Just pick up your bible of practical achievement
A 12-year-old girl in Quebec plagarize a Highlander fanfic a friend of mine wrote and had it published.
By plagarize I mean copied and pasted the words. Literally. She didn't even change the names.
My friend realized and contacted the publisher and the parents of the girl and now it looks like he's going to get the money made from the book, and (unfortunately for them since they had no clue), the parents are going to have a lawsuit from the publishing house on their ass.
Here's an article going over the story, and another report + news video. Both are in French, sorry!
I seriously cannot believe anyone would have the guts to copy-paste a (very long) story from the internet and go say they wrote it so they make money out of it. Scary that it actually happened and that if Frédéric hadn't heard about it, it would have gone totally unnoticed. And as a parent, I have no clue how I'd even deal with my kid doing something like that.
FYI, the book is called Laura L'Immortelle, the girl who claimed the story as her own is called Marie-Pier Côté and the publishing house is Les Intouchables. The original fic was called Des cendres et du vent and the author's Frédéric Jeorge.
EDIT : The fanfic only uses the universe of Highlander, which is why the publisher can get away with it - it doesn't re-use characters and stuff from the show, which would be too obvious a copyright infringement...
By plagarize I mean copied and pasted the words. Literally. She didn't even change the names.
My friend realized and contacted the publisher and the parents of the girl and now it looks like he's going to get the money made from the book, and (unfortunately for them since they had no clue), the parents are going to have a lawsuit from the publishing house on their ass.
Here's an article going over the story, and another report + news video. Both are in French, sorry!
I seriously cannot believe anyone would have the guts to copy-paste a (very long) story from the internet and go say they wrote it so they make money out of it. Scary that it actually happened and that if Frédéric hadn't heard about it, it would have gone totally unnoticed. And as a parent, I have no clue how I'd even deal with my kid doing something like that.
FYI, the book is called Laura L'Immortelle, the girl who claimed the story as her own is called Marie-Pier Côté and the publishing house is Les Intouchables. The original fic was called Des cendres et du vent and the author's Frédéric Jeorge.
EDIT : The fanfic only uses the universe of Highlander, which is why the publisher can get away with it - it doesn't re-use characters and stuff from the show, which would be too obvious a copyright infringement...