Isn’t it enough that you people set out to destroy her career and almost caused her death?
In case you don’t know, which I know for a fact you have been told, Cassie Edwards suffered a massive stroke due to the stress you idiots put on her.
I hope you can live with yourselves knowing what you did almost cost this woman her life. You have deprived her grandchildren of their grandmother. You have caused a lot of innocent people much heartache by your actions.
Everyone is blaming you and your cronies for what happened. Not just her fans, fan club members, etc. I’m talking publishers, authors, editors, and more. I hope almost killing someone was worth the 15 minutes of fame.
If you have any reason to think this is a lie, contact Carol Stacy at Romantic Times and I’m sure she’ll verify the information for you.
A lot of Cassie’s fans plan on being at the RT convention in Orlando just so they can attend your blogging seminar. Instead of it being about the art of blogging maybe it should be about the art of how to destroy a person’s life.
A few weeks ago, when Sarah realized that January 2009 would mark a year since the plagiarism scandal that rocked the ferret world, as well as the romance world, she asked Jane to examine the issue and do a “State of Plagiarism” analysis, so to speak. After much back and forth dialogue, we’ve come to the following conclusions about the way the issue of plagiarism is treated by our community. This entry is posted on both Dear Author and on Smart Bitches as a summary of our conversation.
On the positive side: the issue is being discussed, in the romance community, and in the larger publishing world as well. Fans, authors, and even publishers are being educated as to what plagiarism is, what enforcement mechanisms there are, and why it’s important for the entirety of the literary community to not be complacent or unsupportive. Even if some, or even much, of the discussion is about how horribly mean we were to speak up and speak in the manner that we did, it was dialogue about an important topic that we hadn’t had before.
The Edwards scandal was important not because of who was involved, but because it led to the further education. There was a session at RWA and one at RT. There were mentions in the newspapers and on blogs. There was support for the victim of plagiarism in a way that there wasn’t ten years prior, making it easier for one who is plagiarised to come forward. Plagiarism became newsworthy, and the increased attention meant that victims of prior incidents had room to speak up and share their stories, the costs both financial and emotional they endured to protect their copyright.
Even the absence of discussion was noticeable.
But the negatives are related to the positives: the session at RWA was poorly attended, and there was a backlash to those who spoke out, not so much here at Smart Bitches or Dear Author, but against others who took a stand. With the revelation of plagiarism at the hand of Neale Donald Walsch, the same old themes are played out with a full orchestra.
Those who raise the issue and cry foul, whether it’s a blogger or the writer herself, take the blame. We’re told to hush up, keep quiet, and stop being mean.
It was one year ago this week that we broke the Cassie Edwards story. This entry isn’t in the least about her. Instead, it’s about where the writing community stands in regard to plagiarism within the genre. Based on our analysis, we haven’t made much progress. Lip service is paid to the idea that its bad, but when the excrement hits the air circulating device, there’s navel gazing and thumb twiddling and fretting and calls for forgiveness, bygones, and stop being mean already.
Little has changed in attitude and practice. Plagiarism remains an issue tried in the court of public opinion, and the more famous or published the thief is, the more likely they are to be reassured and forgiven by their eager fanbase. Plagiarism is not an issue that can always be validated in a court case; it’s a community issue. Do we, as a community, believe in the need for intellectual honesty and creativity?
Why is there not more of a reaction to sympathize with the person whose work, inspiration, and words were stolen from them? Why is there instead pressure for the victim to shut up about it and a general attitude that the whole mess should just disappear so people can get back to reading?
In our opinion, plagiarism isn’t taken seriously enough by some readers or by some writers. The defense of the plagiarist and the ease with which forgiveness is offered by readers is so stupid as to be mindboggling. What, because they cried and said they were sorry it should be over? Remorse is enough? To quote the wizened literary scholar Rhianna: “You’re only sorry you got caught.”
