Why do smart students commit plagiarism? Why would a top high-school writer — so accomplished that she would eventually attend Harvard — commit professional suicide by publishing text copied from another author’s popular novel? In reading the gotcha press coverage on Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, I can’t help wondering how much Ms. Viswanathan knew about copyright infringement and plagiarism while she was writing. We don’t send our high-school basketball stars onto the court without teaching them the rules of the game, but I fear that too often we send our high-school writing stars to college and graduate school without teaching them the academic and legal rules that govern their creative work.
Ms. Viswanathan’s book was inspired by two novels that resonated with her own experience: Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. She readily admits to having read the novels three or four times. Many passages are so similar that last month the young novelist was accused of plagiarism and copyright infringement, and her public comments about those charges reflect genuine contrition and confusion. She told The New York Times: “All I really want to do is apologize to Ms. McCafferty. I don’t want her to think I intended to cause her distress, because I admire her so much.” This month she was accused of using content from another author’s work as well.
In college basketball, the rules are not taught once during a brief orientation and then forgotten. They are repeatedly discussed as the season progresses. As we push young writers into the creative arena, the rulesof the writing game should get the same attention. Plagiarism rules are not there just to deter literary thieves. They are codes of honor designed to nurture academic integrity by teaching students to honor the voices of others on the way to finding their own.
Copyright law cannot be understood without thoughtful reflection, because it contains many contradictions. Copyright protection is not supposed to extend to facts, ideas, or general plot lines, yet the copyright laws tell us that the right to create derivative works — for example, a movie from a novel — belongs exclusively to the author. Copyright laws provide broad protection for authors and publishers by assuring that their work will not be copied without compensation, yet they still permit fair use, such as copying excerpts for criticism, comment, or parody. Trying to define the scope of fair use can be a maddening endeavor, but we would serve our students well by at least alerting them to the known ends of the spectrum, to give them some compass to guide them in determining when and how they may use another’s content.
We should not expect our students to absorb these complex rules on their own. If we stop to look at our cultural environment through the eyes of Ms. Viswanathan and her peers, we will see that the concepts of plagiarism and copyright are counterintuitive. Copying is essential to learning. When a toddler repeats a word, it is great cause for celebration. That same child will learn to write by copying letters seen in print. In high school and college, students memorize their lecture notes and redeliver this content back to professors on exams, often without the expectation of attribution. The ability to repeat back what they learned (generally without attribution) is richly rewarded.
We encourage our students to recycle objects and ideas they get from others. Discarding paper and plastic in appropriate receptacles has become a routine responsibility in our schools. Students create collages and sculptures from discarded items such as milk jugs and magazines. We assign them to groups to share ideas. We teach them that great writers recycled ideas they found in other great works. A high-school student will learn that Shakespeare brilliantly recast the plot of Tristan and Isolde to create Romeo and Juliet. She may also learn that Thomas Jefferson could not have drafted the Declaration of Independence without recasting the thoughts of other great philosophers such as John Locke. We would serve our students better if we enriched these lessons with discussions about plagiarism and copyright laws so our students would understand the principles that govern their work in different contexts. They need to learn that they can still work within those principles to create new works inspired by their creative heroes.
When the school day ends, students are inundated with an infinite quantity of recycled content in popular culture. They listen to music that uses famous riffs from other songs. They read books that are turned into movies, and then the characters from those movies appear on an endless array of products, such as breakfast cereals, clothing, toys, and video games. Most students do not know that it takes hours of negotiation and boxes of trademark and copyright licenses to make all this borrowing appear so seamless. The recording industry’s lawsuits against students who pirate digital music may have taught our students that copying an entire work can get them in trouble. We must alert our students to the reality that sometimes copyright laws also prohibit copying smaller portions of a work.
It is quite possible — and I believe likely — that Ms Viswanathan’s editors and advisers pushed her to write and publish without first taking the time to explain to her the basic principles of plagiarism and copyright. Much of the alleged copying in her work is not verbatim lifting but the creative recycling of ideas. The rules of what can be borrowed and when attribution must be given are complex and require vigilant attention. She confessed to The New York Times: “I feel as confused as anyone about it, because it happened so many times.” It is so unfortunate to see a promising young writer taken out of the game because she did not understand the rules. My hope is that this incident will motivate parents and educators to remember that creative work has its rules, and if they want to stay in the game, our students should know them.
Deborah R. Gerhardt is director of copyright and scholarly communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the Intellectual Property Initiative at the University of North Carolina Law School.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 52, Issue 38, Page B20
