Freedom of Expression is More than a Basic Human Right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

The following are unedited excerpts from wikipedia on the subject of freedom of speech.

“The First Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791. The Amendment states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR recognizes the right to freedom of speech as “the right to hold opinions without interference. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression. Furthermore freedom of speech is recognized in European, inter-American and African regional human rights law.”

Freedom of speech, or the freedom of expression, is recognized in international and regional human rights law. The right is enshrined in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

One of the earliest Western defences of freedom of expression is Areopagitica (1644) by English poet and political writer John Milton. Milton also argued that if the facts are laid bare, truth will defeat falsehood in open competition, but this cannot be left for a single individual to determine. According to Milton, it is up to each individual to uncover their own truth; no one is wise enough to act as a censor for all individuals

It should be clear to all therefore that plagiarism is an evil of relative magnitude that militates not just against a basic human right but against the very heart of democracy itself. The public at large are duped by perpetrators as to the severity of the crime. Perpetrators either succeed in buying their way out by offering the victim a minimal share in their ill-gotten gains or get the law to do their dirty work for them by allowing courts to adjudicate on the basis of draconian laws of proof that are clearly in the criminal’s favour. The crime itself can only be fully comprehended by its many victims. What is needed are new laws whereby reason, plausibility and expert testimonies are given added weight in the assessment process and in which a competent and fool-proof lie-detection technology can be used to find the truth or falsehood of conflicting statements.

The Satanic Windmills of Plagiarism.

Plagiarism. What is its nature? The will to win by possessing is its impetus; a will that cannot climb its selected mountain under its own steam: it needs help; and it forages for that help in the honest labours of another. And if you consider Rousseau’s definition of morality as “self-restraint”  plagiarism is totally redundant in that respect. Whatever it needs it takes. To win at any cost is the motivation and in that there is simply no room for morals, no room for compassion, no room for humanity. To my mind it manifests the heartless soul of imperialism. It must have what it needs irrespective of the cost to others. It is violence. It invades foreign territory at will. It’s primary self-deception is that it already owns what it seeks to possess. Rape therefore is its true nature; the rights of  the defenceless ‘other’ negated absolutely.
                                  The philosophy of the plagiarist  if he/ she can be said to have one is ALL ART IS MADE OF IDEAS. IDEAS BELONG TO US ALL. THERE IS NO COPYRIGHT ON IDEAS. The latter statement is only partly true but the real fallacy lies in the first statement, viz, ALL ART IS MADE OF IDEAS. It is true and it is false all at once. The introjected object is the idea. Reality is subsumed and managed by us under the forms of ideas. But, the creative spirit itself is consciousness, i.e, the subject that experiences. Consciousness is not an object. The eye cannot see its own capacity to see any more than a river can flow backwards to find out  from whence it came. The violence done to the work of another is  violence done to the creative presenter of ideas, violence perpetrated against the subject. It is personal  in other words and cannot be other. Only the victim knows how personal it actually is.

                                 Without the individual presenter the ideas delivered by creative endeavour COULD NOT EXIST  in the particular forms chosen and moulded by the presenter. This is easy enough to understand. You can pilfer the style and method of pictorial representation of a Rembrandt self-portrait for instance on the false premise that the great work is composed of nothing but ideas but you cannot present your finished copy as a portrait of  YOU however radical and imaginative your changes may be if you preserve the actual essential features of Rembrandt’s features, what makes Rembrandt’s portrait unique.  The simulation can never be the truth and the TRUE origin of your facsimile is Rembrandt’s portrait without which yours could not exist. In literature, the definitive statement that Mr. Smith invented certain things is in no way invalidated by digging up ‘similiarities’ in books long since forgotten. And if you subscribe to the fact that there are only 36 possible plots available to us in the whole of literature you may take it that your plot, however ingenious, is among them. Theft can never be lawful and this fact of happenstance-similiarity cannot and should not be presented as a defence of it. The fact that an author has invented something without directly copying known precedents should pass as proof positive as to original creation in view of the fact that plagiarism by definition is the exact opposite, i.e,  deliberately and intentionally and without acknowledgement copying directly from known sources in an attempt to claim ‘original creation’ for yourself. It is for the publisher to determine if the level of precedential similarities are acceptable or not or whether the ignorance of the writer in regard to them can be taken on trust. It follows then, as night doth the day, that if a writer is found guilty of plagiarism so too is their publisher and their agent as neither of these can claim professional integrity and total ignorance of existing precedents at one and the same time. For either to cite such precedents in support of their client’s copyright claim to ‘original creation’ is imbecility  at best and skullduggery at worst.

