“Banksy on advertising”: a plagiarism
UPDATE: turns out this wasn’t plagiarized after all, just poorly attributed. Read more→
It looks like that wildly popular Bansky quote on advertising was plagiarized from a piece by Sean Tejaratchi in the zine Crap Hound. Tejaratchi color-coded the passages lifted (pink = indirect; yellow = direct) but the Bansky piece wasn’t color-coded or annotated, so I took the liberty of clearing things up a bit by adding color outlines to the Banksy piece from the original book and annotated numbers to both. Compare and contrast.
Tegaratchi:
It’s hard to know how to feel about this. My first thought was, “Hey, Banksy reads Crap Hound!” Then, “What the fuck is going on?” Then, “Am I a real person? Am I actually happening?” And finally, “Am I a beautiful flower angel sent from heaven to inspire Banksy?”
As problems go, it’s a pretty nice one to have. I like Banksy’s art and ideas. I’m flattered he liked my writing and my sentiments, and I’m happy others liked the quote enough to post and forward. I’ve seen forums where people are debating the passage, including rebuttals from ad-agency twats. It’s on wikiquotes and a hundred blogs. My essay never would have had that impact on its own.
The downside is that Banksy’s name is always on it. Seeing my writing credited to someone else makes it a little less magical. Same with knowing that one day (maybe soon, since the issue in question is being reprinted), I’ll get to hear how I ripped off Banksy.
The fact that he’s an “elusive mystery artist” doesn’t leave me many options. I found contact info online, but so far I’ve only received bounced messages.
My goal is to set the record straight online. There will be no lawyers or threats of legal action. I’ve tried not to jump to conclusions, or angrily denounce Banksy, or the Internet, or the terrible unfairness of the universe. Maybe a ghostwriter was responsible for lifting it. Maybe an attribution was lost in layout. (On the other hand, my words were rearranged and tweaked. How does that happen accidentally?)
Good for Tegaratchi. Here’s hoping this helps a little with setting the record straight.
(Thx to jndevereux.)
betzistar
