My 7 Most Fun Plagiarism Today Posts

This month represents the 20th anniversary of Plagiarism Today. In that time, I have published over 6,000 posts, roughly evenly divided between full articles and 3 Count columns.

One thing that I have (mostly) tried to do is keep myself out of it. Outside of the About Page and my consulting site, I’ve wanted to keep a laser focus on the issues I cover.

With rare exceptions, this has meant omitting my personal feelings. I have made every effort to keep my individual preferences, political opinions, and personal life private on this site.

But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t written a few posts just for fun. Sometimes I want to cover something silly simply because it’s about something that I love or something that I think is funny.

When I look back on the past 20 years, many of those stories are among my personal favorites. Though they may not have been important or even interesting to anyone other than me, they make me smile.

So, with that being said, here are seven (plus) Plagiarism Today posts that were mostly just for fun.

1: The Plagiarism in Pop Culture Series

When I explain to strangers what I do for a living, which is amazingly difficult, one of the first questions that I often get asked is what I think about a particular work that had plagiarism as a plot point.

It made me realize that, for most people, the most they think about plagiarism is when it appears in pop culture, which inspired this series.

Currently, there are 43 entries. I’ve covered video games, films, TV shows, songs and even stand-up comedy routines. One edition, The Kids Are Alright, even got attention from the show’s creator, Tim Doyle.

I admit that this is a cheat because it’s a series, and the portrayal of plagiarism in pop culture is a serious issue. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it and am looking forward to resuming it shortly. Additionally, it prevents this list from being almost entirely entries from the series.

2: Repo: The Plagiarism Opera

Repo! The Genetic Opera, apart from giving my grammar checker fits, is also my favorite film. I have seen it well north of 100 times and actually own several of the posters and other items used in the film.

However, I learned that the film had been part of a plagiarism debate. It shared many themes, most notably organ repossession, with a later film entitled Repo Men.

To be clear, the plagiarism kerfuffle was nothing. It was a case of independent creation, something easily proven by the timeline of the two films. They are also two very different movies that explore similar themes.

Still, that didn’t stop me from writing nearly 1,500 words about the story, covering the history of both films and discussing why it’s not a case of plagiarism. It also didn’t prevent me from making a few dozen Repo! puns along the way…

3: Copyright and the Rocky Horror Picture Show

However, it’s not just Repo! The Genetic Opera that I’m a fan of. I’m predictably also a fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Rocky Horror, to my knowledge, was never the subject of a plagiarism controversy. However, when a friend asked about showing the film in his pub, I ended up taking a deep dive into the film’s history and ownership, which I turned into this article.

The copyright status of the film is shockingly mundane. However, it was still fun to go over the details and slip in at least 10 different Rocky Horror callouts along the way.

I was also amazed by how many people were able to spot all 10 references. It appears I’m not the only one in copyright circles who does the Time Warp.

4: Creating a Fake Plagiarism Story

Speaking of Rocky Horror, I got a chance to revisit it and mash it up with another one of my fandoms, Star Trek.

While rewatching the original series, I came across the episode Catspaw, which shared more than a few similarities with the film. This got my partner and me discussing how we could create a fake plagiarism story by comparing the two.

I had to take some liberties with the retelling of the stories, but I was able to show that it was possible to craft a plagiarism narrative when none existed. To be clear, no plagiarism exists in these works; both are merely playing off similar tropes.

5: Falsifying Attribution for a Bad Pun

Shifting gears, one of my other hobbies is learning about cosmology and quantum physics.

While I am by no means an expert, it’s something I love, to the point I’ve made multiple trips to Livingston, Louisiana, to visit LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), where the discovery of gravitational waves was made, along with the Washington state location.

However, one of my favorite stories dates back to 1948. That was when physicist George Gamow and his PhD student Ralph Alpher were preparing to publish a paper describing how the various elements were created in the nascent universe.

At the last second, Gamow, much to Alpher’s chagrin, added fellow physicist Hans Bethe to the paper, despite Bethe not having contributed. This led to the creation of the “Alpher, Bethe, Gamow” paper, a pun on the Greek alphabet’s alpha, beta, and gamma.

It’s not often a story combines physics, authorship and a bad pun. Three things I have dedicated much of my life to.

6: The Greatest Anti-Plagiarism Video I’ve Seen

One of the things I’m sometimes tasked with is analyzing plagiarism policies at various schools. Normally, this is among the most boring and tedious parts of my job (which I am still very grateful for).

However, the University of Bergen in Norway took a slightly different approach.  Their anti-plagiarism video, entitled A Plagiarism Carol, is a brisk five minutes and presents the issue through a parody of the classic Dickens work, A Christmas Carol.

But this is no ordinary parody. In addition to ghosts, it lampoons science fiction, crime shows, and action films, and even concludes with a massive musical number. Even though much of the film is not in English, English captions are available.

It’s worth the watch in all its mildly NSFW glory, even if you aren’t interested in plagiarism issues. Then again, why are you reading this if you aren’t interested at least somewhat in plagiarism?

7: How the Seuss Estate Stole Christmas

I first got involved in plagiarism after discovering that my poetry and other work were being plagiarized. I haven’t written much poetry in the past two decades, but every once in a while, I pick up the pen and write meter.

In 2016, the Dr. Seuss estate attempted to shutter an off-Broadway play entitled Who’s Holiday, a parody of Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The estate eventually lost the case, allowing the play to go ahead. However, its initial debut had already been cancelled, limiting the play’s reach.

In late 2017, I decided to create my own parody of the book. It’s a line-by-line parody describing the history of the case entitled How the Seuss Estate Stole Christmas. I remain shockingly proud of this work, and it took far more time than I would like to admit.

It may not be a comedy masterpiece (it’s barely even a piece), but it’s definitely some of the most fun I’ve had.

Bottom Line

20 years of 8 posts per week can be more than a bit of a slog. While copyright and plagiarism may not be the most pressing issues in the world, they are indeed very serious. Unfortunately, they can also be quite dry.

On the positive side, these topics impact virtually all areas of creativity. This means that, no matter what you consider yourself a fan of, copyright and/or plagiarism have likely impacted it in some way.

This is true for holidays. Both Halloween and Christmas were deeply shaped by copyright issues. Many of the traditions and media you enjoy around those holidays are due to copyright, plagiarism, or related myths. Copyright even affects how you celebrate your birthday.

While these articles have been fun to write, they also serve as an exploration of how these issues have affected the things I love.

So, I’m realizing that, even when I’m “cutting loose” and having fun, it’s still a somewhat serious exploration.

Even if it’s only serious to me.