Hands off my work!

I read an intersting article in the Register today. You can read it here
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/19/not_invented_anywhere/

"A teenage literary sensation who lifted large parts of her debut hit novel from the Web, without giving credit, says she's justified because "there's no such thing as originality".
For good measure, Helene Hegemann said the plagiarism was justified, because copyright holders had it coming."

I know it's not original Ms Hegemann, but if you as much as lift a sentence of any of my work, you'll get a fat lip.

What is it with the so called creative people these days? Unmade beds and graffiti masquerading as art, recycled riffs masquerading as music and now recycled stories masquerading as literature.

When I write a song, it's hard work. I think long and hard about what I'm trying to say and once I get the thread I work hard at refining it, so that each line scans and rhymes, with not a misplaced syllable. What I don't do is lift lyrics from other songs. That's theft.

There is such a thing as intellectual property, and those who create such works deserve any rewards going.

The author of the piece in the Register is Andrew Orlowski and this is his conclusion-

"Copyright is about credit, particularly credit of the valuable green, folding variety. But if something could be found to avoid giving credit, then perhaps the whole difficulty could go away too ? This is very much a stroppy three-year-old's approach to a problem, but sometimes the internet can bring out the stroppy three-year-old in nerds. Copyright is a social settlement and not something that lends itself to a clean compile, with (0) errors and (0) warnings.
Unfortunately this failed approach hasn't really got us anywhere, except to drive us down an intellectual cul de sac, where creators are told (often by wealthy, state funded academics) that richer means poorer, plagiarism is originality, and obscurity means fame."

Excellent post Mr Orlowski. More doublespeak exposed.