can be defined as the global activity consisting of the creative and efficient exchange of information made possible by digital technologies that is supported by the practice of cut/copy and paste. The concept of Remix often referenced in popular culture derives from the model of music remixes which were produced around the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York City, an activity with roots in Jamaica's music.[1] Today, Remix (the activity of taking samples from pre-existing materials to combine them into new forms according to personal taste) has been extended to other areas of culture, including the visual arts; it plays a vital role in mass communication, especially on the Internet.

DJ Kool Herc
Introduces Jamaican Toasting in NYC throughout the seventies
(Image does not necessarily correspond with time period)

The Hip hop DJs improved on the skills previously developed by Jamaican music producers, and Disco DJs during the seventies. They took beatmixing and turned it into beat juggling, which means that they played with beats and sounds on the turntable to create unique momentary compositions. This is known today as turntablism. This practice found its way into the music studio and became part of the tradition of sampling; and sampling is the basis for the popular practice of cut/copy and paste.

Afrika Bambaataa
Plays with the possibilities of sampling, Mid seventies to early eighties
(Image does not necessarily correspond with time period)

The hip-hop DJs play an important part in the cultural shift from a passive consumer model to a consumer/producer model, which is currently in place throughout the Internet, and is most evident in the blogger.

[1] The early form of remix from Jamaica known as "version" is not a remix in the popular sense. Remix (with a capital "R") is not only defined by material activities but the political contexts of those activities. The remix of NYC was developed in large part due to commercial interests to promote specific songs in a growing consumerist market thriving on the wings of Disco and Hip Hop subcultures. Yet historically, it is agreed that the basic concept of remixing that was defined in NYC was already at play in Jamaica. When considering this, one should keep in mind that the type of consumption that took place in Jamaica's culture is very different from what took place in popular culture in the United States and othe places of the world, and that this does affect the different names that acts of appropriation attain. In short, there are cultural and political reasons why Jamaican musicians called their remixes "versions" and not "remixes."

For further information, read the post: History of Dub and "Dub Revolution: The Story of Jamaican Dub Reggae and Its Legacy" by John B

A book to consider: Dick Hebdige, Cut 'N' Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music, (London: Comedia, 1987).

The following section was added as a separate entry on April 26, 2007
The Three Basic Forms of Remix: A Point of Entry, by Eduardo Navas
Image source: Turbulence.org
Layout by Ludmil Trenkov
Duchamp source: Art History Birmington
Levine source: Artnet

(This following text was added to this page to expand my general definition of Remix.)

The following summary is a copy and paste collage (a type of literary remix) of my lectures and preliminary writings since 2006. My definition of Remix was first introduced in my text: Turbulence: Remixes + Bonus Beats (January 2007), commissioned by Turbulence.org. Many of the ideas I entertain in that text were first discussed in various presentations during the Summer of 2006. ( See the list of places here plus an earlier version of my definition of Remix). Below, the section titled "remixes" takes parts from the section by the same name in the Turbulence text, and the section titled "remix defined" consists of excerpts of my definitions which were revised for the text Remix: The Bond of Repetition and Representation (January 2009), published in English and Spanish by Telefonica in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Three Basic Forms of Remix were revised, yet again, for the text Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture, which was published originally on Vague Terrain in June 2007, and eventually revised once more to be published on the book Mashup Cultures in 2010, edited by Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss. It is in the last revision where I introduce the concept of the Regenerative Remix, which I define below after the three basic remixes.

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REMIX DEFINED
To understand Remix as a cultural phenomenon, we must first define it in music. A music remix, in general, is a reinterpretation of a pre-existing song, meaning that the "aura" of the original will be dominant in the remixed version. Of course some of the most challenging remixes can question this generalization. But based on its history, it can be stated that there are three types of basic remixes, which extend in culture as a fourth type, which I refer to as Regenerative. The first remix is extended, that is a longer version of the original song containing long instrumental sections making it more mixable for the club DJ. The first known disco song to be extended to ten minutes is "Ten Percent," by Double Exposure, remixed by Walter Gibbons in 1976.[1]

Image source: Vinyl Masterpiece

The second remix is selective; it consists of adding or subtracting material from the original song. This is the type of remix which made DJs popular producers in the music mainstream. One of the most successful selective remixes is Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid in Full," remixed by Coldcut in 1987. [2] In this case Coldcut produced two remixes, the most popular version not only extended the original recording, following the tradition of the club mix (like Gibbons), but it also contained new sections as well as new sounds, while others were subtracted, always keeping the "essence" of the song intact.