                                 To mask your theft what you have to do is change the form. You have to change it to the extent that nobody can recognize it’s origins. With regards to literature, you can for example steal the character of Hamlet. You can give him black hair instead of blond, make him fat instead of slender, etc, etc, etc but if you have derived your ‘original’  character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet you have changed the true into the false and have tried to pass off your false attempt as your unique creation. What you have taken from Hamlet is what makes Hamlet “Hamlet”, however cleverly you have cleared your tracks.  His essential character must remain intact else your pilfering was in vain. Indeed, a production of Hamlet in Hong Kong could well portray Hamlet with all the aforementioned traits with oriental eyes added as mandatory. But he would still be Hamlet, speaking his lines and acting out his part. Your facsimile may be original in its falseness, especially if you do not dislcose your source, but sooner or later you will have to get rid of your self-delusions and confront the fact that you are no Shakespeare, that Hamlet was never yours to begin with and that there is more to artistic creation that the take-over of original ideas that do not belong to you exclusively as an individual even if they do belong to humanity at large. That is on a par with claiming E=mc ² as your own discovery when you cannot add up your grocery bill without a calculator. The world belongs to us all but no individual is entitled to take possession of it in his/her own name. What compounds your felony to those who have but a minor grasp of dialectics is this often forgotten element in the balance.  The times one lives in calls forth from the imagination the ideal and inevitable  response to those times in art form. Without Napoleon there is no Eroica. The man who, in the honest pursuit of his craft, answers that calling is the true orginator of the work. The one who copies that man’s work and attempts to pass it off as their own is an imposter and a cheat of the lowest possible calibre. In brief; the copy however attractively presented is not the truth and can never be the truth.

“To have been… or not to have been. That is the query.” ( Prince Mc Hamish of Scotland.)

       Plagiarism – The Ransacking of Another’s Soul.

         How to Tweak your Way to Ignominious Glory.

There are many types of plagiarism. It goes on in many disciplines from music to painting, from mathematics to medicine. It goes on from the simple story called “Finding Nemo” to the high-flying speeches of presidents. From lazy little Johnny sneaking a peek at his fellow student’s answers during exams to shysters avid for letters after their names offering theses by forgotten graduates, signatures substituted, in their demand for a doctorate they could never possibly win on their own merits. Proving it is difficult; and if the plagiarism is eminently successful you will need people of the same misfit sociopathy as yourself to fight in your corner.  Of course, the crime is indefensible no matter who is fighting your corner.

                        “Competitive Plagiarism”  is the most obnoxious form of the disease. This is where the malfeasant is motivated by the conviction based on self-inflated notions of his ‘abilities’; “anything you can do I can do better.” Providing of course you show me what and how. Just give me the text and explain to me how you created it bit by bit and ….I will take it from there. Ciao!

                        Salieri who is alleged to have pilfered the work of Amadeus Mozart falls into this category. The predator, in other words, takes the work of the other as  THE GIVEN  on which to stamp their own name and creates nothing by way of novel invention worth a damn. The goal is not in the service of art, not to improve on something pre-existing for the sake of art, assuming one’s talent is commensurate with one’s arrogance,….but to steal. Else one would acknowledge one’s source. In their defense, self-righteous plagiarists (as they all must be) will cite precedents, genres etc, whatever indeed will make the original creator look like a plagiarist himself. The plagiarist’s philosophy if thieves can be said to have one is that “all creators pilfer the ideas of others. I am no different but I can prove I am better at it.” Salieri might well refer to Mozart’s teacher Haydn or Bach to justify his theft. Fact is, Salieri is incapable of writing anything comparable on his own which is why he is driven to plagiarism in the first place, irrespective of whose shoulders Mozart may have stood on to create his own divine music. Apologists for Salieri and his ilk are all over the net. By the same token you will find people in your junk mail telling you you have won a million bucks if you just contact them to pick it up. Salieri is said to have been Mozart’s ‘friend’. Greed hath no friends.

                        Any schoolboy of twelve or over indeed can tell you how to go about your “borrowing” of ideas. For example, there is nothing new in the story of Hamlet. There are precedents in literature that go all the way back to Oedipus about the prince bent out of shape over his mother and her new lover who has usurped his father’s status and kingship. Freud wrote about its prevalence in myth and named the complex after Oedipus. Unaware that there are only 36 plots possible in the whole of literature according to recent findings Shakespeare would derive his plots from history books and other works by Boccaccio, Brooke, Holinshead etc. Ergo, I can pillage the plot of Hamlet with impunity just as Salieri might have pillaged the work of Mozart. There is nothing new in it after all. All I need is the essential tried-and-tested idea. THE MAIN IDEA. I can do with the rest as I will. Once I have that I can pillage the mighty scenes of  the ghost of  Hamlet’s father appearing to him on the battlements, the Mousetrap Play to unmask Claudius, the death and madness of Ophelia, the final showdown and death of the hero in a sword fight etc, etc.

