Plagiarism

[loras pa6]

Hi Steve,

A more well known example of sequels was Star Wars. Rumours have it when George Lucas filmed 4, 5, and 6, he made it clear, he wanted to do 1, 2,3, but gave permission for others to do 7 onwards.

The point is those who wrote sequels, books, etc. got permission from the original author.

As for grey areas: If it is word for word - clearly we all agree it is copying. If it is nearly word for word, with a just few minor tweaks - most would still agree it is copying. If it involves the same plot - most would also agree it is copying. When in doubt, simply ask the author !    A lot of stuff could be resolved amicably, I am sure, if people did this.

Hi 64Fordman,

I laughed out loud (in a good way) as your comment tickled me pink. It is also difficult to get permission from an original author if they're dead. Not sure what their estate might say. I ain't a legal beagle.

I hope that helps.

Daffy

Perhaps Star Wars was a bad example since he stole heavily from the works of French graphic novelists Jean Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières without crediting them.

[Daffy Duck]

I learn something new every day.

Thanks for the correction. Duly noted.

It proves how badly read am I !

Daffy

[A Pensive Pen]

Hello everyone!

I recently got word that another plaza member was concerned, as one of my stories (The Dice Game) has appeared on another site (Utopia Stories) under a different author name. I just wanted to make clear that I posted that story, and in this case there was NO plagiarism.

To reach a wider audience, I post many of my stories on other sites as well as the plaza, and I also use a different moniker elsewhere, Alex Makin. My name on the Plaza is a holdover that perhaps I should change as well to avoid this type of ambiguity.

Even so, THANK YOU. Thank you so much, because it's very encouraging to know that this community is vigilant about protecting our collective work.

[Daffy Duck]

It is great to hear that the community keeps a vigil for the authors.

The authors really appreciate that.

Thanks !

[Steve Spandex]

It was me that reported this to Gromet, as I've been very aware of this sort of thing going on since my story was stolen (twice). I'm glad that, in this instance, I was wrong!!

Stay vigilant everyone, and report anything you see that looks suspicious. It's better to report and find out that there's an innocent explanation, than not report it and let the bastards get away with stealing our work.


Steve

 

[64Fordman]

A jury trial just ended between Oracle and Google. Oracle, maker of Java, sued Google for copying code from Oracle’s software. The jury sided with Google’s argument that the company had indeed copied code line-for-line, but not enough of it to make it wrong.

Google used to their advantage the current attitude, one they helped create, that everything is free.

[Daffy Duck]

All property is theft. And other such bollocks !

By that reasoning, you did not want your Aston Martin car, so its mine now.  You did not want your sexy wife, so she is mine now. And your house, and your model train set !

Stories posted on this site are 'protected by' copyright. What that means in a court of law, is a matter for the jury to decide. Each case is taken on its own merits, but in some instances case law applies.

Whether a person can steal another person's story and get away with it, is to some extent a mute point. As a community, the question we should be asking ourselves is, should we steal from others ?

If authors feel their work is not safe being posted on the Plaza because others steal; then they will simply stop giving new stories to Gromet.

When that happens, YOU THE READER also lose out.

It is therefore in YOUR interest to help the authors, whose stories you enjoy reading, to keep their stories safe.

If authors cannot trust the audience, we simply withdraw our works.

One author, Lady Jane, has already asked Gromet to remove all her stories.

If everyone did that, you folks would have nothing to read.

You complained when Gromet was away, that there was nothing new to read, so please help the authors by being on their side.

You help them, they continue to write. Win win.

You steal from them, they withdraw their stories from this site. Lose lose.

It is your choice !

[64Fordman]

Daffy, I apologize for not being clear, I was trying to make a point without getting too political. I work with a person in his 20’s who thinks it’s wrong to take an entire music album, but if he only downloaded a couple of songs he shouldn’t have to pay for that. I asked him to try this experiment the next time he is in the supermarket. Find the store manager and say “I know the carton of eggs cost $3.99 but I only want two so I’ll just go ahead and take them.” See what happens next. Nothing is free.