Image source: Rate Your Music

The third remix is reflexive; it allegorizes and extends the aesthetic of sampling, where the remixed version challenges the aura of the original and claims autonomy even when it carries the name of the original; material is added or deleted, but the original tracks are largely left intact to be recognizable. An example of this is Mad Professor's famous dub/trip hop album No Protection, which is a remix of Massive Attack's Protection. In this case both albums, the original and the remixed versions, are considered works on their own, yet the remixed version is completely dependent on Massive's original production for validation.[3] The fact that both albums were released at the same time in 1994 further complicates Mad Professor's allegory. This complexity lies in the fact that Mad Professor's production is part of the tradition of Jamaican dub, where the term "version" was often used to refer to "remixes" which due to their extensive manipulation in the studio pushed for autonomy.[4]

Image source: Last FM

Allegory is often deconstructed in more advanced remixes following this third form, and quickly moves to be a reflexive exercise that at times leads to a "remix" in which the only thing that is recognizable from the original is the title. But, to be clear, in terms of music, no matter what, the remix will always rely on the authority of the original song. When this activity is extended to culture at large, the remix is in the end a rearrangement of something already recognizable; it functions at a second level: a meta-level. This implies that the originality of the remix is non-existent, therefore it must acknowledge its source of validation self-reflexively. In brief, the remix when extended as a cultural practice is a second mix of something pre-existent; the material that is mixed at least for a second time must be recognized otherwise it could be misunderstood as something new, and it would become plagiarism. Without a history, the remix cannot be Remix.[5] This does not imply that a person needs to know that something is a "remix," however, but that this is a pre-requisite for our culture to function-whether it is transparently acknowledged by the remixer or not.

The extended, selective and reflexive remixes can quickly crossover and blur their own definitions. Based on a materialist historical analysis, it can be noted that DJs became invested in remixes which inherited a rich practice of appropriation that had been at play in culture at large for many decades. Below are brief definitions with visual examples.
REMIXES
Extended Remixes
The Extended Remix was an early form of remix in which DJs from New York City became invested. On close examination this was a reaction against the status quo, where everything was made as brief as possible, from radio songs to novels. I argue that due to this, the extended remix is not found in mass culture prior to this period.

The Disco DJs, going against the grain, actually extended music compositions to make them more danceable. They took 3 to 4 minute compositions that would be friendly to radio play, and extended them as long as 10 minutes.[6] In the seventies this was quite radical because in fact, it is the summary of long material that is constantly privileged in the mainstream-which is true even today. The reason behind this tendency has to do in part with the efficiency that popular culture demands. That is, everything is optimized to be quickly delivered and consumed by as many people as possible. An obvious example of this tendency from history is the popularity of publications like Reader's Digest, which offers condensed versions of books as well as stories for people who want to be informed but do not have the time to read the original material, which is often more extensive. [7]

Image source: E Bay

Another recent activity that is now emerging on the web is the two-minute replay available for TV shows like "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."8] If you missed the show when it aired, you can spend just two minutes online catching up on the plot; in essence, this is a more efficient version of Readerâ's Digest for TV delivered to your Internet doorstep. This two-minute replay is also called "video highlights. At the same time, this optimization of information allows entire programs to be uploaded by average consumers in short segments to community websites like Youtube, which in the end function as promotion for TV media.[9] But YouTube falls within the paradigm of the Regenerative Remix, as I explain below.

Image source: Youtube

Selective Remixes
For the Selective Remix the DJ takes and adds parts to the original composition, while leaving its spectacular aura intact. An example from art history in which key codes of the Selective Remix are at play is Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917); [10] this work consists of an untouched urinal (save for a traditional artist signature) to reinforce the question, what is art? And codes of a second level remix on Duchamp can be found in Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp) by Sherrie Levine who, in 1991, questioned Duchamp as a privileged male artist and his urinal as art, leaving intact Duchamp's aura as an artist but not the Urinal's spectacular aura as a mass produced object. [11] In both of these cases there is subtraction and addition (selectively-hence the term, Selective Remixes).

Image source: Turbulence.org
Layout by Ludmil Trenkov
Duchamp source: Art History Birmington
Levine source: Artnet

A second example where key codes of the Selective Remix are at play can be found in DJ culture itself. Notice how the CD remixer gains authority by allegorizing the turntable. In this case the Technics 1210 functions similarly to Duchamp's urinal: the basic turntable designed for listening was appropriated by the DJ to mix and scratch music live; it was used as an actual musical instrument, and Duchamp appropriated a urinal to recontextualize it as art. It is crucial to note that the necessity for precision in performance by turntablists led to developing a specialized turntable that could withstand physical abuse, while for Duchamp, it was enough to leave the urinal intact, save for the artist's signature (R. Mutt). Then the Technics SL-DZ 1200 similarly to Levine's urinal, selectively allegorizes and appropriates elements from the Technics 1210 turntable; in this instance the critical elements that validate the turntable in DJ Culture are not only left intact, but in fact celebrated.

Images source: Panasonic Europe

Reflexive Remixes
The Reflexive Remix differs in various ways from the Selective Remix; it directly allegorizes and extends the aesthetic of sampling as practiced in the music studio by seventies DJs, where the remixed version challenges the aura of the original and claims autonomy even when it carries the original's name. In culture at large, the Reflexive Remix takes parts from different sources and mixes them aiming for autonomy. The spectacular aura of the original(s), whether fully recognizable or not must remain a vital part if the remix is to find cultural acceptance. This strategy demands that the viewer reflect on the meaning of the work and its sources-even when knowing the origin may not be possible.

