Plagiarism In Entertaiment Industry

2 Pages 470 Words

Plagiarism in the Entertainment Industry

The thesis of ¡§Don¡¦t stop me if you¡¦ve heard this¡¨ by Simon Houpt.

. The author Simon Houpt clearly describes plagiarism with all its quirks in the

Entertainment Industry. He illustrates the ridiculous reasons people come up with to

charge another person with plagiarism, such as empty space on a CD. Many of these

unscrupulous people bring charges and countercharges against each other. Bringing our

legal system to its knee¡¦s for using a phrase someone previously copyrighted.

Simon Houpt made six main points in his thesis, and are as follows:

„h phrases that are used often or are very common is inevitable

„h the issue of stealing material is an enormous one, one that the

Entertainment Industry is very concerned with

„h live shows and sitcoms get letters all the time from disgruntled people

who say their material was used on ¡§air¡¨ and want to be compensated for

it; sometimes lawsuits ensue

„h even if a joke is owned by a certain sitcom, once it has aired, it often

pops up on other programs

„h animation is built on plagiarism; if it weren¡¦t for someone plagiarizing

an old sitcom we wouldn¡¦t have the sitcoms we have now

„h jokes like every organic thing, have a life cycle all their own


We live in an informational age, where hundreds of millions of people are

communicating every day by fax, e-mail, magazines, books and newspapers. We exist

today in a world of words. Thousands of newspaper companies in North America pump

out hundreds of thousands of articles each day, can you imagine the amount of

information each year from the printed English word? Plagiarism (although illegal)

happens everyday. Author Simon Houpt in his thesis ¡§Don¡...