Until every reader and every writer refuses to tolerate plagiarism and the thieves that commit it, it will be a problem that continues to grow. But that intolerance needs to extend to every genre. When plagiarism hit romance, the response was, “Oh, but it’s only romance novels, and they’re all the same anyway.” With the spiritual writing community, the response is, “Oh, it’s just crazy religious people who think they talk to God, so whatever.” With fanfic, it’s “Oh, it’s just fanfic.”
Plagiarism should not be tolerated anywhere by anyone, and that includes romance, spiritual writing, literary fiction, academic publication, and fanfic. It shouldn’t be tolerated, it shouldn’t be excused, and it shouldn’t be something that is kept quiet. The lack of support for those who suffer from it is appalling: from insane court costs to accusations of being a whiner, the person who has been robbed is singled out as a troublemaker who ought to pipe down. From warnings of bad publicity to being called an outright liar, the victim is again a victim.
Yet again plagiarism shows up in the news this week, and yet again the same song is played. Everyone should be vocal in making a stand and making plagiarism unacceptable within our community. The song needs to change.
Blast, the link didn’t work. Well, let me try one more time:
link
OMGWTFBBQ – I came late to the party, but I cannot believe there are actually AUTHORS, PUBLISHED AUTHORS and editors and industry professionals who are defending Cassie Edwards! Seriously, Jennifer Cruise, Deborah Smith, everyone else – can I take your books, change your characters’ names and then attempt to make thousands of dollars by selling *your* work under my name? And then I’ll tell you I had a mental illness/my dog died/my health is deteriorating/I didn’t know it was wrong! so that you can magnanimously forgive me just like you’ve absolved Cassie Edwards and defend me against my critics by saying “what did she do, run over your dog?” Serious LULZ: like, earth logic, UR DOING IT WRONG.
Hat’s off to the SBs for exposing this mess. I feel sympathy for Cassie Edward’s health, but that doesn’t that make her (repeated!) plagiarism any less repugnant or worthy of comment. Also, love Nora Roberts and Jennifer Armintrout, who have commented on this thread: classy, outspoken authors who write well *and* possess critical thinking skills! Amazing.
Oh please, I was talking about NEW kids who don’t always understand (or choose to ignore) what copyright and plagiarism means. They seem to think putting a “I mean no copyright infringement” on a fic will protect them from the big bad lawyers. D’oh.
I was also talking about fic writers who have been prosecuted for copyright violation. Editors won’t bother with them. There’s plenty of other writers who have not had legal problems. Less trouble.
Some years back a couple of “writers” stole stuff from Dean Koontz, sold their novel, and got caught.
They had to give back their advance, apologize in PW to Koontz by buying a very expensive ad. They got off lightly.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html
?res=9E0CE6DB133AF937A15755C0A964958260
I remember seeing their picture in Locus (before the ax fell) and how they’d be guests at a convention, talking about writing. Haven’t heard anything from them since. She blew it.
A friend of mine with a popular series got a mail from two fans who wanted to use her character in their fan fic, a crossover with Sherlock Holmes.
She said no, very clearly not granting permission in writing.
They didn’t like the answer and went ahead and published their fanzine, ignoring her.
Writers have a clause in their publishing contracts that says if they are aware of someone violating their copyright and don’t take action, then the publisher can sue them. It’s in the boilerplate of every contract I’ve ever signed.
She could not afford it, but had to hire a lawyer for a “cease and desist” on those two clowns and was forced to prosecute. The zine was removed and destroyed and in 20 years I’ve not heard of the thieves selling anything to a pro house. Publishing is a small village. Word gets around fast.
BUT—- An established writer who has the potential to bring cash in to a publisher has a better chance of career recovery than a newbie. (CE is past hope on that, I think.)
A fanfic writer with a CLEAN RECORD also has a chance of making a sale. Many editors understand that fic is often a training ground for new writers. They just don’t want to deal with new writers who got stupid.
Like this person:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007459.html
She got herself noticed in a bad way. If she ever had career potential she blew it.
