I found Lethem's article extremely interesting and it definitely sparked a lot of thoughts on the subject of plagiarism of my own.
Of course I believe that knowingly plagiarizing someones work word for word is wrong and illegal, but other than that what can we really define as being plagiarism? For a long time in literature there have been certain kinds of stories that have been retold with different characters and in slightly different ways. The story of the reluctant hero or the ugly duckling turning into the swan are stories that have been retold countless times by different people with only slight differences in the plots. Would this be considered plagiarism to anyone? There are some story lines that simply work and it would be silly of a writer to not acknowledge that.
I don't believe that re-telling folk tales and such would be considered plagiarism. If we think about it, people re-tell stories all the time; such as gossip, repeating a phone conversation, or copy and pasting someone's Facebook status into a text message. We don't see people suing others for things such as that, but I guess it's a more serious matter when someone is copying scholarly articles? I've never thought of it the way that you put it, and it makes a good argument!
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