But is it plagiarism?

[javasaurus]

But is it plagiarism? The following is about an issue of (possibly unintentional) plagiarism. My real question, though, is this: When/how does an idea become mainstream enough that it is not longer plagiarism to use it?

Kaavya Viswanathan is a Harvard student who just lost a two-book publication deal because her first book (How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life) suffered from "allegations of literary borrowing" according to an MSNBC article, which notes several instances, and presents the following example:

In [Meg] Cabot’s “The Princess Diaries,” published by HarperCollins, the following passage appears: “There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. ... Because I don’t look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights.”

In Viswanathan’s book, page 59 reads: “Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn’t look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn’t own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat.”

Meg Cabot's online diary mentions a NYTimes article in which Viswanathan indicates having a photographic memory, and that any plagiarism was unintentional. In response, Cabot wrote, "If you have photographic memory, and cannot discern your own thoughts from that of another writer's, DON'T become a writer!"

Comments

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

Curiosity - if it was so obvious, how is it her editors missed it?

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Doesn't look it to me. At least not that example. I've heard variants of the same thing from a number of people who have gone in for spa day makeovers... including my mother-in-law who I *know* hadn't read the book at the time, as it hadn't been written yet.... both those first two sentences, actually. And considering the next sentence isnt' all that much like the Cabot lines, but *does* follow-up the "why not" of the first two sentences...

That just *stinks*. Though I'll admit to being curious what other similarities were hit, and if any of them were closer.

One thing, that Paolini first novel is a good example of a book that obviously uses *many* ideas from others.. even a few bits here and there sound very familiar... but it's still not considered plagerizing in any way because it's all put together differently (though I do wonder a bit about some scene similarities... just not enough to actually go look).

So why one is over picked over, but not another?