My best friend writes fic. She’s sold about 20 novels, but does fic because she loves it. She writes it under a pen name, and in big letters on her site admits “I have no right to these characters. If the copyright holder says take this down, I will do so immediately.” So far it’s been a blind eye from them.
And no way in hell am I going to read any Janet Dailey. She fouled herself by stealing. Maybe some other editor will take a chance on her, but not me. She blew it.
When I want to read Nora Roberts, I’ll go to the source!
Emmy, didn’t you hear, accountability is only for the “little people”. nobody in the celebrity world is held accountable for their actions. I mean O.J., Robert Blake, and Phil Spectre never paid, although O.J. did get caught on another crime. Bush will never pay for his blatant misuse of the NSA on the American people. Cheney never paid for shooting his hunting buddy in the face. So why should a writer be held accountable for her misdeeds? I hate plagiarism, and I will not pick up one of CE’s books because I know all of the things that she stole. I still see her stuff in the stores too, and I can’t help but think of all the young teens out there who are just starting with the historicals (which is where i started), who don’t know what she did and will buy her books because they look like little pieces of fluff that they can read for fun.
I do wish that something would have been done about her criminal actions, whether plagiarism is legal or not it is still criminal in my eyes for stealing has always been illegal. It is sad that people feel that they need to steal someone else’s words and call them their own. This past semester, I took an advanced experimental psych class in which we had to write 2 papers in APA format. A lot of my classmates hated the fact that the prof. was very strict about the way that references were cited both in the text and on the Works Cited page, but she was only looking out for us. If only someone had said something to Ms. Edwards about her citing skills (or lack thereof). Another APA biggie is that we should try never to directly quote someone in the text if you can say it in your own words as long as you remember to cite it in the end.
BTW I knew Bittersweet Symphony sounded familiar…I just wonder where I may have heard the Stones song when I was 12.
Hope, I don’t mean this in a snotty way at all (which I note because written communication lacks so many tone cues)—-do you write at all, either fiction or academic? As someone how does the latter on a regular basis and has attempted the former I have to say I disagree that this is hard to define. The rule is simple—-don’t use another person’s words unless it’s as a quote with attribution. I’ve just never found it that hard to determine if I wrote something or not. I read a ton & have a lousy memory but I know my own voice. Lack of self-awareness doesn’t get anyone a pass.
One can concoct all sorts of scenarios that make the issue seem complex, but I think that in reality the gray areas are really small & rare. The fact that a lot of plagiarists try to say that their actions fall in those gray areas doesn’t make it true. And it would be fine & dandy to spend all our time talking about the interesting gray areas if blatant stealing wasn’t so common & so readily excused.
I haven’t gotten around to reading the the McEwan, but the impression that I got from excerpts is that he was well over the line. Using another person’s descriptions in your work without offsetting them as a quote is plagiarism. Since the quote thing makes no sense in fiction you have to rephrase the description in words that are your own. I don’t see how that’s difficult to define & I don’t see any reason to give McEwan a pass for not doing it.
I also seem to recall that McEwan added the acknowledgment after he got busted, which would put paid to the idea that he wasn’t trying to mislead people, but I may be remembering that incorrectly.
@ Lynne Connelly- I do have compassion- for her stroke. What I do not, and refuse to ever have, is compassion for her plagiarism. I will not let her off the hook for one because of the other. Many people here have stated that they’re sorry she had a stroke. But that doesn’t negate what she did, and refuses to own up to.
Personally, I’m having bigger issues with the people who keep defending her than I am with her. Of course she’s going to defend what she did. But when people, other authors especially, make excuses- well, that just pisses me right the hell off. To be held accountable for her stroke? That pisses me right the hell off, too. And if the Smart Bitches are to blame, then so is everyone else who called her on it. Which includes me. I resent anyone being accused of bringing on her stroke. That’s the same as someone saying my sisters and I brought on my father’s stroke after we held him accountable for molesting my sister. It’s bullshit, and it’s indicative of the bigger problem here- there are people refusing to see what she did was wrong.
