Reddit mentions of The Little Book of Plagiarism

> The penalty for plagiarism (the consequence of a plagiairsm accusation) is typically being forgotten. There are tons of authors who have engaged in practices of reproduction/repetition, been deemed plagiarists, and been promptly forgotten as a result. For an author, that entails losing one's livelihood.

But see, that isn't a result that the legal system cares about. Not directly, anyway. The closest actual cause of action I can think of would be the accused artist filing for defamation against those who say he was a plagiarist, because actually being a plagiarist. . . isn't illegal. Copyright infringement is, but borrowing too closely from someone else's work to be in good taste is not a legally actionable issue.

At least, not in the US. Europe has some stronger IP protections than the US does, but these can be pretty problematic (especially the concept of "moral rights," which the US has no real equivalent for). But Desforges doesn't necessarily strike me as proving your point, as (1) she was cleared on appeal as you say, but (2) went on to right eight more entries in the series, all of which appear to have been successful. Being accused of artistic crimes is unpleasant and distressing, particularly when said crimes are also potentially legal. But the legal system does not exist to be the arbiter of matters of taste or propriety. As you say, artists stand and fall on how they are perceived, but those perceptions aren't something with which the legal system has all that much to do. There is no right to having one's work well-received, and if one's fortunes depend on that reception, there's not a whole lot to be done about that. One does have the right to not be injured by false statements that tend to damage one's reputation, so an artist falsely accused of plagiarism could have a remedy in defamation laws. But that's as far as it goes.

You also appear to be misreading the significance of the Ouloguem situation. My admittedly cursory reading suggests that the problem here was not with references to the Koran, but with essentially copyright infringement of living authors, particularly of Graham Greene. Again: the problem there was not strictly that he'd referenced or even quoted other authors, but that the way he did it made it appear as if he were simply passing off their work as his own. If he'd quoted and attributed it, that'd have been fine. But verbatim grabbing pages' worth of material with no attribution? Yeah, that's copyright infringement, whether or not it's plagiarism.

The focus is, in part on the "use-mention distinction." Using someone else's work as your own is problematic, both on a copyright and a plagiarism level. But mentioning it, whether as an allusion, a quote, a reference, whatever, is fine. Authors and artists are free to interact with other works of art, and indeed, the failure to do just that is one of the main hallmarks of a bad or at least ignorant artist. The point is to make other works part of the conversation, not using them as if they were your own.

I think you may find this book to be of interest. It's by federal appellate judge Richard Posner (7th Cir.) and it's all about plagiarism. I haven't read it, but it seems to be on point.