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January 4, 2003

on sharing

One of these sites is not like the others:

  1. Pirated Sites
  2. UI Patterns
  3. Electronic Frontier Foundation

Put another way:

“Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it.” — Comte de Lautréamont, 1870

“Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it.” — Guy Debord, 1967

To elaborate on what is hopefully obvious anyway: The first site illustrates the common belief that ideas and creative works are finite resources that must be jealously guarded. The second site shows that good ideas only become more precious as they are shared. The third site is how I put my money where my mouth is.

And the full Debord quote might be helpful:

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

posted at 3:42 AM | misc

comments

  1. Good one, thank you!

    posted by anonymous on March 26, 2003 12:43 AM

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