Can You Plagiarize An Idea?

from the words,-words,-words dept

Time and time again, we've heard about people claiming "plagiarism" when the truth is that it's just someone else who happened to have the same, or a similar, idea. It often happens with books and movies. For example, multiple people are suing over the claim that only they could have come up with the idea of a child who has a secret life as a rockstar, and Hannah Montana stole their idea. But actual copyright infringement or plagiarism (two different things) require some actual copying -- not just people having the same idea. Given that, it's not entirely clear what's going on with the claim (found via Michael Scott) that the ex-wife of the singer Usher, Tamika Foster, may have "plagiarized" a self-published author when she wrote a blog post for the Huffington Post called "She's Pretty for a Dark-Skinned Girl..." The author claiming plagiarism had written a book, similarly titled "Pretty for a Black Girl."

But is it plagiarism, or just two people coming up with the same idea? Unfortunately, the report at the link above never bothers to tell us! It simply repeats the claim from the woman that it's plagiarism, but her quotes suggest that it's not:

"My heart sank into my stomach. All the hard work, all the sleepless nights I had endured was playing back in my head as I read this article written by a woman I didn't even know," [Aisha] Curry told BV Buzz. "Why did I feel so connected to this article? Suddenly, it came to me. It was my work! It was my work, my voice, but in her words."

Well, there's a problem there. If it's her words then it's not plagiarism. Also, Curry seems to undermine her own argument in explaining how she came up with the idea for the book:

"One day about five years ago, I was absolutely tired of being told that I was pretty for a black girl," she explained. "I started asking my friends if they had heard this statement before, and as time went on, I realized how prevalent the issue was."

Right. The comment is apparently prevalent, meaning that Tameka Foster certainly could have heard the same thing on her own, and could have decided to write her own essay about it. That's not plagiarism. That's multiple people recognizing something that's prevalent and deciding to write about it. Foster's representatives claim they've never heard of the book. But the real question is whether or not it's actually plagiarism, and that could have been determined by finding out if there were any passages actually pulled from the book. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anyone actually decided to do that. However, as you read Foster's article, much of it seems to be about her own personal experiences, not Curry's, which again suggests this isn't plagiarism at all, but two people writing about a similar concept that is (as admitted by Curry) already "prevalent."

Filed Under: aisha curry, ideas, plagiarism, tamika foster