I have this dirty little secret I’ve been keeping.

Much of what I’ve written is reworded material I’ve gotten from Landmark Education. I haven’t spied on them; I’ve just taken careful notes, as I’m allowed to do, and then re-worded them and posted them, mostly without attribution. Basically, I’ve been plagiarizing.

I have found a solution.

In my studies of how Landmark came to be what it is, I learned that the most important material was originally developed by Werner Erhard, and most of that was plagiarized, too. Erhard copied whatever he saw that was valuable, packaged it up as Est, and then created intellectual property agreements with everyone who participates, as if the intellectual property were his to begin with.

Pointing out plagiarism in someone else doesn’t make it OK for me to do. It does, however, point at a superior solution. Instead of copying Landmark material, I can go back to the sources Erhard plagiarized, use them directly, and provide attribution. This is honest, and it’s unimpeachable. It’s also a lot of work, but hey… this is a lot of work.