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Plagiarism in Fiction: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."''
|{{color|white|Einstein}}}}
{{quote|''"Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer. I may have to steal it."''
|'''[[Stephen Hawking]]''', ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', "They Saved Lisa's Brain"}}
Plagiarism is essentially taking the work of others and attempting to pass it off as one's own. There is a lot more to it than that. If you care about that, look it up on [[wikipedia:Plagiarism|Wikipedia]], WestLaw, or [[Plagiarism|this page]]. Around here, we're more concerned with plagiarism showing up as the topic of a story. The more complicated plots may involve [[Time Travel]], with somebody discovering that [[Shakespeare]] has been earning acclaim for years [[Stable Time Loop|for the play he accidentally left in the past]]. A more common plot involves a [[Ridiculous Procrastinator]] trying to pass off a straight-A older sibling's report or assignment as their own, eventually getting busted because the teacher recognizes it.
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* The protagonist of [[Robert Silverberg]]'s ''Dying Inside'' makes his (not very good) living by selling plagiarized papers to college students.
* In ''[[Anne of Green Gables|Anne of Avonlea]]'', Anne has her fourth class write and send letters to her. One of which turns out to be plagiarized.
== Live Action TV ==
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* Similarly, when Erica Strange had to hurry to write a poem for an English composition class in ''[[Being Erica]]'', she plagiarizes "Hit me baby one more time" by [[Britney Spears]]. It was a big hit and as she was time travelling (long story) at the time, no one caught it.
* ''[[Lou Grant]]'': One of the episodes, season 3's "Lou," dealt with a young reporter plagiarizing from a college newspaper; predictably, Lou finds out and it isn't long before the reporter is searching for another job.
* Unsurprisingly, the ''[[
* Winifred "Fred" Burkle from ''[[Angel]]'' was first encountered as the most recent victim of an unscrupulous academic who would steal the work of students far more gifted than he after exiling them in a hell dimension.
== Music ==
* [[Tom Lehrer]]'s ''Lobachevsky'':
{{quote|''I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
''In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
''Plagiarize! }}
* The title track of Cledus T Judd's album ''I Stoled This Record'' is "Stoled: The Copyright Infringement Incident", a parody of a John Michael Montgomery song that talks about plagiarizing a song and being taken to jail for it.
* "This Song" by [[George Harrison]] may or may not count, given that it's a semi-autobiographical song about a real-life incident of plagiarism that also went before a judge: ''Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music'', the "My Sweet Lord" case.
* "My Iron Lung" by Radiohead. "This/this is our new song/[[Self-Plagiarism|just like the last one]]". It isn't literally a retread of any Radiohead song before or since.
* In 1984, John Fogerty had the unique honor of [https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/john-fogerty-self-plagiarism-lawsuit-creedence-clearwater-revival-752805/ being sued for plagiarizing ''himself''], when the rights holders of the [[Creedence Clearwater Revival]] song “Run Through the Jungle” claimed that his solo effort “The Old Man Down the Road” sounded too much like it. (In 1988, a jury decided in his favor, officially permitting song writers to keep writing in their distinctive styles regardless of who actually owned their songs.)
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