Re: Re: Acknowledging samples

On 9/18/06, Wallace J.McLean <ag737[_at_]freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>
> > "Plagiarism is never illegal..." should be changed to "Plagiarism
> > is almost never illegal..." adding the word "almost" because of
> > Section 106A.
>
>
> If I take a bunch of sonnets by Dryden, Shakespeare, Donne, Owen, and
> others, and publish them in a chapbook, under my name, as if I were
> the poet, I have committed plagiarism. Really stupid plagiarism.
> Really, spectacularly stupid plagiarism. But I have done nothing
> illegal.

Well, not quite. Passing off and fraud are illegal so you may have done something illegal. But you haven't violated copyright law.

-- 
Prof. Steven Jamar
Howard University School of Law