An example from art history in which the codes of the Reflexive Remix are at play is the work of John Heartfield, who takes material out of context to create social commentary. His Photo-montages like Adolf the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk[12] and Hurrah, the Butter is All Gone,[13] question the very subject that gives them the power to comment. In the former, Hitler, as the title connotes, is presented swallowing gold and is questioned as a leader of Germany; while in the latter, a German family is having dinner, eating military weapons, thus the stability of the home is questioned due to German politics. In his case, the spectacular aura of the source image (like in the second remix) is left intact-but only to be questioned along with everything else: we believe the image but question it at the same time due to the dual transparency of a montage and the realism expected of a photo-image; the work then gains access to social commentary based on the combination of recognizable images.

Image source: Turbulence.org
Layout by Ludmil Trenkov
Sources: towson.edu

Another example from art history where the codes of the reflexive remix can be found is the work of Hannah Hoch. Her collages blur the origin of the images she appropriates; the result is open-ended propositions. Her work often questions notions of identity and gender roles. Yet, even when it is not clear where the material comes from, her work is still fully dependent on an allegorical recognition of such forms in culture at large in order to attain meaning. This is the case in pieces like Grotesque [14] and Tamar. [15] Although they were made 30 years apart, both decontextualze the objects they appropriate. Here we have body parts of men and women remixed to create a collage of de-gendered figures. The authority of the image lies in the acknowledgment of each fragment individually, and a specific social commentary like the one found in Heartfield's work is no longer at play; instead, each individual fragment in Hoch's work needs to hold on to its cultural code in order to create meaning, although with a much more open-ended position.

Image source: Turbulence.org
Layout by Ludmil Trenkov
Tamar source (left):
Grotesque source (right): Adam Art Gallery

For Heartfield and Hoch the subject which gives the work of art its authority is actually questioned; the result is a friction, a tension that demands that the viewers reconsider everything in front of them. This is what makes their art powerful.

Regenerative Remixes
The Regenerative Remix consists of juxtaposing two or more elements that are constantly updated, meaning that they are designed to change according to data flow. I choose the term "regenerative" because it alludes to constant change, and is a synonym of the term "culture." Regenerative while often linked to biological processes is extended here to cultural flows that can move as discourse from medium to medium, although at the moment it is in software that it is best exposed. [excerpt from Regressive and Reflexive ...]

Principles of the Regenerative Remix in culture at large are at play in Wikipedia. The entries to the online encyclopedia are constantly revised and updated by different contributors; when a controversial entry is made, a discussion ensues and a posting is placed at the top of the site explaining the current state of debate. Wikipedia, then, is dependent on constant-updating, which is essential for the Regenerative Remix.

Image source: Wikipedia.org

Another example is Youtube, a site, which like Wikipedia is driven by the community. If a video is offensive or deemed inappropriate, the community will let YouTube staff know immediately. Youtube also has a complex tie in with the corporate media, in which copyright infringement is always present, and it is quite common that when a corporation finds it to their benefit, they demand their material to be removed if it was posted without permission. This opens the door to the complexities brought about by the creative possibilities of "free culture" and "remix culture."

For a detailed analysis of how the Selective and Extended Remixes are at play in new media art, please read the section "Remixes" in Turbulence: Remixes + Bonus Beats. For an in-depth analysis of the Regenerative Remix, please read Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture.

There are many other examples from art history and popular culture which can be presented. Neo-dada material by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and their contemporaries can be connected with the reflexive remix, while work by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein can be related to the Selective Remix. The Extended Remix, however remains unusual, except in the club remixes and art projects. The reasons for this will eventually be released in a more exhaustive publication.

In conclusion, what is crucial is to understand how different acts of appropriation throughout history, such as the ones revisited above, enable people to entertain Remix as part of the consumer/producer model often refer as the "prosumer" currently at play in culture.

[1] Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ save my Life (New York: Grover Press, 2000) , 178-79.

[2] Paid in full was actually a B side release meant to complement "Move the Crowd." Eric B. & Rakim, "Paid in Full," Re-mix engineer: Derek B., Produced by Eric B. & Rakim, Island Records, 1987.

[3] Ulf Poschardt, DJ Culture (London: Quartet Books, 1995), 297.

[4] Dick Hebdige, Cut 'n' Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music, (London: Comedia, 1987), 12-16.

[5] DJ producers who sampled during the eighties found themselves having to acknowledge History by complying with the law; see the landmark law-suit against Biz Markie in Brewster, 246.

[6] Brewster, 178-79.

[7] Reader's Digest, http://readersdigest.com (October, 2006).

[8] "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," http://nbc.com, September 2006,

[9] The 2007 Grammys can be seen in pieces almost in its entirety. See "Grammys 2007," Youtube.org 2007 (April 15, 2007), http://youtube.com/results?search_query=grammys+2007&search=Search.

[10] For an online reproduction of the famous Richard Stieglitz photograph visit: "Fountain" Art History Birmington, , (November 2006).

[11] For an online reproduction of Levine's appropriation visit "Sherrie Levine," Artnet, http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/cfinch/finch5-7-4.asp, (October, 2006).

[12] For an image of Heartfield's "Superman," see: Towson.edu, http://www.towson.edu/heartfield/images/Adolf_the_Superman.jpg, (October, 2006).

[13] For an image of Heartfield's "Butter's all Gone," see http://www.towson.edu/heartfield/images/Hurrah_the_Butter_is_all_gone.jpg, (October, 2006).

