Something Borrowed

Byrony Lavery was very wrong to copy from Dorothy Lewis's life, but I think this is a different type of plagiarism. I found it interesting that Dorothy Lewis was in a way proud that her story became part of Broadway because she would not be able to do what Lavery did. Lewis was still upset that Lavery did not give any credit at all. I think Lewis would have been happy if Lavery's play at least included something like "Inspired by the true story of Dorothy Lewis". Lewis would have been more than happy to give Lavery permission to use any part of her story to make such a great play. I think it made Lavery sound like an inexperienced writer when she said that she thought it was ok to use Dorothy Lewis's life story in her play. Plagiarism includes copying ideas as well, she should have known that. A lot of movies are based on true stories. If all those movies didn't include "based on the true story of...", it would make a lot of people angry because the moviemakers stole a part of their life and made their own story from it. In Lavery's case, I think it's as if she stole a part of Lewis's life. Of course without the things that happened in Lewis's life, a great play like "Frozen" would not have been created. I don't think Lewis ever had any intention on making the events of her life into a play. Lewis and Lavery should have worked together on this play.

I thought it was very interesting how Gladwell showed all the different songs that are similar. I decided to listen to a couple of them and I found some of the similarities that Gladwell was talking about. Of course it would make the original writer of a song mad if someone copied part of it and made more money off of it. Copying a whole guitar riff or base line and using it throughout the song would be wrong. I agree that copying something like Beethoven's 4 note "da da da duuuum" is ok because those notes could be played on different chords and they could be changed into different tonations.