Hungry Hyaena has a thoughtful post on plagiarism, intellectual property, and the artist’s perspective on information saturation:
Artists are turning to the symbolic and the approximate in an effort to render experience comprehensible. Certainly this is an important, even vital process but it amounts to reductionism and, as such, there is some risk involved. What’s lost in an abridged reality?
Plagiarism, an issue both practical and philosophical, polarizes the art community. Copyright protects artists who support themselves by marketing exclusive reproductions of their work. Such artists are becoming increasingly vocal in defense of their rights
On the other hand, art is a tradition of responding to, appropriating, and reimagining visual influences. How unlike its inspiration must a painting be, to be “original?” What about references? Collage? Warhol and Lichtenstein? Fan art? In a modern context, what exactly is plagiarism?