[14] For an image of Grotesque visit Adam Art Gallery http://www.vuw.ac.nz/adamartgal/exhibitions/2002/big/lightsandshadows-HÃ¶ch-lg.html, (October, 2006).

[15] For an image of Tamar ,visit "Hannah Hoch's "Dompteuse(Tamar)", http://www.yellowbellywebdesign.com/HÃ¶ch/dompu.html, (October, 2006).

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For my most in-depth definition of Remix, read " Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture." What follows below are excerpts from numerous articles I published since 2006. Grandmaster Flash Hacks the DJ mixer.

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Popular culture, music

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"That's what the music is... a lost thing finding itself." - Sidney Bechet

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Neurologist Oliver Sacks on Memory, Plagiarism, and the Necessary Forgettings of Creativity

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Neurologist Oliver Sacks on Memory, Plagiarism, and the Necessary Forgettings of Creativity

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"Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original... it is a continuing act of creation," researcher Rosalind Cartwright reminded us in her fascinating treatise on the science of dreams. "The biggest lie of human memory is that it feels true," Jonah Lehrer wrote shortly before being engulfed in a maelstrom of escalating accusations of autoplagiarism and outright fabulation. Yet while we already know that memory is not a recording device, the exact extent of its fallibility eludes - often, quite conveniently - most of us.

In his recent New York Review of Books essay, legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks tackles precisely that, exposing the remarkable mechanisms by which we fabricate our memories, involuntarily blurring the line between the experienced and the assimilated:

It is startling to realize that some of our most cherished memories may never have happened - or may have happened to someone else. I suspect that many of my enthusiasms and impulses, which seem entirely my own, have arisen from others' suggestions, which have powerfully influenced me, consciously or unconsciously, and then been forgotten.

One phenomenon Sacks argues is particularly common - if not adaptive - in the creative mind is that of autoplagiarism:

Sometimes these forgettings extend to autoplagiarism, where I find myself reproducing entire phrases or sentences as if new, and this may be compounded, sometimes, by a genuine forgetfulness. Looking back through my old notebooks, I find that many of the thoughts sketched in them are forgotten for years, and then revived and reworked as new. I suspect that such forgettings occur for everyone, and they may be especially common in those who write or paint or compose, for creativity may require such forgettings, in order that one's memories and ideas can be born again and seen in new contexts and perspectives.

Citing a number of case studies where false memories of fictitious events were "implanted" in people's minds, Sacks explores unconscious plagiarism, something Henry Miller poetically probed and Mark Twain eloquently, if unscientifically, addressed in his famous letter to Helen Keller. Sacks writes:

What is clear in all these cases - whether of imagined or real abuse in childhood, of genuine or experimentally implanted memories, of misled witnesses and brainwashed prisoners, of unconscious plagiarism, and of the false memories we probably all have based on misattribution or source confusion - is that, in the absence of outside confirmation, there is no easy way of distinguishing a genuine memory or inspiration, felt as such, from those that have been borrowed or suggested, between what the psychoanalyst Donald Spence calls 'historical truth' and 'narrative truth.'

[...]

There is, it seems, no mechanism in the mind or the brain for ensuring the truth, or at least the veridical character, of our recollections. We have no direct access to historical truth, and what we feel or assert to be true (as Helen Keller was in a very good position to note) depends as much on our imagination as our senses. There is no way by which the events of the world can be directly transmitted or recorded in our brains; they are experienced and constructed in a highly subjective way, which is different in every individual to begin with, and differently reinterpreted or reexperienced whenever they are recollected. . . . Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves-the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain. The wonder is that aberrations of a gross sort are relatively rare, and that, for the most part, our memories are relatively solid and reliable.

Sacks concludes:

We, as human beings, are landed with memory systems that have fallibilities, frailties, and imperfections - but also great flexibility and creativity. Confusion over sources or indifference to them can be a paradoxical strength: if we could tag the sources of all our knowledge, we would be overwhelmed with often irrelevant information.

Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.

In a rare act of defiant reliability, my own memory brought to mind a footnoted passage in Sacks's mind-bendingly excellent recent book, Hallucinations, where he explores memory further:

We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.

In a footnote, he adds:

For [researchers] in the early twentieth century, memories were imprints in the brain (as for Socrates they were analogous to impressions made in soft wax) - imprints that could be activated by the act of recollection. It was not until the crucial studies of Frederic Bartlett at Cambridge in the 1920s and 1930s that the classical view could be disputed. Whereas Ebbinghaus and other early investigators had studied rote memory - how many digits could be remembered, for instance - Bartlett presented his subjects with pictures or stories and accounts of what they had seen or heard were somewhat different (and sometimes quite transformed) on each re-remembering. These experiments convinced Bartlett to think in terms not of a static thing called 'memory,' but rather a dynamic process of 'remembering.' He wrote:
Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole active mass of organized past reactions or experience. . . . It is thus hardly ever really exact.

