You Didn’t Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did

Why can't we plagiarize? Information is not a concrete thing. It exists only in people's minds. We cannot control information, because we cannot control minds. Even if we could, it would be unethical. Then information is not property, and so information cannot be owned like property.

To say one person owns information is to make a universal claim of right against all other minds. This is transparently impossible. It is unwise and stifling to make customs and laws aim at impossible things. Then the very idea of plagiarism is a mistake.

Why can't we plagiarize? Information is not a concrete thing. It exists only in people's minds. We cannot control information, because we cannot control minds. Even if we could, it would be unethical. Then information is not property, and so information cannot be owned like property.

To say one person owns information is to make a universal claim of right against all other minds. This is transparently impossible. It is unwise and stifling to make customs and laws aim at impossible things. Then the very idea of plagiarism is a mistake.

Writer Russ Juskalian responds to the current un/sub controversy over at The Human Condition blog: http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/07/09/subconscious-vs-unconscious-writer-russ-juskalian-two-psychologists-freud-and-wikipedia-respond-to-your-comments.aspx

Sorry. I must have done it unconsciously.

I remember Bono from U2 said he caught himself unconsciously plagiarizing - he wrote a song, then realized he had lifted at least part of it from someone else. He said, "I thought I was the genius." It happens all the time, even to the most established creatives. Our minds are more permeable than we think. It might be a good idea to put every final draft through the plagiarism checking software before submitting it. If you don't, someone else will.

I remember Bono from U2 said he caught himself unconsciously plagiarizing - he wrote a song, then realized he had lifted at least part of it from someone else. He said, "I thought I was the genius." It happens all the time, even to the most established creatives. Our minds are more permeable than we think. It might be a good idea to put every final draft through the plagiarism checking software before submitting it. If you don't, someone else will.

you guys need copy editors. It's Elisabeth Hasselbeck, not Elizabeth.

With all the information that now exists and bombards us cryptomnesia may becoming a common and understandable occurrence. HOWEVER, when someone is selling 'original content' for PROFIT there is no excuse. When profit is involved, it is the sellers responsibility to check and re-check -- and disclose all sources.

The word used throughout this article should be "subconscious" not "unconscious." The subconscious mind makes the decisions we're not fully aware of. When you're unconscious, however, you're not doing much of anything!!

There are some six billion people on the planet today... and what? perhaps twice, maybe three times that many in the most recent four or five generations before us. If only one in a hundred thousand wrote anything in the same language as some current fiction writer, what are the odds, really, that he or she COULD write a book free of phrases, or even fairly long passages, nobody has ever written before? Perhaps, Horatio, there really IS nothing new under the sun.

Conscious plagiarism:


Maureen Dowd of the New York Times shamelessly ripping off entire sections of a TPM article by Josh Marshall and calling it her own before being busted for it only a month ago .[ such pinheads may not be taken with any seriousness as a result]

Unconscious plagiarism:

Director Peter Jacksons speech by King Theoden in ''The Two Towers'' [ ''where are the horse and rider''..?] which was lifted from a German poem penned in 1912 which forsaw the coming of the First World War called ''The Slaughterhouse Of Mankind''.

I think when passage after passage has been lifted it is not unconscious plagiarism. However, sometimes you have heard something or read something so often it becomes yours, even if someone else published it first. You may not realize you're plagiarizing. I've also come up with novel ideas that I haven't known were documented anywhere in the literature.

I think it is somewhat unfair to include Chris Anderson in the list of unconscious plagiarism. According to Chris and his publisher (see http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/06/corrections-in-the-digital-editions-of-free.html), the author knew quite well that he was copying from Wikipedia and had it attributed until an editor-led change had prevented proper attribution at the last moment.

it definitely happens in songwriting. I finally had to accept the truth about my songs and I quit doing it as a hobby. By best work are all rips. Subconscious rips. I got tired of my sister saying "um, you know thats a donna summer song right? not the whole thing. just this part of the chorus. Thats donna. "

I think it would be impossible to write without some unconcious copying. Diligence and proofreading are essential, but even so there may be some inadvertent violations. I've encountered incidents twice and been left wondering if it was me or. . . As a songwriter I was demonstratiing one of my pieces to an onlooker several years ago-a work that had never been published, but has a lilt and engages the audience. My listener remarked "that's not the way I remember that going" and I've always wondered what familiar work he was refering to-I haven't been able to drag it up! Another time a friend brought me some material that his aunt, who was a singer, had written while she was performing in Germany in the early 1960's. He had never heard it and wanted to know what it sounded like. I worked up the melody from the handwritten sheet music and voila-a lovely song about forgotten love with a striking melody similar to the Beatles' "Norwegian Woods". So who lifted from whom? I'll never know, but I do know the group visited Germany during the time this piece was written. It happens.

I frequently see unconscious plagiarism in my college students' work. Some weren't taught how to use citations in high school. Others see plagiarism (paraphrasing or even copying word for word without citing the source) on the internet, in blogs, ezines, news reports, etc., and think it must be ok. Others, like the article suggests, just incorporate the information into their memories and suffer from source amnesia. It's usually not too difficult to separate the clueless plagiarism (an idea, sophisticated in intent but often badly stated) from the deliberate plagiarism (an articulate statement mysteriously inserted amidst convoluted, ungrammatical, misspelled prose). Giving students a chance to correct their mistakes usually fixes the problem - at least, for the remainder of the semester. What they do outside the classroom, in the real world, is another matter.

LOL, right. I unconsciously plagiarised... And the dog ate my homework too. Hey, I got a bridge that I'd like to sell you. You can see it just south of Manhattan. It's really long and oh, it's really tall. (Like this tale)