Plagiarism

Here's a commendable site with resources on the subject.

Plagiarism strikes album cover art of late, and Microsoft's efforts to compete with Twitter.

Finally, though, I'll mention an instance where an accusation of "plagiarism" seems to have been manufactured out of nothing. A Russian sci-fi novelist, Boris Strugatsky, is rumored to have accused movie director James Cameron of plagiarism on the basis of the movie AVATAR. Much of the action of that movie takes place on a planet called "Pandora," which is also the name of a planet that figures in a Strugatsky novel.

As grounds for an accusation, that is very thin. Obviously, the connotations of the word "Pandora" come to us from Greek mythology, and everyone is entitled to draw on those connotations.

Fortunately, Strugatsky himself has cleared the matter up, telling a news website that he has not made any such allegations.

And that completes our random round-up of plagiarism-related news for today.