THOU SHALL NOT COPY OR PLAGIARISE

Being an English editor cum reporter, my work involves a lot of calling up contacts, typing articles at a speed that can put a jet to shame, failing to meet deadlines hence having abundant scope to nurture the talent of ‘ thinking on one’s feet’ by giving on-the-spot-thought of excuses for not meeting them, giving in the article for publishing with shaky hands and finally, post publishing, have multiple strokes every time the office phone rings in the fear that someone might be calling up to inform me beforehand that they are going to sue me for writing something about/against them.
But work’s fun. Getting to meet people from all the sectors of the society, getting to attend meetings in hotels like Hilton and Marriott which you have always gawked at from a safe distance fearing that someone may charge you for just looking at the building are all perks that come with the job. With time, experience and eyeballs being glued to the screen, you learn how to keep your article free of mistakes and misquotes by rechecking the information till you are ready to rattle off the entire article by heart.
A long time ago, when still at school, I used to regularly contribute my amateurish writings to the supplement of a newspaper back home. Though I used to look forward to reading the paper everyday to check for my article, I partly used to look forward to reading to it for the articles of another regular contributor whose articles used to be one of the main topics of discussion among my friends. His articles and his writing used to so brilliant that among us at least he was a mini celebrity of sorts! Inches of the ‘mailbox’ column were occupied by letters from his fans, all applauding him for his creative and innovative articles.
Until he made the mistake of writing a poem inspired by a popular tv program’s theme song. It was pretty obvious that the piece was a tribute to the tv program. But a reader wasted no time in pointing out that it was a clear case of ‘copying’. The writer responded quickly by saying that it was a tribute to the tv program and in no way had tried to cover the fact that it was based on the theme song. This was all put to a quick end with a letter from the editor which said that when writing a piece which borrows content from another piece, we must always remember to put them under quotes, so that the reader will know that we are not trying to masquerade the writing as our own.
The Dan Brown case and the Kayva Vishwanathan cases have all highlighted every author’s nightmare – plagiarism. The latter had admitted to unconsciously borrowing content from an author whose works she used to avidly read while in high school. And the consequent punishment (which I felt was equal to a death sentence) was to rip off all copies of her books from shelves of many bookstores. Today while writing articles for my magazine, I am always bogged down by the fear of unconsciously borrowing some content from a previously read article or thinking of an idea for an article which may have been dealt with by someone from the 16th century and still be accused of plagiarism!! I understand that the line between copying and getting inspired by someone’s work is indeed very thin, but it is one that must be clearly defined. I have attended seminars back in college where directors have said that if you look around you, you are surrounded by ideas or subjects for any piece of work – be it a movie, novel or anything. But if you happen to deal with a subject matter that bears some resemblance with an old novel or movie, is that plagiarism? Or is that the lesser ‘sin’ of just getting inspired?