Signal SHUTDOWN & a Lesson Of The Day · 9:22pm Jul 11th, 2014
I've spoken before about the Messner-Loebs idea of all writers tapping the same river and thus, on occasion, getting near-identical bucketfuls. Coincidences happen. It's entirely possible for two people to have more or less the same idea. It's not plagiarism: just inspiration particles splitting and hitting different targets.
But this? Is not that situation.
So here's today's moral: if you're going to wholesale ripoff someone else's story with a potential planned future personal defense of 'I just didn't know another person had already tackled this concept?' Don't have the original on your Favorites list.
I'm curious to see how many downvotes this can collect before deletion.
I'd like to see triple digits.
ETA: I need to clear this up. I was angry about the act of story-stealing, but that anger was directed towards the act: it's a very bad topic for me. While I hardly objected to a whole bunch of downvotes on this as FIMFic's collective way of saying 'Don't do that', I wasn't trying to order anyone over there to cast one. (Me, order someone?) I'm also not attacking the member: I'm just furious about what was done to the original work, along with being a little worried about WagesOfSin. (For what it's worth, there were about thirty downvotes when I got there, so I had some company going in.)
The account in question is now showing Banned. Let's not beat a dead pony.
If this came across as bullying, I apologize.
But still... geez.
"This story was a huge hit, so if I post it under my own name I'll be a huge hit as well!" cannot be true at the same time as "Nobody knows this other story so nobody will realize I'm stealing it".
You'd think the plagiarists would realize that simple point. But that is apparently too high a bar for them.
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Unsurprisingly, this one just got smashed with the Banhammer. (The story itself is no longer visible on the New column -- but as of this posting, the link still works.) So at this point, there won't even be any posted self-defense: all s/he can do is sit back and watch the negatives flow in. Currently 1 up, 54 down.
If you want a little irony, the one and only person s/he was following? Obselescence.
Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please, "research".
--(Tom Lehrer, "Lobachevsky")
From Fimfic's FAQ:
From this blog post:
Alerting people to plagiarism is fine.
Don't get dragged down with him.
2275124
*slow nod* Understood. I honestly didn't intend it as a personal attack: more towards 'Dear gawds, look at this.' Going after the act more than the actor. But I can see how it comes across that way, and I apologize. Copyright violation is just a hot-button issue for me: I reacted emotionally.
2275123
If Mr. Lehrer's work ever stops being relevant, we've officially changed species. Or at least the nature of the current one.
I took a look at both the original and the plagiarized version. It's potentially, I guess, an entirely accidental thing... but the original was in the author's favourites? Yeah, I'm siding with you on this one.
I'm not a fan of the original, though, having taken a quick look at both. I don't go for straight-laced things like this very easily. The only time I really liked something like this was with "dear idiot", and then I guess it was because it was against a clear and present character that had some specific impact on the series itself. This thing is without context, so it just makes me question everything to do with it, which gets in the way of enjoyment.
2275108
"Do not let anger your actions fuel,
for the path to the dark side that is!"
– Yodaffaddah (No relation. He's really short.)
2275124
Yeah. What you said!
2275108
I noticed that, freakin' hilarious.
Well, I was going to say that at long last we've found a piece of common ground, but, y'know, one upvote.
Could be the author's, I suppose.
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What's doubly amusing(*) is that if you look at the stats on the original, Bucking
PlagiaristPonderous added it to his favorites list (which is only 9 entries long) sometime this morning, about 9 hours ago as of this writing or about 7 hours before he posted his ripoff.(*addendum: "amusing", in the sense of "you do kind of have to admire the sheer weapons-grade chutzpah of someone who thinks he can actually get away with something so brazenly obvious")
I mean, really...
I could kind of see it if the guy had been a FIMFiction member for years, with a favorites list in the multiple hundreds or thousands, and had posted a story that was very close to one that he'd favorited way back when he first joined and had simply forgotten about (hey, it happened to David Gerrold when he wrote the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", only to realize after the fact that the tribbles and their multiplying out of control all over the ship were both uncomfortably close to the Martian "flat cats" in Robert Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones", a book he'd read years ago as a kid and completely forgotten about until someone else pointed it out to him)... but to post a story that's a carbon-copy of something you favorited the same day you posted it?
I am reminded of a line of dialogue from the Doctor Who episode "City of Death":
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Unfortunately, image limits prevent me from properly sticking my tongue out at you with the actual intensity of one hundred lingual nyahs, so consider this to be a representative gesture.
The story did get one Favorite, so that could be the upvote. If it's the author's, then the ban probably means it should be wiped in a few days.
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A very large percentage of lawyers might admit this situation would push the jury-workable definition of 'circumstantial evidence' a little. The remainder will just take the
moneycase for the defense.2275145 Edited - sorry, I mis-read the time stamps and thought the "farted" comment was much more recent. I still think it's not exactly giving you the high ground, but I suppose that was posted about the same time as this post.
