Recently there is a wave of plagiarism haunting young German literature talent … errr … promoters. Jens Lindner, Helene Hegeman are two authors whose books "Döner for One" and "Axolotl Roadkill" have been denounced as copies of "One for the money" by Janet Evanovich and "Strobo" by Airen respectively. It's nothing new, and particularly "young authors" have been known to be prone to improve their writing output by standing on the shoulders of giants others. It was said to be inherent to the genre of "chick lit".

But really: who is to blame? Yes, the authors. But what about the publishers? Branding themselves as the guardians of quality, the promotors of good taste, … how could they ignore or "overlook" the fact that they were fed plagiarized texts? Sure they are quick to react when somebody posts a plagiarims alert on amazon (e.g. in the Lindner case). But they neglect any duty they have towards their customers — we want to read original books, not bad copies. And they prove in a weird way that authors' rights don't matter and that copyright is only good for the profit of publishers.

It's not consumers who destroy the old brick-and-mortar-industries in the digital age; its incompetence on the part of intermediaries and arrogance on the part of creators.

Sadly, this seems not sufficient to abolish copyright altogether.