School of Parody, Homage, and outright copying - A quick discussion on the topic · 3:22am May 10th, 2016
First, before I start, do NOT go thundering off like some herd of buffalo and try to stampede the author I'm about to reference. This post is for educational purposes only. Put away your swords and get out your pencils. More after the break.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and you're stupid if you treat this as legal advice without consulting with a real one.
Okay, for those of you with good memories, you may recall about a million years ago when I thought I had accidentally copied something by Wanderer D. This is, of course, why MLP writers do NOT read fanfic. If we accidentally duplicate a story somebody else did, we get embarrassed and humiliated. If Hasbro does it, there could be millions of dollars riding on the courtroom battle that would follow. As a real-world actual example, take the legal issues around the Harry Potter series, and the billion dollars it has generated in one fashion or another.
Under US law, Parody is one of those protected forms of speech where you can make fun of music/speech/stories/pictures without worrying *too* much about waking up some morning with a restraining order in your bed. It has not always been this way, but back in 1993 and thanks to 2 Live Crew and The Capitol Steps, the Supreme Court made it official. (Which is 2 Live Crew’s only positive influence on American culture, but I digress)
A homage is thinner ice, and as fanfiction writers, we skate the edges with care. In general, it can be considered as Hasbro saying, “Yes, you can write about our characters among yourselves, BUT if you commercially publish anything for profit, it goes through us or we will sue you down to your socks.” Seriously. As an example, if you took your favorite story “Twilight Sparkle Reads a Bedtime Story to Spike” to a major publisher and tried to sell it… Let’s just say it won’t have a happy ending unless you have the talent of J.K. Rowling and the luck of Gladstone Gander, as well as the blessing (in writing) of the Hasbro legal team.
Now we get to copying, or at the lawyers refer to it as, Plagiarism.
pla·gia·rism ˈplājəˌrizəm/
noun: plagiarism; plural noun: plagiarisms
the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
early 17th century: from Latin plagiarius ‘kidnapper’ (from plagium ‘a kidnapping,’ from Greek plagion )
The Harry Potter series suffered a lot of this and simple piracy. I don’t know how many foreign language versions of the story (insert obligitory joke about the series being translated into American) are floating around out there, but I’m certain it killed a large forest. Some of them were really poor, most probably being fed through an online translator and shoved onto paper within days of the book being released, but many, many more were the work of eager fans who would search/replace other names into published stories just for the thrill.
Which brings us to… here.
A few days ago, I saw the most fantastic pony story. The characters jumped with life, the descriptions vibrant, the environment enticing, the story entrancing. Rarity and Twilight made the most perfect Good Princess and Evil Witch.
About the second chapter, I had a sinking sensation. It was too good. I made a quick trip to Amazon.com and used ‘Look Inside’ on the sample chapter. Here’s what Text-Compare.com shows:
First, the Pony story:
Then, the original:
All of my hope for an original and clever pony story, crushed into ashes, but there is a positive side to this story. The local library has a copy of The School For Good And Evil, and I’ll be reading the three stories in the series over the next few weeks.
Perhaps someday the movie will come out too. At times, you need to open your eyes to something without hooves and tails, but I don’t think it’s going to be as good at Civil War (which I’m going to see this week).
Fascinating.
I hope you reported them.
I don't understand; is this your story?
3934267 I severely doubt it. Georg seems to be opposed to the idea of doing something like that. You can see an example of what I am referring to in the third paragraph of the blog. (First sentence)
3934267 Oh, I could only wish. The School of Good and Evil hit the NY Times bestseller list with each of the volumes. If I could write like that, my wife would be behind me with a stick and smack me across the knuckles every time I did anything except write another book in the series. After all, we have to put a roof on our house this summer.
Oh, you mean the pony story. No.
Georg, it's not a question of just ethics, we're talking site rules. This story needs to be removed, and the author possibly banned.
3934278 This is a 'Yesbut.'
Yes, but I don't want the author slammed with a sledgehammer (like can happen when a bunch of people get their ire up). More like thwapped across the nose with a rolled up paper and encouraged to expand their creativity in a more creative direction.
ugh. Just ugh.
Did they think that no one would notice, ever?
I realize they can simply make an alt account and try and erase the past, but plagiarism like that is an easy way to say, "hey guys, I'm a hack writer. Don't bother reading anything I write, ever, since I didn't write it."
Doesn't matter if they go on to create some great master work, someone will remember them as a blatant plagiarist, and said masterwork will receive scorn.
Basically their reputation is bucked.
3934263
Seconded
Maybe it's a coincidence!
Ok, time to find this guy and stab him repeatedly with my pencils. (jk)
3934291
"Disclaimer: Any resemblance to books I copied word for word is completely unintentional."
There, that oughta cover me!
Hm, unfortunate that a writer here did that. However, I agree they need a slap on the wrist and a firm reminder that they shouldn't do that because it's honestly bad form to simply copy-paste a story and then change a few terms and names.
That said, I think we've all been there before. We're really inspired by a story, and we want to write just like the author. I think, in this instance the best thing to do for them is to tell them that inspiration is fine, but outright copying is bad.
But, if their choice of reading is any indication, when they try something on their own they'll do well after some practice.
