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A License To Plagiarize, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Since time immemorial, authors have wanted to own various kinds of

exclusive rights in the works they create. Curiously, the rights authors want

to own at any particular point in time tend to reflect the nature of the market

for the works they create. The first exclusive right authors wanted was attribution.

In classical Greece, philosophers accused each other of copying

ideas without attribution. The Roman poet Martial coined the term plagiarius

to criticize other poets for passing off his poems as their own. Even

medieval Irish poets observed plagiarism norms that prohibited copying

without attribution. In all of these …