That’s not true, he said, I get free shipping when I order from Amazon.

Let me explain it to you I said, the shipping cost is built into the price of the product, and then they tell you it’s free. That used to be called a scam. I owned a bakery. I didn’t advertise free decorating with every birthday cake purchase, it was included in the price.

My point is that many people have justified stealing, and companies (and politicians) who use the word free for things you are really paying for reinforce that justification. My co-worker above knew it was stealing to take the eggs, but the music was still okay. Some internet companies don’t have a problem with you stealing other people’s property as long as you’re seeing an ad for bathroom tissue while you’re doing it, or they are collecting data on you they can sell.

It’s no surprise considering how much theft goes on between corporations. The software for the Apple Macintosh computer was stolen from Xerox. The technology for digital cameras was stolen from Eastman Kodak. Companies used to pay for stealing when they got caught, not anymore. 75,000 people lost jobs at Kodak because a jury, made up of people like my co-worker, didn’t care how the camera in their cell phone got there.

Stealing a story is stealing, but it’s also a sign of a larger moral breakdown in society. Of course that’s just my opinion.

Sorry if I got too political.

[Daffy Duck]

Hi Fordman,

Thanks for your clarification.  We are actually saying the same thing here.

I agree nothing is free. I agree whole-heartedly that stealing is wrong.

I also agree that if members of society feel there is no punishment, then it is as if their actions are condoned.

My comments reinforce this by telling everyone, there is a consequence.

You piss off authors, they walk and take their stories with them, and write no more.

Once the users of this site realise the harm they cause and the reaction, may be they will think twice. I hope they do.

Stealing hurts people. Whether it is the Plaza authors or the employees of Eastman Kodak.

It breaks the 10 commandments and it breaks "Love thy neighbour as yourself", if you think about it.

(Sorry if I got too religious.)

Daffy

[AmyAmy]

I know this is a dead thread now, but I missed it when it was the hot new thing.

The kind of person who decides to copy a story, and try and conceal they've stolen it, probably doesn't care a jot what impact it has on others. They will not shed a single tear if the original author vanishes and never writes another tale. Instead, all they care about is funneling traffic to their paid ads site, or some other money-making scheme. You can be fairly sure that somewhere, somehow, money was at the bottom of this, and not a simple desire for attention.

After all, there pretty much isn't any attention to be had from writing an original story, let alone a copy, even if it's a Steve Spandex hit with a large readership and numerous highly-positive reviews, it's still not exactly stardom. I'm also guessing the copy didn't get quite the acclaim the original did, so there has to be some other motivation. If you want attention, I'm pretty sure that regular old trolling does a better job. As for the drugs excuse, it doesn't hold enough water to wash a hamster.

[ElectroPainLover]

Hi AmyAmy,

There's not really a dead thread, just one that has fallen to the back burner.

I have to agree with what you said about there having to be a monetary motivation behind the plagiarism of an originally uncompensated story.

It is, however, impossible to write an original story now days without it having some level of plagiarism in it. When I was in college, we had to run all of our papers through a plagiarism detection program. I had never copied anything in a word-for-word manner and always wrote my assignments in my own words, from my own thoughts. Usual result was about a 15% plagiarism return.

Stephen King once elaborated on their only being five different types of Horror writing, which he continued saying that if it was just down to original thought, there would only be ten to fifteen original horror titles and the rest could be considered some kind of copy of another author's original work.

I am in no way trying to defend a plagiarist in any form or fashion. A plagiarist is a thief, down-and-dirty. Especially one that merely changes names, locations, and title; slaps their own name as the author; and packages it as their own work. However, there are going to be times when someone writes an original thought that may come a little too close for comfort to someone else-es original work. The old adage of "Ten-thousand monkey's typing on ten-thousand typewriters for ten-thousand years, one will eventually write War and Peace."

Anyway, plagiarism is morally and legally wrong. Unfortunately, the people that actively participate in it really do not care about either.

