Is it Plagerism

After reading the article i was surprised for one because i didn't know that copyright issues existed so long ago and in so many different works of art. I knew of course the issue with the work of music, however i thought that the farthest it went with literature or art was maybe students citing where they got there information from or a business reprinting someone's product. I didn't know that actual writers were using others work to such a great extent.
My opinion on different copyright rules is kind of all over the place. When it comes to music i think that the idea of downloading music and DVD's illegally is wrong because it is the way that the artist among many others make their money. So for a individual to steal the work of art that they would normally pay for is wrong because its taking away from the welfare of the artist and many others. Now as far as a artist sampling a old song, which is done all the time, is a little different. Usually by the time a song is sampled the monetary aspects of the song and/or beats is pretty much over.
Now as far as television shows and ideas being used in that area, i think is a complete necessity. For example, without artist being able to do this there would be no shows such as Mad TV, The Chapelle Show, or Family Guy. In television i think the borrowing of ideas is important. I really don't think there should be a fee or consequence to things like this. Now to completely steal someones trademark is a different story.
As far a literature goes one shouldn't be able to completely steal ideas from other authors but a lot of times stories need to be updated and made modern. Of course there should be some type of recognition to the original author.
Finally, i was so surprised to see at the end of the article that the author confessed to stealing pretty much everything he said. This is because usually when material is stolen i can tell by the flow of the passage that it was cut and paste, just some put together material. However this author did a very good job at putting information together. By the way it was a greating ending to the story.....