And for her editors? What it comes down to for me is that she plagiarised on her own. No one held a gun to her head and said “steal this passage, this passage, and oh! that one right there”. I’m not a published author, so I don’t know exactly what an editor’s job is, but is it honestly to check out every possible source a writer could have stolen from? I always thought it was to make sure readers got a cohesive story. She did this, she owns it, and it’s on her (as well as those who keep making excuses and saying it’s okay).
I’m sorry but, um, no. You guys have nothing at all to be guilty about. I’ve lurked on this blog for a while and read the whole Cassie Edwards debacle and all I saw was the information being brought out to the public. I didn’t see anything particularly mean about it all. You guys just basically said ‘This is what happened and isn’t it a travesty and shame on her.’ You know what? Shame on her indeed. It’s a shame about her stroke but what caused it was not people simply talking about what she did and calling her out for it, which, I’m sorry, if we’re buying your books and you try to screw us over, you deserve to have tomatoes thrown at you and more. What caused her stroke was the enormity of her own guilt over knowing that readers will not let the wool be pulled over their eyes and will be pissed about it if you try.
The stroke is unfortunate, but to blame the readers anger at her as the cause is an insult to every single reader out there and further proof that Cassie Edwards is not the least bit sorry for what she did, and that her ‘friends’ and cohorts think it’s perfectly okay to steal from other authors…Hmm…I think I’m gonna write a book with the exact same characters and plot as a Cassie Edwards book or any other of her cohorts and see if they all rally around me.
Score one for plagiarized victims!
[Sorry if off topic, I’ll read the rest of the comments later but I’m itching to add in here.]
Not really in the romance genre but in scientific publications: my friend did a lot of research on paleoclimatology and has been published several times. Her work is cutting edge and people ask her permission to include her data in their work all the time, which in turns validates her research. But this year, one person used the data without permission and tried to give a talk about it at the big geology meeting in San Fran last month. I proud to say that the scientist and her other collaborators stood up to this person, hounded her with questions (her theory was majorly flawed), and mentioned it was their data in front of everyone. Most the people in the biz knew it was my friend’s data and now this person has black balled themselves. Yes, there were some people there that were too scared to say something, but they are also babies that have never been screwed in the corporate world by someone taking their ideas. I write as well and I would be furious if I was plagiarized. Would I do something, hell yeah. Would it be legal, maybe.
Smart Bitches: you did nothing wrong; the truth hurts, but so does being victimized.
PS: Love your blogs!
I have actually heard that if you write something with a piece of chalk (which disappears with water) can be called vandalism in certain circumstances. Who knows a post-it note could be vandalism, and defamation of character, and some other legal shit that the Edwards fans could drum up.
Yeah, that’s plagiarism.
Look, it’s not as grey as you appear to think it is, hope. Let me give you some clear examples.
Dan Brown was sued for The DaVinci Code by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. He won the case. Why? Because Brown borrowed their ideas—with acknowledgment—but he never used their language. Furthermore, Holy Blood, Holy Grail was a reference work. He acknowledged that he used their theories—crediting it to them in both the acknowledgments AND the text—but he never, ever used their language, words, turn of phrase, or whatever.
Ian McEwan used the language of another author. He did not borrow her ideas with acknowledgment. He stole her life story in HER words. That is plagiarism.
Dan Brown is a terrible writer, IMHO, but he at least knows better than to steal someone’s words. Ian McEwan is a gifted writer who apparently doesn’t.
Lori,
Yes, I write fiction, and am published (by Edinburgh!) No, sorry, the snark got away from me. I do write, I am published, but can’t prove it here, and don’t really think it matters. My understanding is that MacEwan always had the author’s note crediting his source, and my opinion of what he did rides heavily on that. If he didn’t, I think he was wrong to borrow so much of another person’s ideas without giving them some credit. But according to your definition, if he changes the words enough, he doesn’t have to give his source any credit at all. I don’t see that. I think he honored his source, both by crediting her, and by keeping the integrity of her work intact. But that does not fit into a neat definition. I think reputations counts and should count. I look at the body of his work, and I’m willing to give Ian McEwan the benefit of the doubt.
