de=da=duh=D'OH/ bloooooze and thievery

[Chris Warburton]

You already know what Carl & Larry have been sying, so BIG snips:
>At 19.15 -0400 99-10-07, DASLUD at AOL.COM wrote:
>>In a message dated 10/7/99 5:10:00 PM, cea20 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK writes:
>>
>><<
>>I emphasize that I'm not discussing whether Zeppelin did with the blues
>>songs they ripped off was legally or morally correct,
>>=snip
>>no! it's not any kinda matter of societal evolution! why are you giving
these
>> but in this case, zeppelin stole.
>=snip
>What I am doing is making the observation  that stealing of that sort was
>once very much the norm and not viewed negatively. A medieval author would
>cheerfully plagarize other authors in constructing his own work--
>
Also not making moral judgements (merely making further observations), but
Lord Of The Rings is not credited to "Trad, arr. J.R.R.Tolkien"...Likewise
Poul Anerson's "The Broken Sword" (same source myths). Likewise, Terry
Pratchett's entire Discworld is built on spoofing, plagiarizing, rewriting
and generally causing mayhem to all kinds of myths, legends, cliches & bits
of literary history (though of course he'd cheerfully admit to all that).
Tolkien himself has been mercilessly plagiarized by authors of varying
degrees of talent, and I'm sure that most fields of literature have the
same phenomenon - one of the Booker prize nominees has been accused just
recently...this stuff will always happen, the trick is figuring out at what
point it actually becomes a rip-off!

ChrisW

"a cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin" -
Bierce