3934289 They can still become vice-president.
3934304 Hey, the pen is mightier than the sword, not a replacement.
3934291 Or a post turtle. It just happened.
oh, this ?
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/209883/the-school-for-good-and-evil
Sorry for going against your wishes, but it would have been found out eventually.
Thank you for bringing this up, I wasnt watching the person in question, but bleh on something like it happening.
Any chance it's the same author?
3934331 Didn't even try to hide it...
Seems like I missed some drama...
Banned and the story was removed from their account (not sure why it wasn't removed from the site entirely, but whatevs).
Just going to add... Regarding the thing with your story and Wanderer D's, I had someone in the comments of one of my stories repeatedly accusing me of stealing someone else's idea. I remember the sensation well: a mix of dread and anxiety, like something had gone horribly wrong and I wasn't even sure what it was. And I felt this way even though I was pretty darned sure I hadn't stolen anything.
The guy kept accusing me every time I posted a chapter until he got banned for general jackassary against multiple other writers. Never did tell me what story I supposedly "stole" from, though.
I can't even imagine the mindset it would take to intentionally take someone else's work and present it as your own.
3934285 If the "author" is copying their story whole cloth, it remains to be seen if they have any creativity at all.
Back in the Olden Days when I browsed for fanfics on EQD, I saw exactly the same happen with a fic that was supposedly a crossover with Scott Westerfeld's "Leviathan" series. A few very ridiculous failures to adapt the concept of a girl trying to pass herself off as a man (as described in this comment) made it immediately clear that this was just a word swap too
Even worse, this was actually advertized as crossover with Leviathan. Meaning, anyone who had read the originals should immediately recognize that those were the exact same passages from the books
Ah well. At least it pointed me towards an interesting book series
3934278
Peculiarly, the 'author' (I'm really stretching the meaning of that word here, I know) seems to be banned now, but the story is not removed, but merely unpublished. I could still get to it through an author blog that referenced it
Since Wanderer didn't comment here, Georg, in the future... Report it as well, rather than simply blogging about the matter. That way, something can be done about it. We're as little a fan of plagiarism as you are. It's better to find out via reports, than popular users blogging about the matter and having people start linking said blogs to us. For future reference.
A few years back I used to hang out on EQD's chat room for artists and spent my time catching art frauds, even before that doing it on some local manga forums in my early years.
It's super easy because most of them total idiots. (Looks at crisp clean stolen vector art "How did you make this?" "Oh.. er... I used.. er... crayons" ... yes, they're that stupid sometimes...)
Even wrote an article at one point explaining how to spot art frauds.
The thing is... plagiarism in anything involving creativity (art, writing music etc.), for some reason, really... reaaaallly... REAALLY pisses me off.
I think it's because being in creative field is already very hard and time consuming to achieve, has a low chance of producing income (we to it for the love of it), suffer under the stereotype that we were "born with the talent" (like we've never had to work a day in our lives to get better) and at the end of the day, the only positive seems like a little bit of recognition... only to have that snatched away from someones who decides to take the shortcut and tries to get there through less.... ethical ways...
Let's just say there's a higher chance of Tirek getting reformed in my eyes than these frauds, that's how strongly I feel about it.
The reason? Of all the art frauds I've called out in my years, not ONE of them apologized and/or fessed up for their crimes. Hell, if they told me that they wished to hang out with the good artist but couldn't draw well I would have personally helped them get better myself.
But alas, it's always asinine excuses (one kid said his "fanart" looked exactly the same as the official art on the games website because he drew the pic pixel by pixel from his big screen TV XD) followed by rude comments and eventual fleeing when they realize the jig is up.
*sigh*
I won't brandish swords against this writer, but I did check my collection for anything they've written to see if I had to remove any (didn't have any as it turned out) and made a point not to read any more from them in the future.
As I've told frauds in the past... copy-pasting might seem like a quick way to get recognition... but can leave a black mark on your name that's VERY hard to get rid of.
3935935 I've hit this problem when attempting to make a cover picture for a story, because I have this mental image of what I want, just not anywhere near the talent to do anything even remotely like it. I hate to beg an artist to make something, and until recently I've been reluctant to expend any bits on Patreon because of our credit card debt issue (working it down, ever so slowly), so that leaves finding something I like and asking the artist nicely (which I've had a 100% success rate on, because manners count). The exception is the fabulous MuffinExplosion who did three beautiful bits of art for me, Auntie Luna, Luna's Lab, and Diamond Tiara Buys a Little Sister...
Where was I? Oh, yes. Art. Try to keep it ethical.
3935112 Well, my *intent* was to get the story called in today, because I wanted to wait until after the blog readers had looked at it (and few things are worse than "I have this terrible thing I want to show you but you can't see it.") After all, it had been out there a few months.
Now I want to make a pony parody of this, The School Of Kinda-Good And Not-Very Evil.
FYI: For anybody coming along to this after the fact, the story in question has been removed/cancelled/blocked by FimFiction. Also, I was unable to get all the way through the first book of The School. The first third of the book is a treasure, the second third a bad case of "Well, it might get better" and the last third "Did the author's grandson take over and finish this or what??" After that, I had no intent of struggling with the next two.