When does your influenced art become plagiarism?

Can your stealing from others be its own art?

Much has been made of late of plagiarism—or playgiarism, as Raymond Federman calls it—as a valid literary resource in a world progressively more awash in text with each passing day. What I’d like to discuss is what I’ll call a sort of structural plagiarism, just as frequent and certainly at play with those mentioned above, but less recognizable per se than lifting and sampling in the form of quotation—whether cited or not—as a means of expression.