While watching Good Copy Bad Copy I continually thought about how the standards in academia seem so different. One of the people they interview even tried to make the analogy and said that he publishes books for a living and does so with the understanding that college students all over could possible mis-cite his work. In some ways that analogy works for me - after all, when I write an article I use other peoples ideas to the point that sometimes I am not even sure when their idea ends and mine begins. I get to do this in academia so long as I provide some sort of credit at the end of my paper. The analogy breaks down for me though when I think about how academics don't make money from their writing (usually or very much). The main reason that academics write is so that they can get tenure at a university and get a pay check for that university and thus it doesn't hurt them financially. I have always thought of musicians as different because they make music in order to make money from it. Towards the end of the movie though I realized that maybe that isn't where the bulk of profits are supposed to come from - maybe musicians should depend on things like concert sales and therefore not depend on the sale of CDs for profits. I guess I am still trying to work out whether or not the analogy to academia works in this instance...for now I am perfectly content being an academic pirate and just "thanking" my sources at the end of my papers much like Girl Talk does in his liner notes.
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