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Funny... is a bad word here. As said, this is a sort of an automatic fire-breather issue for me. I also got there later than others. (I saw the story in the New column and wondered what was happening to cause a downvote flood.) This isn't all me by any means. And I made two comments there, with the first before considering a blog post. The 'incoming' meant the extant rising red waters. And the other... well, as also said, someone liked it...
But again: I can see how it comes across that way. So while I'm leaving the story comments intact, I'll edit the blog post a bit. I don't feel like being the bully in the room today.
However, for the act itself? Still ticked off. (Which was some major self-editing.)
ETA: The upvote comment was about two hours ago, but the time stamp isn't always easy to spot. No offense taken, still in the middle of editing the actual blog entry a bit.
2nd ETA: Okay, that probably muddled things more in the intent department. Regardless, edited.
2275108 Yeah, I noticed that he had been already. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
And not that I'm counting (or anything), but when I was just there, the thing was up to 77 down-votes...one of which was mine.
I have a question, Estee. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
If an author reads a fanfic, one that is perhaps even popular, and finds himself liking the premise but disliking the story itself (whether for personal, more subjective reasons or for more objective reasons like the author detecting a lot of formatting or grammatical mistakes) is it plagiarism or 'wrong' to write a similar story centering around the same premise, but with the intent to improve upon the first?
I'm not saying that's necessarily what happened here. I honestly can't tell what was going through the author's head when he was writing it. But if I were to, say, read a crossover fanfic... let's say "The Unicorn at Hogwarts" (a popular fic that I myself do not care for) and I were to say "I could write this premise myself and make so much better of a story," would it be plagiarism if I were to go through with writing such a thing? An act of arrogance, perhaps, but arrogance is not a crime.
I don't condone plagiarism, and while the story linked seems to read almost exactly the same as the first, and thus I agree this was probably an act of plagiarism, I ask what you would consider of the aforementioned situation.
This is not the first plagiarism journal I've seen this week. <.<
I do not understand why people feel possessed to make posts like this.
Report them; they'll get banned. There's no need to send a flood of people after them.
2275575
Well, I'm not Estee, but as an author I'll chime in anyway.
Fanfiction is a peculiar beast, in that technically we're all "plagiarizing" from someone else's work. (Okay, technically, it's copyright and/or trademark infringement, not plagiarism per se; I'm just using the term in a very loose sense to help make the point.) Crossover fanfics even more so, since they often involve taking characters from "A" and inserting them into the exact same situations or basic plot structures as "B", and you have to recycle settings, situations, and plot points from "B" for it to be recognizable as an A/B crossover at all. So the standards are somewhat looser in practice. In the scenarios you describe, I'd say how "wrong" it is probably depends on not just how close to the original story the "remake" is, but whether or not the remake's author acknowledges the original as an inspiration for it or not, and how the original's author feels about it.
A complete point-for-point retelling of the source material, which is basically what we have here with the two "letter to the gryphon emperor" stories above, is plagiarism no matter how you slice it. The plagiarist didn't even try to bring anything new to the table or develop the premise in a different direction; he basically did the equivalent of a schoolkid "writing" a report for class by copying an article out of the encyclopedia and hoping the teacher won't notice if he just changes the words around. The only way it would not be plagiarism is if the original's author says "I'm not interested in / able to continue this story, this other guy has expressed interest in picking it up, so I'm basically giving him the whole thing to do with as he likes", and then the other author says "I'm rewriting this first chapter to fix ___ flaws and/or make it so the writing style is the same as mine so there's not a huge style shift between chapters 1 and 2", or something like that.
(Which does happen on occasion; I have seen a couple of stories where the author basically said, in the face of some fairly severe and detailed critiques of a flawed story, "I acknowledge all of the criticisms, but I just don't feel like going back and rewriting it again. I'm done, it's finished, I've moved on to my next project, if anyone thinks they can do it better, have at it.")
Rewriting it solely to clean up grammatical and spelling mistakes is also treading into plagiarism territory if you then turn around and publish it under your own name. That's what editors and proofreaders are for; they fix up that sort of thing for an author (or are supposed to; frankly, there are more than a few people around here offering their services as editors and proofers who have no business doing it
, but that's another discussion altogether), but they give their changes back to the original author to publish under his own name.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with looking at a story, seeing the flaws, and thinking "that idea deserves a lot better than what it got; I could write something a lot better, that really does it justice." It happens all the time, even in "professional" fiction writing. (And movies, music, TV shows, etc.) The key question is, can you take the same basic premise, and make it your own by developing in a way that's not just a point-for-point rearrangement of what the first guy did?
2275145 Agree 100% about the plagiarism, but it's not a copyright violation, except insofar as it's violating Hasbro's copyright to their characters and setting. Nobody producing fanfic in an established setting covered by copyright has any rights to the work they produce, from a legal standpoint. This is, for example, why 50 Shades of Grey had to be rewritten before it could be sold. It's a harsh and unpleasant reality but an important reminder for the budding authors on this site.