Could it be, then, that the very fallibility of memory is essential to our combinatorial creativity and to the mechanics of the slot machine of ideation? To steal like an artist might be, after all, the default setting of the brain.
Oliver Sacks portrait by John Midgley via Wired

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Neurologist Oliver Sacks on Memory, Plagiarism, and the Necessary Forgettings of Creativity

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"Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original... it is a continuing act of creation," researcher Rosalind Cartwright reminded us in her fascinating treatise on the science of dreams. "The biggest lie of human memory is that it feels true," Jonah Lehrer wrote shortly before being engulfed in a maelstrom of escalating accusations of autoplagiarism and outright fabulation.

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Popular culture, music

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An Unresolved Issue: Evgeny Morozov, The New Yorker, and the Perils of "Highbrow Journalism" — Taming the American Idol

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An Unresolved Issue: Evgeny Morozov, The New Yorker, and the Perils of "Highbrow Journalism" — Taming the American Idol

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Last week, The New Yorker published its October 13 issue. It contained an "A Critic at Large" piece by Evgeny Morozov, titled "The Planning Machine: Project Cybersyn and the Origins of the Big Data Nation."

Within a few days, historians were chatting. Something was wrong. Morozov's essay clearly borrowed heavily from Eden Medina's book, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile, a book that every reader should buy right now. Medina, who received her PhD from MIT, is an associate professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University and also co-editor of the volume, Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America.

Indeed, Morozov's essay was ostensibly a review of Cybernetic Revolutionaries. Yet, Morozov only once mentioned Medina, and the mention came well into his text. To add insult to injury, citation was glancing at best: "As Eden Medina shows in 'Cybernetic Revolutionaries,' her entertaining history of Project Cybersyn, [Stafford] Beer set out to solve an acute dilemma that Allende faced." The placement of the mention as well as its wording could and did give many readers the impression that all of the ideas and the work that went into the essay were Morozov's, but they weren't.

Historians of technology, especially experts in computer history, and other scholars were angry. They took to Twitter and other social media platforms to draw attention to the situation and shame Morozov for his behavior. On the mailing list of SIGCIS, the world's foremost organization of computer historians, members hashed out the ethical lapses of Morozov's essay. Talk on the SIGCIS list became increasingly heated. On Twitter, Meryl Alper, a PhD candidate in Communication at USC's Annenberg School, pointed out that there was an additional irony: Medina's "work highlights power imbalances in knowledge production and circulation." In the Medina-Morozov situation, we have a well-known tech critic (Morozov) and a powerful periodical ( The New Yorker) borrowing heavily from a young, female professor's work without due recognition. Don't mind her. She's merely "entertaining."

At some point during the week, Janet Browne, a professor in Harvard University's History of Science department (where Morozov is currently a graduate student), wrote the executive committee of SIGCIS. She asked its leaders to remove two posts from its "blog" that alleged plagiarism on Morozov's part. Furthermore, she claimed that the issue was "now resolved," that no one had found evidence of plagiarism, and that the paucity of citations to Medina's work was fitting with the genre of "highbrow journalism."

The mailing list isn't a blog, so there was nothing to be done there, but the issue of plagiarism is a difficult and murky one. I have not alleged that Morozov plagiarized, and I have had questions for anyone who has made that claim. But plagiarism has several definitions. The most narrow definition focuses only on the direct borrowing of language. I haven't seen anyone claim that Morozov's essay did that. Yet broader definitions of plagiarism include borrowing from an author's argument and research without proper attribution, and it is understandable that some people feel that the Medina-Morozov affair is a case of plagiarism (even if we ultimately believe that such feelings are misplaced).

(I've been pleased to learn that the above image on plagiarism was put out by the Poynter Institute. You can find the original post, which contains several other insights, here.)

More troubling to me is the claim that this situation is "now resolved." It isn't. (After word of Janet Browne's communication was shared with the SIGCIS membership, one historian sent out an email to the list titled, "Nothing to See Here, Please Move Along . . . ") And I do not believe that we can invent new genres, like "highbrow journalism," to wiggle our way out of traditional ethical norms around writing. It is this issue that I want to focus on in this post because it is a real problem and it has every appearance of becoming a worse one.

At least since I entered graduate school in 2005, there has been increasing talk of and pressure for historians (and likely other academics) to write for mainstream publications and communicate via other popular media. For too long, the thinking goes, academics have been writing only for each other. It's time to reach out, to share our thinking with the general public. Blogs, Twitter, podcasts-so many tools have become a necessary part of the engaged academic's arsenal. And there is amazing stuff being done in the popular arena in the history of science and technology (HOST). NPR's Radiolab is probably the most famous case. But great pieces on HOST are also appearing at the Guardian, Slate, The Atlantic, and, yes, even The New Yorker.

But there's a question: what should historians produce for pop outlets? Academic historical works take years to research and write. You can pop one or two aspects of your research and maybe even write a book for a trade press, but in the end, if you want to produce regularly for popular venues, you are going to have to draw from other sources. Under such conditions, there is going to be a temptation to lean heavily on other people's work and present syntheses thereof.

Today, so much "news," online and elsewhere, is just rewritten postings of stories that were originally written elsewhere by others. In the first episode of the new television series, Gracepoint, a journalist character complains to her boss, "All I'm doing right now is polishing press releases." We live in a world of recycling. It would be sad if historians are willing to join others in forgetting ethical standards, especially ones about others' work and thoughts. It is a trend worth resisting.

