The Ecstasy of Influence Argument Map by Mia Vicuna

Jefferson and Copyright

mav250 — 2025-10-05 23:16:15 UTC

Copyright was considered to be a necessary evil by Thomas Jefferson. These ideas of copyright were enshrined in the Constitution, which gave Congress the authority to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writing and Discoveries". However, the

Heinz von Lindberg vs. Vladimir Nabokov's

mav250 — 2025-10-05 23:50:49 UTC

Heinz had published his book Lolita, and then forty years later, Vladimir had published his book. When Vladimir was writing his version of Lolita, he took inspiration from Heinz and created his own version of his book. Although there are some thoughts of full plagiarism in reality, Vladimir took inspiration from another story and created his own story.

Cryptomnesia

mav250 — 2025-10-06 00:02:38 UTC

Cryptomnesia is when an artist accidentally takes inspiration from a preexisting idea while claiming that it was an original idea of theirs.

Disnial and Source Hypocrisy

mav250 — 2025-10-06 00:10:47 UTC

Disney is one of the best examples of source hypocrisy. The company had borrowed ideas for its creation from Shakespeare and De La Soul, but would not allow others to use their work for any other creation unless it was Disney itself.

Source Hispocrisy

mav250 — 2025-10-06 00:15:04 UTC

Source hypocrisy is the denial of one's creative influences, combined with refusing to allow one's work to become a source of inspiration for other creators/artists.

Monopolization and the establishment of stricter copyrigt and intellectual property laws

mav250 — 2025-10-06 00:26:45 UTC

Creative work had started to have a price and was treated like a product being bought by others, which began to feel like the inspiration of the art was fading away. With all of this came digital reproduction, which made it more difficult for people to keep track of the amount of someone's work/art.

Gift Economy vs. Market Economy

mav250 — 2025-10-06 03:47:09 UTC

The overall culture of art was split into two economies: a Market or a Gift economy. People thought that art had either a market value or a gift value based on the art. The market economy is a competitive economy that correlates with money. The gift economy is based on voluntary giving without getting rewarded back with anything.

Gift and Commodity

mav250 — 2025-10-06 03:51:36 UTC

A gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, whereas the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection

Bob Dylan

mav250 — 2025-10-06 03:58:20 UTC

Bob Dylan is a famous music artist in society, but many of his songs were drawn from other creations. Shakespeare, Hollywood Films, etc, were art that Bob took inspiration from while trying to write these songs

Rebirth

mav250 — 2025-10-06 04:02:05 UTC

Rebirth is a second-hand use where inspiration from existing ideas is being used to create a new creation of art

Crime of being influenced

mav250 — 2025-10-06 04:07:29 UTC

Being influenced by other artists is seen to be a crime. Plagiarism/copyright goes into anyone's brain when people get inspired by different creators, even if they create their own version of art.

Commons

mav250 — 2025-10-06 04:21:42 UTC

Another way of understanding the presence of gift economies is in the sense of a public commons. A commons, of course, is anything like the "streets over which we drive, the skies through which we pilot airplanes, or the public parks or beaches on which we dally. A commons belongs to everyone and no one, and its use is controlled only by common consent."

Reveal

mav250 — 2025-10-06 04:26:50 UTC

With all of these terms and examples in Lethem's book at the end, it was revealed that Lethem's book was not original, but used multiple sources as influence to create his own book. In the end, everything about plagiarism that was talked about used his point that influencedand created a different work of art that showed was different from the sources that he had used.