plagiarism and copyright

Plagiarism is when a piece of work or an idea is stolen or re used and passed off as someone else's. Plagiarism is a huge thing in the creative world and there are are hundreds of cases going on every day to fight for the rights to the work. Plagiarism is also a pretty vague concept, as an idea cant be copyrighted because lots of people can think of the same idea it just takes one person to go out and actually create the idea. If you thought of the idea but didn't create it then thats your fault not the person that did create it. You can write down an idea and post it to yourself it then gives you the copyright to the idea as the idea is in a sealed dated envelope and that is proof of the time that you had the idea. 

To be honest the whole area of this topic is quite grey and it has became a very complex thing to understand as there are many different loop holes and ways to get around plagiarism. A lot of the most famous art such as 'the Mona Lisa' and 'the girl with the pearl earring' has been copied and plagiarised time and time again. Here is an example of plagiarism on 'the girl with the pearl earring.'

Plagiarised the girl with the pearl earring 

One loop hole that people try to use all of the time is they say their work was simply inspired by the original piece, this would be classed as something else called a homage. A homage is basically when a piece has been re created but in a different way (it is usually obvious) sort of like a tribute to the original. The example below is a homage to 'the girl with the pearl earring' its made from balloons

Homage: the girl with the pearl earring 

  



Another way that people try to get around it is to claim that the work is a spoof but a spoof is something different yet again a spoof is where something is re created or imitated in a comical/humorous way. below is an example of  a spoof. I decided to use the same piece for all three as i think shows how different the three things are. 

Spoof: the girl with the pearl earring