Even before the Medina-Morozov case, we have already seen cases where pop writers have borrowed too heavily from academic historians. In September, Latif Nasser, who received his doctorate from the Harvard History of Science program, published a piece titled "Helen Keller and the Glove that Couldn't Hear" at The Atlantic. The article recounted the fascinating story of a visit at MIT between Helen Keller and Norbert Wiener, the "father of cybernetics." It's a good story, and Nasser's telling of it is clear and enticing. The problem was that the first version of it published did not make clear that it was almost wholly a retelling of Mara Mills' essay, "On Disability and Cybernetics: Helen Keller, Norbert Wiener, and the Hearing Glove," which was published in the journal Differences. Mills also got her PhD from the Harvard History of Science program and is now an assistant professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. As her webpage states, she is "completing a book (On the Phone: Deafness and Communication Engineering) on the significance of phonetics and deaf education to the emergence of 'communication engineer' in early twentieth-century telephony; this concept and set of practices later gave rise to information theory, digital coding, and cybernetics." ( A list of her publication is here.)

One thing that separates the Mills-Nasser situation from the Medina-Morozov one, however, is that, as soon The Atlantic realized there was a problem, it responded.

It's worth pointing out, though, that some believe that there was still a real issue at hand.

The fact that Nasser and the editors of The Atlantic would use a scholar's research so cavalierly is troubling. Far more troubling is the response that so far has come from Morozov (hostility) and The New Yorker (to my knowledge, silence).

When scholars began questioning Morozov's essay on Twitter, Morozov went on the attack. He told Nathan Ensmenger, an influential computer historian and Medina's colleague as a professor at Indiana University, "As I said, you simply don't know what you are talking about." When Ensmenger suggested that maybe he (Ensmenger) needs to learn how to read a book review, Morozov responded, "Yeah, you do, actually."

Morozov's self-defense has been that The New Yorker's reviews, including "A Critic at Large" pieces, do not mention the authors and books that they are reviewing with great frequency. (In other words, a single mention gets the job done.) As Ensmenger and others have pointed out, though, a quick survey of New Yorker reviews, including "A Critic at Large" reviews, shows frequent mentions and, more important, early mentions of the works under review.

Moreover, Morozov wrote on Twitter "The main reason to mention the author more than once in that format is if you are arguing with them." Bull. See, for instance, Louis Menand's "The De Man Case," which is also "A Critic At Large" book review, in the March 24, 2014 issue of The New Yorker. Menand mentions the author he is reviewing, Evelyn Barish, early and often and in all kinds of circumstances. For example, "From what Barish found, it seems that this was wishful thinking." (Menand would have been a good person for Morozov to look to in writing his piece since Menand writes for the magazine and is a renowned scholar, as Morozov aspires to be.)

In response to people questioning his sourcing of Medina, Morozov put up a post on his Tumblr, titled " Some notes on my cybernetic socialism essay." He spent most of the piece describing all of the work he had done, which is utterly beside the point when it comes to proper attribution.

Yet, Morozov also admitted in his Tumblr post, "But it's a book review essay, and I do mention the book under review."

On his blog, Morozov writes, "It's probably not obvious to people who haven't read Medina's book AND all the materials that I've read but: I'm not actually drawing on her book when I'm summarizing quite a few things in my piece." True enough. But notice that, by definition, this makes Morozov nearly the only person on the planet who can judge when he was borrowing from Medina and when he was coming up with his own material. The fact is that his telling of the story was simply too close for scholars to tell it apart from Medina's. That's a problem, a problem avoided through citation.

Other historians have also suggested that Morozov drew on works that he did not cite at all, including Andrew Pickering's The Cybernetic Brain, which recounts the correspondence between Brian Eno and Stafford Beer, something that Morozov writes about in his essay. When the historian of computing, David C. Brock, a Senior Research Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, pushed Morozov on this point. Morozov replied, "Pickering's book was duly read when it came out and it failed to impress. Actually, I found it awful." Here, Morozov repeats a mistake that he also made in his Tumblr post, when he wrote, "Am I absolutely happy with Medina's book? No. In fact, I even have minor quibbles with it." We don't cite other authors because we agree or disagree with them but because the hard work they have done has taught us something.

Moreover, we cite because it often becomes unclear what are our ideas and what are the ideas of those we have read. Here Morozov is not reassuring. After Morozov put up his Tumblr post explaining his essay, a fan asked him a question.

Almost every study I have ever seen shows that we tend to overestimate the accuracy of our memory (just as we overestimate our ability to "multitask"). Morozov asks concerned readers to trust his blessings.

I have some sympathy for Nasser and Morozov. I am hard at work on my first piece of historical writing for a popular magazine. I know how hard it is to keep things tight, get the flow right, and avoid weighing the text down with academic bullshit. But I also know how my piece draws on others' research. I will cite them. If an editor would not let me give credit where credit is due, I would walk away. At least I hope I would.

