Just don’t. Okay? I have rights, you know. The world of copyright is changing. Sharing is caring. The internet is forcing everyone to re-think how we understand what is ours because… well a lot of reasons. For one, the internet is a very open community that is all about sharing. Plus, the majority of what we do is no longer physical, but digital. But you all know this already. Responsible members of this community recognize our sources and attribute the work appropriately.

A couple nights ago Leah and I went to see Knocked Up (hysterical movie, Leah peed herself a little — I think), the new Apatow movie. But wouldn’t you know it, someone (Rebecca Eckler) thinks they’ve been plagiarized, ripped-off, bamboozled and scally-wagged.

Last night, I was sharing a few emails with Ben Gray—he is the author of the template I use for this website and whom I give credit to for all the work that he did—about copyright and ownership (and a few other things). I have made some fairly significant changes to Ben’s theme (this theme) unsleepable and I was wondering when he thought that the theme was no longer his. To be honest, the changes that I have made to the theme are mostly superficial—colors, placing, etc. Aside from some minor code changes, this site functions the same as the day I installed it. I wasn’t asking because I want to turn around and tell the world I have designed a great new theme and take credit for work that I didn’t really do. But the question remains—at what point is something mine?

In the poetry world, ideally, I think we might say if I took one of Tracy’s poems and changed a word or two (maybe we might say they would have to be significant words not a the or and) it would no longer be Tracy’s poem. I think we would say this because, ideally, every word in a poem has been carefully chosen, so that to alter it even slightly would be to take away from the authors original brilliance. But that’s not really true, is it? If you took the poem that I have up right now and changed one word in it and told everyone you wrote it I would come to your house and smack you in the mouth and tell you that I’m Neil Diamond (SNL reference, see Will Farrell as Neil).

What’s the deal with Eckler then? From all that I have read—I read about it for about a half hour this morning—she/everyone seems to point out all the similarities and not as quick to show the difference. Those that think she’s doing this for publicity are quick to point out, and rightly so, that this is a story that’s been done many times before. There are a lot of jokes that have been made before that are in both. It seems to me that Eckler isn’t standing on much, other than the cash from selling a few more books. In her case, I really doubt she’s been plagiarized and it’s because of something she said in the beginning of her article:

I could have accepted any one of a number of bids from Canadian production companies who wanted to option my book for a few thousand dollars. But I was holding out for the Big American Offer.

She started out looking for money and she’s still looking for it. As for me, don’t plagiarize me.