                        Hamlet indeed is a good example because the plot is complex. The cake is rich and from it you can extract all sorts of ingredients if you are that desperate and barren. You keep the style of writing of course and the world of the play, tweaking this and tweaking that, tweaking here and tweaking there, until your little heart is content. “To be or not to be” becomes, under the laser of your ‘genius’ (After all you are now greater than your impudent rival Mr. Shakespeare) …. “To have been or not to have been.”  You blush at your own powers of creativity, at how you have moved the ghost from the battlements to the dungeons; the Mousetrap is renamed the Flytrap; and you positively weep when you fling Ophelia into a lake instead of a brook as the author had intended. It is all soooo you! You see your own reflection in every tweak. Tired of tweaking you may even get ‘professional tweakers’ marshalled  by your so-called ‘literary’ agent to take over for you while you dream of riches and fame and meeting the queen and learn how to pass yourself off as a saint from your PR people. Won’t daddy be proud?

                         Finally, you give your Hamlet black hair instead of blond, make him good with pistols instead of sword, remove him from stupid old Denmark, install him in a castle in Edinburgh and call your concoction “McHamish Prince of Scotland”.  A masterpiece is born! All kneel. You have won at last. People will call you a ‘great’ writer. But people are gullible as your agent, who is firmly on your side (at least until the shit hits the fan) has no doubt counseled you. As for the author you pillaged, in the words of Ophelia – “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown”. You know what you have done of course. And you cannot Un-Know it try as you might.

                        Et Caïn dit « Cet oeil me regarde toujours!  (Victor Hugo “La Conscience”.)

                         Next, in the illustrious company of whoever else has helped you commit your crime you have your story peddled to the publishing houses. Of course that is all just for the gullible. The pre-selected grabs his long-awaited product with both hands and sets about interesting the rest. They smell money in it which is all that concerns them. Their market researchers tell them it is time for just such a story. The world is hungry for your inconsolable hero. Mc Hamish has winner written all over him  and they buy up the copyrights. Trees are felled by the myriad and books shipped everywhere by night and day and, of course, film producers fall over themselves for their take of the ‘universal’ cake. The thing is a smash hit and Disney includes Mc Hamish’s castle in its theme park complete with ghost in the dungeons and the thrilling pistol-duel at the end. By then ,of  course, you have rehearsed your lines for the press; about how ‘inspired’ you were by a great idea that just fell into your lap out of the heavens where you now dwell, how you slaved and toiled into the wee hours giving shape to your masterpiece, how you sacrificed health and well-being in the style of the great Romantics (whose shoes you are not worthy to unlace), to bring forth your masterpiece…. and all the rest of it. Pabulum for the paying public for whom you have as much contempt as for the man you ripped off. Your agent protects you from very dangerous things like questions,unsolicited interviews and unexpected visitors.

                         And if your new-found wealth does not succeed in preventing you from being dragged into court by Shakespeare’s protectors, those messengers of Hugo’s eternal Eye devoted to the integrity of the creative soul of Mankind, your legal hounds can argue that your play is “similar to”  but not really the same. After all, Shakespeare’s ghost was younger, had a beard, didn’t speak in Glaswegian slang, appeared on the battlements for crying out loud not in the dungeons, was a swordsman not a gun-toter, his girl was called Ophelia and there is no connection at all betwen “Ophelia” and Agnes Ofeelme, etc, etc, etc, etc. Your fans have been educated into being appalled at the very notion that your genius that they crave in their sleep to emulate is being called into question. They sing hymns with anxious teachers for your vindication. Middle-class newspapers that serve the interests of those who have been creaming off from your theft rally with all the ruthlessness you deployed to commit it gather in their clubs to defend your innocence. Your agent and political gurus rejoice that they had the foresight to cast you as a saint in the way Maggie Thatcher was cast as a firm but sensitive Head Mistress. Everything is panning out perfectly. You are inviolable…… or so you think, now managing director of the magic theatre whose floors you used to scrub. Who can get at you? But, a large eye follows you to bed at night and in the morning as you draw your curtains it is staring at you from the horizon.

                        Of course, most of us know Hamlet - one of the greatest plays ever written. But we are not really talking about Hamlet per se. Nor Shakespeare for that matter. They are just similes for the sake of argument. It would be damn difficult to rip off Shakespeare without acknowledging him even though most lawyers can easily prove he is dead and a fair few that is is still alive and dines regularly with Elvis in Clapham. The Bard for all that is established forever.

                        But, what if your source is another book by an author that only a few people know about, an obscure writer whose story never quite got the fanfare treatment yours was guaranteed to get even before you began to paste it together?  What if it was a story ahead of its time that was allowed to sink into obscurity like the paintings of El Creco that were only rediscovered centuries after his death? For example, what if the story and the world within it was created by a doting father for his son. What then?

      Et, comme il s’asseyait, il vit dans les cieux mornes
L’oeil à la même place au fond de l’horizon.
Alors il tressaillit en proie au noir frisson.
        Cachez-moi !  cria-t-il; et, le doigt sur la bouche,…..

                        What I have explained by analogy is, as far as I am concerned, how it is done by plagiarists everywhere who are driven by greed and ambition. You need neither flair, nor imagination. You need to know only how to read, photocopy and to write. And, we can all write. Can’t we?