In Jonathan Lethem’s piece The Ecstasy of Influence, he talked about how ideas could be borrowed by others unconsciously and then realize how these ideas are not original. He gave examples of many artists and writers who are gaining from these influences and those who are becoming very controversial because of this borrowing of ideas.
I agree with Jonathan Lethem that it is very hard to distinguish between the original ideas and plagiarism anymore because people have so many interests in common, and there are only so many resources in the world people could use to consume information. And in a digital world, people would rarely actually go look for the sources when some ideas come, or if the idea was being produced before in some form of art. I once read that the majority of the music people produce today were produced before by classical pianists before. I think that it is very hard to produce anything original anymore since even words were used before by the creator of words. Thus, there are inevitable similarities between contemporary works and original works.
Nowadays, plagiarism is written in school policies and company policies. However, it is becoming very hard to figure out if one is using someone else’s quotes as a reference or does this author think that it is original.