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?