On Twitter, the historian Patrick McCray, a professor at University of California-Santa Barbara, began discussing the Medina-Morozov affair with the hashtag #faust. (About a year ago, McCray wrote an interesting blog post on Morozov, which included reflections on Morozov's relationship to academic norms.) #Faust is right. We live in a world full of intense pressures, and writers sometimes face Faustian bargains. What will we choose?

The fact remains that no matter how much archival research Evgeny Morozov did, his essay drew heavily on Eden Medina's fine and award-winning book, Cybernetic Revolutionaries, and he did not make that at all clear.

If what I have said above makes sense-and I would be more than happy to hear that I am wrong-this situation is not resolved. Any suggestion that it is resolved might be interpreted (perhaps misinterpreted) as an attempt to quash this controversy. This situation is unresolved, but there are straightforward steps to resolve it:

* Evgeny Morozov must apologize. Publicly. It doesn't matter if he didn't intend to do anything wrong. He did. His essay failed to properly acknowledge its sources. The placement and wording of his mention of Medina give readers a false impression. Morozov should make his sources clear in a written statement and confess his wrongs. His apology must be public because the damages that result from these kinds of violations go beyond the personal to the level of communities of inquiry and, ultimately, to the level of creative humanity. He also needs to drop his defensive, arrogant, and hostile attitude. Morozov's Twitter handle is "There are useful idiots. Look around." How might that worldview have contributed to this situation? Did he find Medina useful?

* The New Yorker has not responded in any formal way. It must. This situation is partly a result of faulty editing at the magazine. The online version of Morozov's essay should be edited with the proper notations that changes were made because of this ethical problem. The magazine should issue an apology and correction in print.

* Academics should begin a process of discernment about their relationship with journalism. We must consider what norms will guide us no matter where we are working. Some historians have said that they are going to teach the Medina-Morozov situation in their classes as a case of ethical violations. A few have even suggested that they will teach it as a plagiarism case. One historian claimed that we must go further and think about how we will handle our graduate students if they break such ethical codes.

To begin with, however, we scholars must speak out when we see these kinds of violations happening. The Medina-Morozov situation scares some people. I had a friend say, maybe partly in jest, that he didn't want to speak up because he is "terrified of the Harvard Mafia." Others have said that they have no desire to upset editors at The New Yorker. (Oh, dreams of publishing in The New Yorker, you dissipate with each passing word.)

But we have to stand up for each other. If we don't, who will?

← @EvgenyMorozov @NewYorker #ShowUsTheMissingPages What's Really Behind The Facebook Psyche Experiment Controversy →

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An Unresolved Issue: Evgeny Morozov, The New Yorker, and the Perils of "Highbrow Journalism"

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Last week, The New Yorker published its October 13 issue. It contained an "A Critic at Large" piece by Evgeny Morozov, titled "The Planning Machine: Project Cybersyn and the Origins of the Big Data Nation." Within a few days, historians were chatting. Something was wrong.

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Latest Findings on Plagiarism from Our Survey of 1,200 Librarians

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Latest Findings on Plagiarism from Our Survey of 1,200 Librarians

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True Detective plagiarized? No, Nic Pizzolatto did not “plagiarize” Thomas Ligotti.

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True Detective plagiarized? No, Nic Pizzolatto did not “plagiarize” Thomas Ligotti.

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Popular culture

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On Monday, Mike Davis, editor of the Lovecraft eZine, published a conversation between himself and Jon Padgett, founder of the website Thomas Ligotti Online, under the headline: " Did the Writer of True Detective Plagiarize Thomas Ligotti and Others?" Their answer to that question is an emphatic yes. The charges were summarized on Tuesday by the , which declined to take a position on the matter, and on Wednesday morning they were written up by IndieWire, which described the piece as a "strong accusation." The story has since been picked up by several other outlets, most of which have summarized the accusations without taking sides.

The exchange between Padgett and Davis may spur interesting questions about pastiche, homage, attribution, and influence, but a "strong accusation" of plagiarism it isn't. Consider perhaps their strongest example, these lines from Rust Cohle, the character played by Matthew McConaughey: "I think about the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this meat ... Force a life into this thresher." At different points in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Thomas Ligotti refers to people being "stolen from nonexistence," says "we are meat," and asks, "Why should generations unborn be spared entry into the human thresher?" It's clear from these similarities that Pizzolatto has read the Ligotti book and borrowed from it-something he has himself acknowledged, about which more below. If True Detective was not a cop show on HBO but a term paper in a philosophy class, then it would indeed be wrong for him to lift such ideas and metaphors from an author without citing him in the work itself. But Davis, at least, does not seem to fully grasp that distinction: He explains his charges by quoting a Cambridge University statement on plagiarism that was explicitly provided for people giving and taking written examinations.

Nic Pizzolatto was not taking a test. He was writing a fictional TV show. It is of course possible for a writer of fiction to plagiarize: Padgett cites the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, calling it a "similar" case. But that novel included dozens of passages lifted either verbatim or nearly verbatim from similar novels. That is not what Pizzolatto did with Ligotti's work. He created a character who thinks much like Ligotti thinks, and he had that character express ideas similar to the ones that Ligotti expounded upon in a work of philosophy-albeit an unusual one, which Padgett says " morphs into metafiction "-occasionally using phrases similar to Ligotti's. (It should be noted that some of the similarities cited by Padgett appear purely coincidental and unremarkable. Cohle refers to "seeing straight into the true heart of things," and Ligotti refers to the "horrible 'inner Truth' of things." Including that as an example of plagiarism seems like wishful thinking.)

