Comments | 221b_baker_str: New affiliated communities:

lustmordred in 221b_baker_str

New affiliated communities:

Mar 07, 2012 20:14

We are now affiliated with stop_plagiarism - Investigation into and Censure of Plagiarists
and
the_empty_pale - A prompts community for fiction writing. All fandoms and original fiction welcome.

community promotion, mod post

Comments 5

unsentimentalf March 8 2012, 12:31:08 UTC

That's' rather handy because I've recently come across a number of stories that I believe may plagiarise the characters from a well known TV show. Where do I send the list?

lustmordred March 8 2012, 17:22:24 UTC

Pretty sure they don't mean that sort of plagiarism, which at least in the US is actually protected by law so long as you state that it is for entertainment purposes only and not for profit. There are books that have gone unpublished by authors because they're similar to fan fiction. But what they're about is people stealing the stories of others online, especially on LJ, and claiming them as their own. I suppose if you don't have a problem with that, then it's silly. But it's surprising how many people are not cool with that sort of thing.

unsentimentalf March 8 2012, 19:22:56 UTC

Whatever the legal position, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction suggests it's not quite so straightforward, we undeniably nick other people's backgrounds, characters, plots and not infrequently dialogue without their consent and frequently against their express wishes, so it just struck me as funny that we had a plagiarism comm. Which is not to say that taking credit for other people's stories is a nice or acceptable way to behave, or that challenging it isn't appropriate, just that when we talk about plagiarism maybe we ought to acknowledge that it's what we all do.

(You can probably tell that I find the whole fanfic thing morally troubling every so often, generally when I think about how I'd feel if someone wrote crap stories about my OCs.)

lustmordred March 8 2012, 20:27:13 UTC

I know it's not that straight forward. I just didn't want to spend an excessive amount of time outlining it all. I really don't feel when I write a fan fiction story that I am plagiarizing, but that's me. I also don't feel in any way that I have a right to go out and try to publish that fan fiction, so I suppose those are conflicting ideas ( ... )

Thread 5