Marsha Hairston
March 9, 2007
Theory of Internet Writing
Dr. Lisa Maruca and
Dr. Caroline Maun




Utopian Plagiarism, Hypertextuality, and Electronic Cultural Production


The authors attempt to cast plagiarism as a positive or constructive activity because they believe that plagiarism stimulates or promotes cultural enrichment and the expansion of ideas. Keeping this in mind, it appears that the authors are opposed to the confinements that copyright places on intellectual properties. In addition, it appears that the authors’ views are somewhat the same as Lessig’s regarding what should happen to “intellectual property” that enters into the public domain. The authors believe that the works should be available to all for their creative purposes. Lessig belief was somewhat the same as he did not want to lose history or stifle creativity.
The authors also implied that basically there are no true new thoughts, which in my opinion is reflected in this statement, “At present new conditions have emerged that once again make plagiarism an acceptable, even crucial strategy for textual production. This is the age of the recombinant, recombinant bodies, recombinant gender, recombinant texts, and recombinant culture” Click here.
The author states, “One of the main goals of the plagiarist is to restore the dynamic and unstable shift of meaning, by appropriating and recombining fragments of culture.” This statement is quite involved however, in my opinion to truly understand what this statement means, it is necessary to define recombinant. According to the on-line Merriam Webster dictionary,. the word recombinant means 1 : relating to or exhibiting genetic recombination 2 a : relating to or containing genetically engineered DNA b : produced by genetic engineering recombinant http://publication.nodel.org/Utopian-Plagiarism.


Source:http//www.critical-art.net.books/ted/ted5.pdf