In addition to highlighting similar ideas and phrases in True Detective and The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Padgett also provides a timeline of people noticing those similarities and Pizzolatto acknowledging them. True Detective premiered on Jan. 12, and nine days later an interviewer mentioned "Cohle's Ligottian worldview" in a question. In his reply, Pizzolatto didn't refer to Ligotti by name. Nine days after that, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, Michael Calia, wrote admiringly of the parallels between Ligotti's work and Pizzolatto's, citing some of the same passages that Padgett has reproduced this week. (Padgett says he helped with research for Calia's piece.) A few days later, Calia published an interview with Pizzolatto, in which the showrunner listed Ligotti first among the writers of weird fiction he'd point people to and said that the premiere episode of True Detective featured "two lines in particular (and it would have been nothing to re-word them) that were specifically phrased in such a way as to signal Ligotti admirers." Padgett says that in subsequent interviews, and on the first season's DVD commentary, Pizzolatto has not mentioned Ligotti at all.

For Padgett and for Davis, this amounts to a guilty man trying to duck his crimes and only admitting to them when "cornered." (I emailed Calia asking if he agreed with Padgett's take, but he forwarded my message to an editor at the Wall Street Journal, who told me, "Michael's two excellent Speakeasy posts on the subject speak for themselves and we don't have any other comment.") When it comes to the specific charge of plagiarism, though, this behavior is neither here nor there. With fiction, plagiarism does not come down to whether or not a writer is willing to acknowledge what he or she has borrowed from someone else. It comes down to how that borrowed material is used-and True Detective creatively borrows a lot of material from many different sources.

As was widely noted when it aired, the show's finale featured two lines that were taken from comic books: Rust's kiss-off "L'chaim fatass" comes from a Daredevil installment, and his final speech, about how the stars prove that "the light's winning," is lifted from an obscure comic by Watchmen author Alan Moore. In my view, that last example veers from inspiration into mere imitation. But given the quotations and visual allusions sprinkled throughout the series-even the title was taken from a long-lived pulp magazine-it is of a piece with the show as a whole, which should probably be thought of as a pastiche. Not as blatant a pastiche as, say, a movie directed by Quentin Tarantino (has Tarantino "plagiarized" kung fu movies and spaghetti Westerns?), but a pastiche nonetheless.

How does one properly credit one's sources when you've made a pastiche? Legally speaking, you don't have to explicitly credit them at all. On a more personal level, it's probably appropriate to direct one's fans to the works that have inspired you, especially if your own success ultimately exceeds that of your inspirations. In this context, it's perhaps notable that when Pizzolatto talked at length about the show's final line with Alan Sepinwall, he didn't mention Alan Moore. It seems to me that people can reasonably debate whether Pizzolatto has suitably credited Ligotti and Moore with their influence on True Detective.

I have not been able to reach Pizzolatto or Ligotti to get their comments on this issue. (Padgett told me he knows from past correspondence that Ligotti "prefers not to comment on True Detective in any way.") I emailed Derrick Hussey, founder of Hippocampus Press, which published The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, and he told me that his publishing house had no comment on the matter. In an email exchange today, Jon Padgett patiently and thoughtfully expanded on his thoughts for me, reiterating that he believed Pizzolatto had plagiarized Ligotti "by any measure," but also suggesting that even if I disagreed, I should concede that it was "unethical at least." Readers can decide for themselves whether any of Pizzolatto's behavior was unethical, but what he wrote was not plagiarism.

Update, Aug. 7: Nic Pizzolatto has released a statement on the matter through HBO, in which he mentions many other writers not named Thomas Ligotti who influenced the thinking of Rust Cohle. (He does not mention Ligotti.) You can read the statement in full below.

Nothing in the television show True Detective was plagiarized. The philosophical thoughts expressed by Rust Cohle do not represent any thought or idea unique to any one author; rather these are the philosophical tenets of a pessimistic, anti-natalist philosophy with an historic tradition including Arthur Schopenauer, Friedrich Nietzche, E.M. Cioran, and various other philosophers, all of whom express these ideas. As an autodidact pessimist, Cohle speaks toward that philosophy with erudition and in his own words. The ideas within this philosophy are certainly not exclusive to any writer.

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The Problem With Saying True Detective Was "Plagiarized"

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On Monday, Mike Davis, editor of the Lovecraft eZine, published a conversation between himself and Jon Padgett, founder of the website Thomas Ligotti Online , under the headline: " Did the Writer of True Detective Plagiarize Thomas Ligotti and Others?" Their answer to that question is an emphatic yes.

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How Senator John Walsh Plagiarized a Final Paper - NYTimes.com

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How Senator John Walsh Plagiarized a Final Paper - NYTimes.com

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carnegie endowment for international peace

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How Senator John Walsh Plagiarized a Final Paper

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A line-by-line analysis of Mr. Walsh's 2007 final paper shows that he took much of it from other sources without giving them credit.