Letham's view on plagiarism is that artists should be proud of their work and grateful that others wish to adapt, borrow, or build on it in order to create new art. He believes that while the more concrete aspects of a work should belong to the artist, others should be free to use the idea or concept of that work in their own material.
His view is extremely idealistic, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it fails to take into account the very human desire for revenue. Artists and authors want to be recognized for their labors, but many would be upset by the idea that their unique concepts were being used without their consent, particularly if money was being made by using those concepts. As Letham argues, however, even these so-called 'original' ideas contain aspects of others' work--nothing created today is truly original.
The line separating plagiarism from acceptable adaptation is thin and extremely blurred. Copyright law attempts to define the boundary, but realistically, this would require a concrete decision about how 'original' an idea has to be before the creator can consider it to be his/her property. Similarly, a decision must be made as to how much borrowing or adaptation is permissible once a work has been claimed as someone's property.
I suspect that there will never be a clear-cut answer to the questions that Letham raises. Some artists will always wish to own their work, and other artists will always wish to mold that work into their own interpretation.
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