Dana -- EPL

[A Pensive Pen]

I think the whole "it's impossible to write a new original story" thing to be very misleading. It smacks of a great illustrative idea, that there are common fundamental grooves based on culture that nearly all stories fall into, taken to a misleading extreme. But nothing prevents the possibility of a new groove forming. I'm not saying I know what it is, or can do it, but I do know that historically it's the people who say 'never' that usually wind up with egg on their face, sooner or later. Which is why I'm telling the universe here and now that I will NEVER, ever win the lottery

The original idea is so easily twisted into a fallacy, the false dichotomy that a story is either completely original or completely not. But derivative works can draw influence from one or many previous sources while also being original. There's also the danger of being reductionist, and stripping a work of its nuance so one can make sure it gets stuffed into one category or another.

And for what it's worth, EPL, I expect the plagiarism detector was never at zero because of common word strings like "it is" being present across many works, or even because it was comparing the paper to your own previously submitted work, and detecting your individual writing patterns.

[ElectroPainLover]

Hi Pensive,

The plagiarism checker would highlight which part of your paper it had found to fall into its plagiarism hit-list. It accounted for common usage of English transitional verbiage and common use language. It would normally hit on mine due to names and theme.

I had written a thesis on the Potato Famine in Ireland which had happened in the late 19th century, as one example, and because I did not change the name of the towns of Ireland, and, my surname being one of the thousands displaced and relocated to the US (hence, the reason I chose to write upon the subject), I was tagged for some plagiarism due to the fact that I wrote about the Potato Famine of Ireland using names of actual sufferer's. As this had been written about before, there was absolutely NO WAY to not get dinged in the plagiarism checker.

It took 25% or better to have a paper turned-out due to plagiarism through the checker. As all of our papers also had to cite peer-reviewed papers, there was also some plagiarism in the quotations, though thoroughly cited, for which I used.

I have sent in an original work, "Blackberry Patch", which I hope to be posted soon. However, after I sent it in, I stumbled across "The Raspberry Patch" by Otto Dix. I have not read Dix's story yet, but, I would imagine that since both types of berry bushes have vicious cats-claw type thorns, there will be similarities between the two. However, I can not plagiarize what I have not read nor even knew existed.

That was the point I was trying to make. Certain works about a common style will, inherently, cross the lines of absolute plagiarism even though the two writings where completely unknown by either author.

Hope to clarify,

Dana -- EPL

[Steve Spandex]

I think we need to distinguish between two different types of plagiarism here. There's stealing ideas and writing your own narrative around that plot. Then there's copying someone else's work wholesale, word for word, apart from changing the title and a few names. It was the second of these that happened to me, which led me to start this thread. The former is harder to prove, the latter clearcut.

As to whether money was made on the back of my hard work, I have no evidence one way or the other.

Steve

[ElectroPainLover]

It was the second of these that happened to me, which led me to start this thread. The former is harder to prove, the latter clearcut.

What that other person, I can't say author as they did not write their own work, did to you Steve is no-doubt a direct violation of any description of plagiarism.

I just wanted to expand on how easy it is to plagiarize, by plagiarism standards. There are no stead-fast definitions of plagiarism, with the exception of what Steve encountered, and is open to interpretation based on the institute or regulatory principle for whom the work is presented. I just read that the top-most Universities have varying definitions of what defines plagiarism, all of which agree that direct usage without citation constitutes plagiarism but vary beyond that. I also found that one can self-plagiarize, something I have never even considered.

I am not trying to give myself an out to be able to write a story based on something else I have read...it is too simple just to ask the original author if I would be intruding on their original work. I'm just trying to show how easy it is for one author to claim another has plagiarized them, when, by definition, agreed upon most of the higher Universities, requires the second author to have knowledge of the previous work and intently set out to use the work as a basis for their own. All authorities agreed that intent and direct usage had to be present for plagiarism to be present; even if it is your own original work you are working from.

Dana -- EPL