AskOxford: Other Men’s Flowers June 13, 2007
“It could be said of me” wrote the French moralist and essayist Montaigne, “that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other men’s flowers, providing of my own only the string that ties them together.”
Montaigne was writing at the end of the 16th century, but views on the balance between originality and plagiarism can be heard through the centuries.
But if those flowers happen to be audio samples from another man’s record then it’s wrong. Isn’t what the current music producers are doing: just using technology to do what humans have been doing since people were capable of doing it?
AskOxford: Other Men’s Flowers
