As simple as this case might look, the episode failed to ignite the shame campaign that typically greets supposed thieves in fields like journalism and book publishing. The interesting question is: why? The answer begins with the art world's built-in empathy for alleged plagiarists, a legacy of the artists who've been keelhauled for infringement. Andy Warhol, for instance, was sued in 1966 by Patricia Caulfield, a photographer who recognized her magazine shot of hibiscus flowers in a Warhol series. He eventually settled out of court and paid off Caulfield with a suite of Marilyn Monroe silk screens—then worth about $2,000, currently fetching more than $1 million at auction.