Daniele Luttazzi - Plagiarism

Plagiarism

In 1994, Susanna Tamaro, bestselling author of "Va' dove ti porta il cuore", sued Luttazzi for plagiarism after his parody "Va' dove ti porta il clito". Luttazzi won the trial: it was a parody, not plagiarism.

In 2007, a journalist from "Il Foglio", a centre-right newspaper under control of Berlusconi's family, accused Luttazzi of plagiarizing jokes from American comedians.

In 2010 he has been accused of having plagiarised many jokes from comedians such as George Carlin, Mitch Hedberg, Eddie Izzard, Chris Rock, Bill Hicks and Robert Schimmel. Five years before those charges, Luttazzi himself told about his scheme on his personal blog: he wrote that he adds unoriginal material to his work as a defense against the million-euro lawsuits he has to face because of his satire. Luttazzi calls his ruse "the Lenny Bruce trick" after a similar trick played by his hero, Lenny Bruce. Luttazzi asked his readers to find out the original jokes. He awards a prize to anyone who finds a "nugget", i.e. a reference to famous jokes: he calls the game "treasure hunt". Luttazzi also calls the charges "naive", explaining why those jokes are not "plagiarized", but "calqued", which is a fair use of original material. He pretended to use a joke by Emo Philips to prove that the meaning of a joke depends on its context. Luttazzi's blog lists all the comedians and writers quoted in his works.