Knock Offs

[sartorias]

Is plagiarism the sincerest form of flattery or the fastest way to cash in?

I sometimes wonder what would cause someone to deliberately* swipe someone's work and put their name to it. Greed? Desperation? A hunger for fame, even borrowed fame?

Anyway, calimac caused me to snorfle my tea today with:

REYKJAVIK (AP) -- Snorri Sturluson, a 12th-century

Comments

[skogkatt]

I have no idea why people plagiarize intentionally. Do they think it takes the work out of their writing? I don't know. That Cassie Edwards thing really confused me. Why would she do it? I'd think that after going to all the trouble of researching, that changing the words to be her own wouldn't be too much, but I guess I am wrong.

That link is hilarious, though. I've wondered more than once if the person who sued J.K. Rowling did it in the hope of renewing some public interest in her own book more than anything.

[sartorias]

It's hard to know. It could be the woman genuinely believes Rowling read her piece, and pinched it...but one wonders, considering the smacking great sum of the lawsuit. Of course that amount might have been to punish Rowling for having been successful with the supposedly stolen ideas.

The Cassie Edwards thing sounded like the sloppiness of haste.

[weatherglass]

Fom what I remember of that case, it seemed like a combination of greed and a certain amount of honest craziness. The judge eventually ruled against Stouffer and fined her on the grounds that she'd fabricated much of her evidence.

There's a Making Light thread on it somewhere... ah. Here.

I checked Stouffer's site out of morbid curiosity a while back, and she had a plea up, asking for witnesses who could testify that the judge was conspiring with Scholastic.

Stouffer interests me because she tried on a grand scale what I see from my students, sometimes; they just honestly can't believe that anyone is going to notice. I remember a case another TA had of a student turning in "papers" pasted straight out of Wikipedia, with the URLs still included, and being shocked that they were caught. On a more ordinary level of dumb, I think that there's a real divide between those who have an ear for text and those who don't. If a student copies a passage out of their textbook, it's going to be painfully obvious that their style has just changed

[starshipcat]

When I was teaching, I got a paper that just felt wrong. Parts of it were written in a distinctively different -- and more sophisticated -- voice. So I turned it in to the college plagiarism checker, and it identified not just the passage that bothered me, but several others as well, as word-for-word copies of published literature

[scribblerworks]

I think unconscious plagerism is hard for the writer to recognize, sometimes. I still recall David Gerold's reaction to realizing he'd lifted the basics of the tribbles straight from Heinlein's flat-cats. But that was a case of being entranced with the creatures, I think, since other than the fact that the animals are born pregnant, and feeding them increases the birthrate, he did something quite different plot-wise with them. An eagle-eyed staffer on Star Trek recognized the resemblence, and had the use cleared with Heinlein. But if I remember what Gerold said about it, he was chagrinned.

But when someone copies either word for word or beat for beat the work of someone else, that starts to get disturbing. Even when they say they're doing it in homage to the earlier work. Particularly if they're being paid for it.

[sartorias]

Disturbing and arrogant.

What is the weirdest thing is the romance author a few years back who was plagiarizing her own books! She plugged whole pages and passages from one book into another. I guess to pad out her wordcount. but to think the readers wouldn't notice?

[starshipcat]

It's far too easy to do, especially when you're pressed for time. And computers only make it easier, because a few clicks of a mouse can give you chunks of text instead of having to laboriously retype it.

It's even easier when you're writing non-fiction, because there are only a limited number of ways to phrase the same facts. Once you've written two or three articles on the same subject, your fingers start typing the same old catchphrases over and over again, even if you aren't actually cutting and pasting old text into new documents.

In fact, there's no real firm guideline about how much changing is enough to avoid an accusation of self-plagiarism in non-fiction. So no one knows for certain whether they've changed enough by nip-and-tuck rewrites to not get in trouble, or if they've automatically echoed too much of old articles in a piece that they've keyed in completely afresh.

[danceswithwaves]

My sister ran into this problem last year at school. She had been working hard on a project -- which the teacher saw her working on, which helped her not get in trouble in the end, just had to rewrite it -- and ended up using a lot of phrases that were similar or the same from her sources.

[windsong5]

Thanks for the laugh. :)
I loved The Gammage Cup and The Whisper of Glocken!

I have no idea why someone would intentionally lift someone else's work. No amount of money or fame would be worth it--especially if/when that person got caught. Likely I'm very arrogant, but I like the way my voice sounds, I like the way it feels when my prose rolls out of my fingertips and onto the computer screen. There are numerous bits of prose I've read that I wish I could have written, but love to enjoy them as a reader anyway. I couldn't understand wanting to steal someone else's words.

I think unintentional plagiarsim happens sometimes--words rather than passages though. And, of course, coincidences happen all the time. :)

[browneyedgrl023]

This reminds me of Kaavya Viswanathan ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaavya_Viswanathan ), a Harvard student who was accused of plagiarizing other authors works in her first novel.

Here is a link for a video of her explanation here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12495352/

She defends herself by claiming to have internalized the passages. I think her excuse is shaky, sure she probably could have internalized some words and phrases, but whole passages? I don't really think that would be something you wouldn't notice.

[sartorias]

Hard to know--I guess some people could memorize that much!

[starshipcat]

I can remember my dad reciting huge passages word-for-word from books he's read multiple times*, so yes, I can believe someone could actually memorize and regurgitate substantial passages without even realizing what they're doing

[boldly_go]

Thanks for sharing that story.

I'm not sure what would motivate people to do that, but the ones you list seem right.

Not entirely related, but I've run into situations where two people writing will have made up a name for a character that's not real name and then met each other later and discovered that their characters share names. (Both were unpublished writers so they hadn't picked up the names from print)

[sartorias]

The name thing is weird. I came up with Kyalee back in 1966. What happens when she finally hits publication? Lots of girls have that name--but way back then my character was the only one!

[asakiyume]

This reminds me of something in the Awfully Big Blog Adventure a while ago--and did you link to it too?--about authors coming up with similar plots at similar times. Yes, I remember, you did link to it--the whole business about ideons.

[sartorias]

Yep--zeitgeist haunts again!