Oi! read this, you hacks!

Plagiarism and idea theft is rife in the digital age. Documents and websites of published stories can be cut and pasted by hacks into rehashed articles with a click of a mouse. 

Everything comes from somewhere else. Nearly everyone is copying without permission these days. But these are not excuses to steal ideas or plagiarize. That’s bollocks. 

It does not matter whether ripping off is common practice or not. Ethics is not dictated by popularity; morality is not decided by consensus. 

Translations, spoofs and intertextuality are all well and good. But you have to acknowledge your influences and sources. And you have to honor them with your own excellence. 

One’s writing, when inspired or derived from another work, only becomes original when one takes it further or injects something from one’s own experience, generation and culture. 

Cinema and music illustrate well the defining line between originals and copycats. 

The movie "Kill Bill" borrows heavily from Hong Kong Kung Fu features and Japanese animé. But though Quentin Tarantino’s movies are obvious tributes to his influences, they still possess that unique Tarantino signature. He gets away with it because he’s good at it and because he’s very much Quentin Tarantino. 

In the music business, there are only two good reasons to cover somebody else’s song: Either you do it better or do it different. Edwin Starr remade George Harrison’s Hare Krishna anthem “My Sweet Lord” into a southern gospel song. The Black Crowes amplified and electrified Otis Redding’s sweet and soulful “Hard to Handle” to create kick-ass blues rock. 

But unlike plagiarism where the similarity of words can be proven in a court of law, idea theft is harder to substantiate. Different executions can produce very different results from the same concept. Ideas, intangible as they are, have no proof of their existence until they have been drafted or published. 

Yet ideas do have value. It is original ideas, and not just fine execution, that elevates the artist above mere artisans. 

Certain magazines discourage their staff from associating with those of the competition for fear of story ideas being leaked. Advertisers have lost jobs because of loose talk on elevators. We in The Manila Times refrain from contributing to establishments that have conflicting, compromising or competing interests. 

But what if a writer repeatedly features the same people and places one already wrote a year ago and uses the same contacts to further themselves? It happens all the time. Bollocks? 

I say never mind the bollocks. Good writers aren’t one-hit-wonders. While copycats cling onto stolen words, gifted writers produce good stories prodigiously. Let the hacks rot as hacks.