2276392
50 Shades Of Grey involved writing?
2275575
Pretty much what EquesTRON said. There's an old line claiming the best criticism of a movie is to make another movie, but you have to do so in a way which distinguishes the product. And some ideas are always going to be done over and over. 'Alien invasion'. Count the results. It'll take a while.
But a specific permutation on the idea... you have to take it pretty far away from the original, and doing so creates your own work anyway. Beyond that, all you've got is parody, which is protected speech/writing and doesn't have to worry too much about infringements or duplications and yes, I am writing this before breakfast and am now vaguely aware I'm making very little sense. Stopping this part right here.
2275646
'Temporary possession by limbic system' pretty much sums it up.
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So I plagiarized a plagiarism journal on the subject of plagiarists?
...just ban me and get it over with.
This looks like ignorance, not maliciousness. He/she just joined, saw a story, and rewrote it. The rewriting is what's really odd. Somebody who wanted credit and wanted to fool people would just copy it.
Also, the rewrite is as good as the original. (Not that I like the original. It's a pure, concentrated Mary Sue-ing of Equestria. A plotless fangasm over how powerful pastel ponies are. It's weird to me that someone thinking in that direction would be here instead of here.)
My guess is BuckingPonderous didn't intend to deceive anybody, but just didn't know copying fan-fiction isn't okay.
Derailing a bit: it's very annoying how many people in this fandom fail to realize this. I'm speaking specifically about authors going bonkers about other people "stealing" their oh so original OC Donut Steel pony names. Heaven forbid, someone else also having a guardspony with Bulwark, Shield or Aegis in their name - even though it's a character with a completely different personality and physical features.
2275296
The person who favorited it is someone who has 1010 favorites...
2276685 2276392 Yeah I call bullshit of 50 Shades being writen
2276392
This is not quite correct. You do indeed own any fanfic you produce.
The issue primarily lies in the fact that said work is not independent of the original work; that is to say, in order to distribute your work, you need the permission of the original copyright owner (or the copyright to have expired and the work to have entered the public domain). The person who owns the original copyright, however, cannot simply take your fanfic and print it as their own; that would be a violation of your own rights.
This is, incidentally, precisely why they don't allow their writers to read fanfics; if you were to rip off a fanfic, you could potentially put yourself in a situation where you could be sued for using their work without their permission.
Note that some works (works of parody, as well as potentially some works of commentary) are indeed legal to distribute because they fall under the fair use exemption. Most fanfics do not fall under said umbrella of fair use, but a small percentage of them do so.
2283560
2283560 To the extent that fanfiction qualifies legally as a derivative work, and I'd have a hard time constructing a colorable legal argument that it doesn't, and it infringes on the property it has been derived from (I.e. is not fair use, and American courts aren't sympathetic to the idea that it is), you do not possess a valid copyright of your work. Yes, the original copyright holder can simply take it and reproduce it, though more likely they'd file for an injunction.
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If a derivative work shows distinct original expression, rather than merely being an uncreative variation on the source material, it will indeed enjoy separate copyright protection. That is not to say that you might not lose control over it as the result of a lawsuit, but if I, say, wrote a spec script for a Thor movie, but never submitted it to you, and someone else subsequently took it and sold it to a studio, I could then sue for copyright infringement, even though I don't own Thor.
In fact, this sort of situation does occur in the real world, where a writer submits some work, is rejected, and then his work is then subsequently used and the writer sues the people who used his writing without his permission; even if it is for some show or some other pre-existing work, if the work has sufficient original expression, it will still be protected by copyright.
Straight up copying is one thing, but I've always found plagiarism to be a messy area. Tangentially speaking: how do you decide when something is someone else work and when it becomes so commonly known as to not be the work of any one person? I mean, there are plenty of details about U.S. presidents that were probably noted by some author and a century earlier we might have had to quote some book if we wanted to say something about them...
I don't hold with inspiration particles or whatever, but I do believe there are a limited number of themes, etc. I.e. there are only so many ideas/situations/etc that are common to human experience. Given enough writing, similarities will emerge and people will come up with similar ideas, maybe even identical at some level, completely independently of each other.
2283982
I'd consider fanfic to have some genuinely messy issues given that, in the US, afaik, everything is copyrighted the moment it is set down in a physical medium. Your actual work would still be your copyright if I understand correctly. I'm not sure if a court has any power to change that. You might not be able to publish it (i.e. make it publicly available for sale), but I'm not sure if there's any legal way they could stop you from printing out your own work and handing it out for free.
Besides, along the Thor example given above, I suspect that if someone wrote some fanfic a few months or more prior to an episode of the show being publicly aired or spoilered (i.e. the public is aware of it) and you could prove that Hasbro/the people making the show were aware of your work and that the episode followed it more closely than a basic plot that would create all kinds of possible legal hassles for Hasbro.