Stealing Someone's Brain


 

     So, I was watching this video about musicians that are guilty of plagiarism, like Deep Purple’s immortal "Smoke on the Water” (copied from “Maria Quiet” by Astrud Gilberto); Radiohead’s extremely popular “Creep” (which plagiarized “The Air That I Breathe” by The Hollies) or Andrew Lloyd Webber's “The Phantom Of The Opera (which copied from Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”).

     Ed Sheeran, it seems, just blatantly copied most of his hit songs from other songs. Led Zeppelin, too, and One Direction. A few Beatles songs were also a product of plagiarism.

     And then there's "accidental" plagiarism: George’s Harrison’s most popular solo song “My Sweet Lord (1970)” was very similar to “He’s So Fine (The Chiffons, 1963),” but despite a court ruling  that it was indeed a case of plagiarism, Mr. Harrison insisted that he didn’t copy “He’s So Fine” and that he wasn’t aware of the song while he was writing “My Sweet Lord.” The case, George said, traumatized him so much that he temporarily stopped from writing new songs, afraid that it would be again similar to other tunes.

     Of course, plagiarism is bad, it's like stealing a part of someone's brain, and plagiarists should be penalized. It's bad to steal anything, the only time you should be thrilled about stealing is when somebody steals your heart.

     When I was writing for komiks (where you submit four-page stories to be illustrated), I would see some of my stories being plagiarized. Some daring (or lazy) writers would just change the title and the names of the characters and resubmit it; others would put some effort and rewrite a little—but I didn’t mind it. Well, I couldn’t sue them. Lol. And I thought then that copying my stories was just a proof that they liked it very much, and it was enough compensation for me.

     It would be a different scenario if instead of a story, they’d steal my girlfriend because I would—wait, I haven’t had one.

     I only got stories for them to steal.

 

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