I sort of agree.

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Monday, June 03, 2013, 23:39 (3981 days ago) @ bryan newman
edited by narcogen, Monday, June 03, 2013, 23:42

The part about trying to appear smart. Why quote other people's work? What does it add to yours? It's plagiarism in the strictest legal definition.

No, it's not. If you think so, you misunderstand the strict (or even the loose, to be honest) definition of plagiarism.

If Bungie were passing off the work as their own, it would be plagiarism. However, since the quotation is well-known, and the title of the video is drawn from the original work directly, and even the pages are the book are shown, I don't think anyone can seriously accuse Bungie of plagiarism here.

One might have considered it infringement, if Kipling's works were not i the public domain, which they are, because they were published in the US before 1923. Even when the author's life + 75 year rule is applied, they are STILL in the public domain.

I really don't think you can substantiate an allegation of plagiarism on the idea that people who don't recognize the reference would assume it is Bungie's original creation. And after all, it would be hard to appear smart in front of an audience that didn't get the reference.

Why quote other works? Because they exist. Because nothing is original. Because stories are shared experiences, and like those experiences, are meant to be shared, borrowed, changed, adapted, and stolen. Most of Shakespeare's plays were basically rewrites of other works. Some very entertaining modern works are adaptations of Shakespeare-- Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead leaps immediately to mind. (That work certainly extends and enhances the original in ways that this trailer does not, but then again, it's a feature length play and film and a work in its own right, not a 90 second TV spot.