Day 3

[jadarene]

Day 3 was Plagiarized by wickedwitch81 from Sabrina Jeffries' book "Married to the Viscount." We have hard evidence that ten pages were taken word for word, with only the characters names changed. We were alerted by liza1131, whom we can't thank enough for her vigilance. Shortly after discovering this plagiarism, lillithj informed us that wickedwitch81 also plagiarized her story "In the

Comments

[jadarene]

Yeah, but she didn't put a disclaimer on saying it was taken from Sabrina Jeffries. She also copied word for word, which is vastly different from you or me writing a story just using the characters. If I opened Prisoner of Azkaban and retype the whole thing and don't put a word about it belonging to anyone else, that's plagiarism.

[dacro]

very, very true.
Credit where credit is due.

[jadarene]

Thanks, frulie. :)

[dacro]

*hugs* most welcome.
~J~

[dacro]

no. It still would have been wrong.

You're right. It might have been ok to credit, and then list what lines she used, (sort of like songfic) if it was really important to the plot...or was part of pop culture (something everyone would know)

However, if anyone needs to use more than one or two lines...hummm, that's not so good.

Writers need to write...not copy.

[sillybridget]

"It might have been ok to credit, and then list what lines she used, (sort of like songfic) if it was really important to the plot...or was part of pop culture (something everyone would know)"

Yeah, like when an author uses a quote or snippet from a poem (NOthing Gold Can Stay appears in The Outsiders, for example, or a quote from Farenheit 451 appears at the beginning of Stephen King's Firestarter). That would be OK as long as it's credited.

"Writers need to write...not copy."

Agreed.

[dacro]

*nods and hugs*
right on!

[jadarene]

Go Frulie!

[jadarene]

Not in the case of ten pages copied word for word with the names substituted for HP characters.

[anonymous]

You are an idiot. Copyright infringement and plagiarism are two different animals.

In fandom we take another person's ideas and universe and make something unique and creative with them. There is nothing creative about copying someone else's hard work, claiming it as your own, and garnering unearned praise for it. It's dishonest and it shouldn't be tolerated in any environment, professional or fannish.

[anonymous]

BOTH are illegal. Did you miss that fact? Isn't it "dishonest" to steal JK's characters and settings and use them without permission? In my world, theft is still a crime no matter how many disclaimers you put on it.

The difference between what fanficcers in general do, and what wickedwitch81 did, is that fanficcers never claim that the characters and worlds they use are their own creations. Hence, y'know, fanfiction. Yes, it's walking the line of illegality, (though a great many of the creators of the original works couldn't give a flying fuck about fanfiction) but I wouldn't call it dishonest, because the fanficcers never claim to be doing anything other than what they are.

In this case, wickedwitch81 lifted material directly from another work and claimed it as her own. It might not be any more illegal than any form of fanfiction, but it's a hell of a lot more dishonest. She fooled people into thinking she'd written something that she didn't; it wouldn't matter whether the work she plagiarised was published or the work of another fanficcer. It's equally

[suzycat]

But they do steal another person's creations and original ideas and use them without permission. So did Shakespeare. So, some argue, did JK Rowling. Rowling and I are a similar age and read very similar books. She's been "inspired by" E Nesbit et al to a massive degree, and acknowledges it as such (disclaimer: I am not a Potter fan and have barely looked at the books). "Original ideas"? There's no such thing. What if I had chosen to write a story about boarding school kids and magic? Would that have been stealing from Rowling? No - it would, however, have been me being influenced by the books I read as a child, which are the same books Rowling read as a child. One friend of mine raves endlessly about Rowling "stealing" from classical mythology