Plagiarism in Review

Thanks to The Sheila Variations and Emily at Second Breakfast for the links.

Most people the blogosphere have heard of the sad tale of Kaavya Viswanathan, the young lady who was recently busted for stealing passages of her first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, from other recent books by Megan McCafferty.

She also used the services of a "book packager," called that because they stand behind the scenes and massage workable novels out of the rambles of authors. In other words, she couldn't even plagiarize somebody else's work on her own - she required help.

It's a small advance for society, I suppose, that Ms. Viswanathan didn't merely throw it all on the anonymous packager, and she did contribute some original material. She and her publisher have announced that future editions of her novel will offer more of it in place of the stolen bits. In software terms, that means that "Opal Mehta" was a beta version pawned off as a finished product, requiring patches and additional work that the consumer should have gotten in the first place. I was rather hoping that the practice wouldn't catch on elsewhere. (And I Brian Cullen Ken Nightfly should know, since I Brian Cullen Ken Nightfly ran a blog carnival that blew up in my face some months back. Yes, it was my his fault.)