<<For that matter, what if public domain text was stolen? It’s still
<<plagiarism — do you contact her current publisher and hope they do
<>

No, it’s not. Public domain text is no longer the property of
anyone, thus cannot be “stolen,” ie, it’s not plagiarism in the legal
sense of the word.

It is bad form, though, especially for a novelist, who is, after
all, supposed to be creating something.

As for “stealing” story lines — my thought is, if it’s good enough
for Shakespeare, it’s probably good enough for the rest of us. Just
so long as the author does the real work, which is the actual telling
of the story. That’s where the real art is — in the choice of
words, the rhythm, the poetry. That’s why Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet is what it is, and why all the hundreds of other versions are
what they are, both good and bad.

_______

Jane did make a good point in that I was confounding plagiarism and copyright infringement, however. Not very precise of me, considering I make my living with words. There is a good discussion of plagiarism in various contexts (academic, journalistic, Internet, etc.) at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism

Case in point, Harry Potter was the name of a character in an obscure fantasy movie called Troll before he was made by JK Rowlings, and the makers of that film haven’t gone after her even if the character share the same name in arguably the same genre. If the Tolkien company was really interested in protecting their copyright, they could have sued TOR, the makers of DnD, into the ground for using the concepts of Elven, Dwarven, Orc, and Halfing races. Because of that, those races are now ubiquitous in high fantasy.

Some authors though do sue the fans making these fanworks or at least scare them into taking stories down anything using their characters and world, (See: Anne Rice, Laurell K Hamilton) which only drives the fans back underground or into other fandoms. What no one has addressed so far, aside from the costs of taking legal action against fanworks, is the perception it then puts into the fandom against the author. LKH demanding Fanfiction.net to delete all the Anita Blake stories there not only soured my dwindling opinion of us, but probably everyone else that bothered to write in that fandom.

Also, none of the true fans ever contend that their work isn’t based off of someone else’s concept, since that is the very definition of fanfiction and transformative works in the first place. Most of them are happy not making a dime off their works, but just wish that their hobby, you know, be hobby without the general public going like everyone is here, and thinking, “OMG, isn’t that copyright infringement? plagiarism?”

On the flip side as well, every true fan I know is down right mean when it comes to ridding the community of plagiarists. One of my good friends has had one fic of hers in particular copy-pasted word for word twice by male fans and posted up, and the offending fics only got taken down by concerted efforts from other readers to report it and comment on the offense. These girls don’t pull their punches either and neither did I.

For what happened to Mm. Leto, I can only assume this happened before Web 2.0 and LJ groups like stop_plagiarism or on fanfiction.net. That site is notorious for being slow to remove anything unless legal papers are waved in front of them. It’s also one of the most hated even among fans for all it’s content restrictions and policy of looking the other way on somethings they claim to not allow as well as rampant amounts of under-aged fans posting ‘like OMG Best Fic Ever!!1!11!!1!’.

To me, plagiarism is the actual lifting of words and passing it off as your own, like Edwards has done, not writing a story based off of someone else’s story and taking it in directions the originator didn’t think about. Not all fanfics stick strictly to the original, or even to the characters or world. I once read what’s called an alternate universe story that set the cast of Sailor Moon, a popular girl’s anime, in a modern hospital romance. The only things similar were the character names, and a few in-jokes to the series. I saw an Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter fic once that took the idea of the world (real vampires living as legal citizens), recast it, set it in Philly, and all in an original adventure.

So, ok, I think I lost my point in here a little, but I think my point is that before you all damn all fan-writers as unoriginal, or as plagiarists and criminals at worst, at least consider a point at where the literal theft of words stops and the ephemeral theft of ideas begin, and which is more punishable when there’s profit involved and not involved?

Again, I apologize to any author who feels that I was blaming them for being silent. I still don’t like the silence, but at least I understand some of it better now.

Robin, there are a lot of things that happen ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak that authors just don’t discuss in public. Every author probably has their own set of rules, but I’d say a lot of the ’silence’ stems from an attempt to remain professional.

We’ve seen how many people have commented that Ce is being ‘attacked’ over this, when what most people have done is condemn the act. While in some cases, dismay and disappointment are certainly warranted ( and yes, I feel this is one of them) there have been other issues when one author said something negative, no matter how politely and diplomatically she was, things got ugly.

Too often, when authors criticize, it comes back on us as either issues of jealousy, issues of lack of professionalism, among others. I’ve seen authors lambasted just because they didn’t like a book somebody else did…even if their comments were a vague… it didn’t work for me

While the distinction in this case is clear, IMO, there are probably a lot of authors who’ve remained silent simply because it seemed the most professional approach.

I wouldn’t think any author would want to think about somebody using their work, but sometimes speaking out publicly on something, simply have an opinion, have can far reaching consequences for the author. There have been a number of times when I’ve remained silent, even when I had strong opinions, but when I weighed professionalism against the urge to speak, professionalism won out.

This wasn’t the case for me this time, but it might have been for others.

As with Dailye, the Edwards excuse just doesn’t fly. How can you possibly justify stealing another writer’s work? — In a drug filled haze or psychological breakdown my aching butt. Please. Copyrighted or not the material CE used was still not hers. And I expect that the black footed ferret stuff is still under copyright. How can professional authors (and publishers)not know the difference between copyright infringment and plagerism? Some of them are doubless covering themselves — but I’m hearing stuff from writers that sends cold chills down my spine. It’s all right to copy works in the public domain — please. I wonder what CE or JD would say if someone stole their scenes/chapters? There are a lot of catty things I could say right now to expand that last sentence of mine, but I’ll refrain.

And I have to admit I am dumbfounded to see that Dailey is still being published.

This is the first time I’ve come back to this thread, and sometimes I wonder why I just don’t let Shiloh say everything and just nod :-)

Because as cute as you are, you don’t wanna be a bobblehead?

;)