4 ms·
The idea of giving credit to original creativity, citing sources properly, etc, can be very difficult. I have had lots of ideas that were derivative of other p
by checkyoursudo 7y ago
The idea of giving credit to original creativity, citing sources properly, etc, can be very difficult.
I have had lots of ideas that were derivative of other people's work. Maybe almost all of my ideas. Coming up with anything truly unique is super hard!
I have written a lot in my career, but most of it is for clients and courts. Much of it is quite original in a sense, because the facts of any two circumstances are never quite the same. However, my legal writing is almost certainly never going to be used by anyone else to make money or take credit that I might otherwise think should be mine. But I have made money by doing all of this writing.
On the other hand, I used to be a professional editor and sometimes writer. Some of that work could much more easily be used by someone else either to make money or to be passed off as their original ideas etc. That's where I would start to feel bothered if I weren't given credit or compensated for that work.
But the actual work of coming up with ideas, writing them down, and giving them to someone else to read is not really very different between those two (or three if you count writing and editing as different) jobs! So why would I feel differently? Why do I want credit for one, but not the other?
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoI think you answered your own questions right there, but there is a little more juice to squeeze: legal writing had limited domain of interest and is just "the person who observes these fact commits them for transmission". Whilst the other writing (it seems from how you couched it) has a cultural aspect to it, [more] personality in the writing, broader interest and possibly for entertainment or general education. We value our personalities, our distinctiveness, more than we value our characteristics that are shared with others. Anything that's creative in an artistic way we see as being more valuable that things we produce simply by being conduits of information -- making up a joke and telling it and getting a laugh feels much better than telling someone else's joke and getting a laugh. You want credit for the cultural value but not the mere ability to transmit information, the later being something that's essential inherent in your physical make up, the former being creative output of your personality and more unique characteristics. A simpler way to look at it is that if people can make money from something then it's valued by society. You seek recompense for the value you add because you've been trained to do so.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoActually no. Uniqueness is easy. The problem is more on the filtering out things that are not very good.