Ecstasy of Influence

Lethem's is not condoning plagiarism or defending it. He's saying that ideas feed off other people's works/writings/movies/ideas, and therefore everything new is not necessarily stolen as plagiarism, but something to get inspiration from, almost like a muse. He mentions that without basing ideas upon other works, we wouldn't have a lot of what's around now, such as Ren & stimpy, South park, etc. If this is called plagiarism, then it can sometimes be a good thing. However, I don't see that as plagiarism, it's simply taking ideas and changing it into something else.

He also mentions that there's a difference between plagiarism and stealing. He mentions that when an object such as a purse is stolen, it isn't available to the owner anymore, but taking music doesn't impact the owner; it's still there, somebody just used a copy of it.

Some people perhaps don't even think about plagiarism, as if it's something that everybody knows about just like a law. he said "as naturally inherent in our world, like the law of gravity". It's not something people think about deeply. Lethem brings up a point about plagiarism and how it isn't necessarily a horrible thing because it feeds new ideas bringing new things to the world and expanding others' knowledge.