In 1955 Johnny Cash wrote and recorded a song that would become a worldwide hit: Folsom
Prison Blues.
In 1887 Van Gogh admitted himself to a mental asylum in Southern France and spent his time
painting 30 beautiful pieces of art that are almost priceless today.
In 1603 Shakespeare wrote Othello, one of his many masterpieces.
These masters of the arts created one of a kind originals using nothing but the contents
of their own brains, as though their works were like gifts from the heavens.
The only problem is that this is utter crap, all the aforementioned creations were stolen.
And I’ll tell you how and why in a few seconds, but first a quick word about our sponsor RAID:
Shadow Legends.
For those who don’t know, Raid: Shadow Legends, is a Brand new collection RPG game that is
taking the mobile gaming landscape by storm.
Almost 10M players worldwide have already downloaded the game in just 3 months!
It has great graphics, strategic gameplay, huge boss fights, an amazing storyline and
over 400 champions for you to collect and personally customize.
My favourite champion is this big hairy dude Sir Nicholas, because, well he looks like
Santa with a sword and he’s got frickin antlers on his back.
The detail on the champions is incredible, it’s amazing that this is actually a mobile
game.
What I love about this game is that everyone can find something for himself.
Some love collecting characters, some are all about the deep storyline and graphics.
I personally love the player vs player!
It’s got it all.
The game is free to play, you can enjoy PvP battles in Arena, PvE in Dungeons and cool
huge boss fights.
Personally, I think the game is amazing but don’t just take my word for it, with almost
200,000 reviews - Raid has almost a perfect score on the play store!
The game is growing super-fast and the highly anticipated new update is now live!
And - there is a new, awesome, loyalty programme.
You’ll get a new daily login reward for the first 90 days in the game.
You can find me in the game under the nickname Thoughty2, if you’re quick enough you can
also join my clan.
So what are you waiting for?
Go to the video description, click on the special links and you will instantly get 50,000
silver and a free epic champion as part of the “New Player Program” to start your
journey.
Good luck, and I’ll see you there!
So you’re a Johnny Cash fan, aren’t we all, well he stole Folsom Prison Blues almost
word-for-word from a song released two years earlier by another American composer: Gordon
Jenkins, his song was called Crescent City Blues and if you listen to it, in another
tab, of course, then you’ll notice that the melody and more than half the words are
identical to Folsom Prison Blues.
Cash tried to get away with his forgery too, he didn’t credit Jenkins anywhere on his
record which sold many thousands more copies than the original.
Cash was later sued after his version became a worldwide hit, the lawsuit cost him $75,000.
Van Gogh’s 30 masterpieces were all precise replicas of 30 artworks by other artists.
Although I am being slightly unfair on the mad Dutchman, he actually admitted that these
were all copies at the time, in fact, that was his intention to copy, as closely as possible,
works that he admired.
Though it’s still interesting to learn that even a master such as Van Gogh needed to copy
now and then for inspiration.
And Shakespeare, well he stole a lot of his work.
Othello was a story borrowed from a previous Italian novelist Giovanni Cinthio.
Hamlet was stolen from 12th-century Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus.
And Romeo and Juliet, yes that was stolen too, from a poem written by Arthur Brooke
in 1562, the poem was even called ‘The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet’.
But am I angry that these legends of the arts, the titans of creativity have been lying to
us?
Hell no, stealing other people’s work was the best thing they ever did.
These people may have nicked their treasures but who cares when they did such wonderful
things with the booty.
Crescent City Blues sounds great but Folsom Prison Blues sold better because let’s be
honest, it’s a hell of a lot catchier and has a higher production value than the original
song.
Shakespeare arguably did greater things with the material he copied than anyone else in
history.
He transformed the stories he stole into truly beautiful creations that elevated the English
language to a godly level, permanently enriching the tapestry of mankind in the process.
The fact that Shakespeare stole these stories doesn’t disparage his work in the slightest,
he was still a literary genius and potentially no one else could have given these existing
tales such a breath of brilliant new life.
If he had copied the stories word for word then that’s a whole different ball game
and that’s not ok.
But truthfully, copyright theft doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it that counts.
These three examples are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to famous works that
are actually copies.
In fact, I would argue that the majority of all creative works you know today, books,
music, film etc. are copied from someone who came earlier.
If this is true then it begs the question: Is any idea truly original?
Well, no; there was a point in history when truly original ideas were still possible,
but such a rare phenomenon has not existed for at least 2,000 years - and probably not
since humans began building large, connected civilisations.
Your brain is a collection of millions of memories collected over your entire life.
Whenever you have an idea you aren’t always aware but you subconsciously borrow little
bits of these memories and combine them to imagine something new.
You could derive this new idea from bits of hundreds of different memories or just three,
but you can’t avoid it, this is how the human brain works.
The inception of a 100% unique idea is not possible because the brain always has to draw
on prior knowledge.
To frustrate matters even further in most creative fields there are actually a very
limited amount of possibilities that can be realised, which makes repeats or at least
very close duplicates inevitable.
