A few years ago, this young adult novel was published and subsequently pulled from shelves when it came to light that the novel had at least "45 'strikingly similar' passages" to Megan McCafferty's novels, and those of several other popular novelists. The author, Kaavya Viswanathan, claimed to have "internalized" passages from these books and "accidentally" incorporated them into her own, and despite the fact that no one really believes this is true, it seems to have been accepted--Viswanathan lost respect and her second book deal, but suffered no other repercussions of this fraud. She graduated from Harvard, where she was a student at the time of the scandal, and is now happily attending Georgetown Law. I'm glad that this kind of fraud still causes at least some media scandal, because it means that most of us find this scandalous. But Viswanathan lost so little--shouldn't there be punishment for this? To me, this plagiarism is at most grand theft, and at least copyright infringement, both of which have serious punishments. Perhaps a tinge of jealousy is behind my desire for justice as well; not simply dishonesty, but also money got this girl's book published and got her into Harvard. She may be smart, but she has gotten much of what she has (and what I or people I know and love want) with a combination of money and dishonesty, neither of which I have in any great quantity. Perhaps I am not morally outraged: maybe I am just jealous.
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