The The MehtaMorphosis Award was recently established based on the flap raised by similarities between a book written by Kaavya Viswanathan, a 19 year old Harvard student, and several ones written by Megan F. McCafferty several years ago. The list of similarities apparently encompasses a number of phrasings, but doesn’t appear to encompass any real ideas - at least not based on the samples I’ve seen. Nonetheless, it has generated a tremendous amount of heat over accusations of plagiarism.
The lesson here is that we now know that people aren’t nearly as creative as they aspire to be, but so what? Solomon once said “There’s nothing new under the sun”. Does it take 3,000 years to figure out that he was right? The issue here isn’t ideas, but expression. Copyright law states that the expression must be an “exact replica”, not just close. In fact, the replication must continue for more than a sentence. The examples I’ve seen don’t even make it that far.
If we are to assume that this carries to ideas, then we are saying that no two people can express exactly the same opinion. Not only would this silence nearly everyone, it would also (as a result) cause political gridlock.
Expression, particularly first person expression, is a way of demonstrating personality. Phrasing can be a signature of a particular cultural group - and the use of that phrasing can be a way of establishing a character as part of that group. While Kaavya Viswanathan may not be as creative as she’d like to believe, she’s hardly a thief.
This high temperature moralizing is ludicrous. Further, the publisher is stupid to NOT take advantage of the controversy - it’s great publicity for the book.