Take for example a novel.
You would think there are limitless possibilities for writing fiction, but not quite.
At least that’s not what Christopher Booker thought.
He postulated that there are only seven possible plots and all works of fiction ever written
fall into one of them.
They are:
Overcoming the monster.
Think Beowulf, War of the Worlds, James Bond.
Rags to riches.
Cinderella, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations.
The quest.
The Lord of The Rings, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Voyage and return.
Alice in Wonderland, Peter Rabbit, Gone With The Wind.
Comedy.
Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night.
Tragedy.
Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet.
Rebirth.
A Christmas Carol, Beauty and The Beast.
You can go round and round in your mind all day conjuring up wild storylines that may
not fit into one of these seven.
And if you do you’ll probably end up at some truly stupid destinations: such as the
tale of a man who grows a third nipple and has to take up underwater basket weaving to
make enough money to have it removed.
But then you realise that’s just an f’in bizarre example of ‘The Quest’ or possibly
‘Overcoming the monster’ depending on how you look at it.
And even within these categories, you often find that so many acclaimed stories are the
same.
Within the human experience, there are only finite things that a character in a book can
do.
Because of this, every now and then a very odd phenomenon occurs, films are released
by completely unrelated and independent studios that have identical plots, and neither was
aware of the other film’s existence until their release.
This is so eerily common that it has been given a name: ‘Twin Films’.
For example:
In 1986 Top Gun was released and so was a remarkably similar but spectacularly less
successful film called Iron Eagle.
In 1998 there was Antz and A Bug’s Life.
In 1999 there was The Mummy and Tale of The Mummy.
In 2006 there was The Illusionist and The Prestige.
These are just a few examples of many.
Some twin films have been attributed to espionage within the film industry, but many others
are pure coincidences, after all over 2,500 films are released each year.
But it could also be due to the fact that there are only a limited amount of possible
storylines, that can be altered, sure, but the core story remains the same.
Even when you are absolutely certain that your new idea is entirely original you may
actually be suffering from a case of ‘cryptomnesia’.
This is when you recall a memory you had forgotten and you mistakenly think its an original idea
that you have just generated.
But in reality the joke, or concept for a book, film etc. is something you heard of
saw a long time ago and had just buried deep in the recesses of your mind.
As you can imagine cryptomnesia can get you in trouble if you are adamant that your idea
is original but it turns out to be plagiarised, and cryptomnesia has come for many well-known
people.
When the American writer Helen Keller was 11 she wrote a short story called ‘The Frost
King’.
But later in her life, it was discovered that the entire story was plagiarised from a fairytale
called Frost Fairies.
Helen Keller had no idea she was committing plagiarism at the time, she was suffering
from cryptomnesia but she later recalled that she had, in fact, read Frost Faries four years
before she wrote The Frost King.
She got into trouble and her name was dragged through the mud by the papers.
The event left Keller a nervous wreck and she would never write fiction again.
So if having an original idea is almost impossible and if you do then it’s probably just cryptomnesia
anyway, then it begs the question: should we all be committing plagiarism and just hoping
to get away with it or should we go the other way and all put paper bags over our heads
and sit in the corner shaking, because we’re afraid that if we utter a single word we could
be breaking the law?
Well, there is actually a happy medium and it’s what 99% of us do when we want to create
a great piece of honest creative work.
Plagiarism is obviously morally wrong.
Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work or concept and passing it off as your own
with little to no changes to its content.
I would personally abhor anyone who practices plagiarism and hopes to get away with it.
But there's isn't anything inherently wrong with using one or more pieces of other people's
work as heavy inspiration, so long as you add value.
When true originality isn't possible, and it seldom is, then greatness can only be achieved
by adding value.
Few of Shakespeare's works are genuinely original but he achieved greatness time after time
by taking already successful stories and rewriting them using astonishing language to elevate
them to a new level that the original writer could never reach.
Imagine if Shakespeare had to come up with a truly original storyline each time he wrote
a play, he would have far less time to focus on carefully crafting beautiful lines and
probably wouldn’t have written nearly as many plays for future generations to enjoy.
Using other people’s work allows one to not get caught in a hopeless black hole of
imagination, trying to fathom some immaculate conception of an original idea that will likely
never come.
By bypassing this step and building upon the work of others you can get a head start and
focus on adding significant value to truly make it into a unique piece that may actually
improve upon the original.
Forget about whether what you are working on has been done a hundred times before and
focus on what you personally can add to it that nobody else has, do this authentically
and with passion, and you will create something amazing.
In doing so you will not be alone, the best musicians of the past century have taken inspiration
from the great classical composers that laid the groundwork for them.
And what is Star Wars if not an amalgamation of spaghetti westerns, samurai films and footage
of Spitfire dogfights during World War II, all set in space?
Instead of being intimidated by all the great work that has come before you, let it instead
inspire you and there is no limit to what you could achieve.
Thanks for watching.