PLAGIARISM AND ORIGINALITY

An excellent and interesting coverage of the fine points of plagiarism, infringement, borrowing, similarity, copyright, parallels and the principles of litigation. These explorations in the realm of theft research into historical incidents and material, from the Greek and Romans, on through the medieval and renaissance, to present day, describe and investigate present voluminous examples of the variety of derivations and influences affecting the writers of these periods. In modern times the troubles that have occured over books and magazine articles, in art, music, radio, plays, moving pictures, etc., are reviewed against their legal battles Gone With the Wind, Rebecca among others) and the amazing growth of plagiarism suits is noted. There is a section on the psychology and and ethics of the plagiarist and another on the elusive definition of originality. The whole accents the relation and interdependence of all artistic creativity in its continuous and cumulative aspects and underlines the difficulty of proof, the cumbersomeness of current copyright laws and given an entertaining and and exhaustive accounting of a vast field.