Reading the section titled "Give All" in Letham's "The Ecstasy of Influence", was quite challenging. He makes his opinion on plagiarism known and he has several reasons for why he takes that stance. He says that the bulk of human material is plagiarism because no one really thinks up their own ideas. They all have to start somewhere, whether it was from a story that was read or from a song that was heard. No one truly thinks of any original. He refers to them as "second-hand" because they have all been ripped from other things whether it be consciously or subconsciously.
I think he takes this position on plagiarism because he is an author but then when you get to end of that section, he kind of contradicts what he just wrote about. He spent that entire section writing about how basically everything is plagiarized because it's not truly original and then he goes to say that we are free to take his ideas and stories because he wrote them for us. I'm just a bit confused on his stance and his reasoning because he does contradict himself there.
I'm not sure that I agree or that he convinced me. I think of things that no one else has thought of, granted, it may be helped by an idea that was already thought of, but my idea is completely my own and original to me. For example, if you take the idea of space travel in general, you can think of many different stories that are completely new and haven't been thought up yet. So, I'm not sure how he can honestly say that all ideas are not original.
He talks about writers in this section as being pulled in one direction because their works are being plagiarized and they don't even know. I'm not sure if this is true because I honestly had a hard time understanding his piece. I'm just not sure what he is trying to say since there are many sides to this but they are all coming from him.
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