I think it is easier when you are working with non-fiction. But even then, crediting everyone whose ideas affected your work is impossible. According to the cut and paste definition, only the written words are protected. I’m not sure you should sit at lunch snatching everyone else’s ideas out of the air and presenting them as your own. If they are the starting point for your thinking, and your research, and your compilation of words, that’s different.
For me, the important thing is outcomes. I want Ian McEwen published. I want to people to make allusions in their texts, insert references to other people’s work that only insiders will get, find perfect set pieces and incorporate them into something larger, if that larger thing has real value of its own (and with credit). I like Shakespeare. I like wicked parodies. I like the free interchange of good ideas to make more good things for me to read.
What I don’t like, is incompetence and fraud. I don’t want people who can’t make something worthwhile themselves, to get away with faking it. I want there to be an effective means of discouraging those people.
Oh and not taking a woman to task for what she’s done because she’s going through a rough time is the same as not punishing a murder because they’ve found Jesus.
Uh too bad, you still deserve to be punished because what you did was wrong.
I don’t understand the difficulty of this concept for some people.
Nancy, that reminded me of the part of the law that says a stay can be granted to a person on death row because he/she is sick. Recently, I read something about someone who was given a stay for trying to commit suicide. It is ridiculous but it actually happens.
In reality, it’s all pretty basic.
If you are writing and have any worries that you may be plagiarizing (nope, I don’t care how you spell it, if you understand the concept, it’s all good) then research the topic.
If you find yourself in that “gray” area, then either leave it out, cite it, or rewrite it until there are no questions to be asked. No claims to be made.
If you have the ability to research the sources you are stealing from, then certainly you can make the next step to researching what is proper usage. It’s not rocket science.
And Nora has the right of it. The issue NEEDS to be brought up again and again. Why? Because aspiring authors join the ranks every day, and just as they should not go blindly into contract negotiations on any level: seek any publisher willing to print them, glad-hand deal with shady agents, dish out thousands of publicity dollars on works that might sell only 50 copies, and the like…
…then it needs to be said over and over that the theft of another’s words is NOT the way to go. That yes, people have gotten by with it, but there is a growing factor who will speak out. Be outraged. Not let such an issue rest.
Welcome to the changing world of publishing.
See? Just further proof that there are people out there who are simply batshit crazy and just don’t understand the simplest concepts. I means seriously! You’re going to kill them anyway, what the hell difference does it make if their sick???
And seriously, an author committed fraud, what difference does it make if they’ve been ill???
There’s compassion and then there’s just plain stupidity.
Holly, just to be clear I wasn’t asking if you were a writer as an in group/out group thing to validate your right to have an opinion. I was asking to ascertain your level of experience actually working with the issue. As I said, as a practical matter I’ve never found it difficult to avoid ripping other writer off, but I can’t compare that experience with someone who doesn’t write.
And I never said this:
What I did say is that acknowledgment doesn’t preclude plagiarism. I stand by that.
I also don’t think that plagiarism can be excused as honoring or keeping the integrity of another person’s work. The book wasn’t supposed to be her work, it was supposed to be McEwan’s and he plagiarized her. I don’t believe that any body of work makes that OK.
I’m also not crazy about the idea of letting plagiarism slide because of the desirability of having a particular author published. That’s basically what CE’s fans are saying—we love her so she didn’t do anything wrong. Applying the logic to McEwan or any other author is a difference of degree, but not of kind.
And lastly I’ve read & enjoyed plenty of intertexuality that didn’t involve plagiarism. I tend to think that if you have to cross the line to do the shout out it just means the writing needs more work.
Nora, it’s Opposites Day in internet land, we just missed the memo.
I, for one, will be putting my shoes on my hands and kicking my own butt for being so heartless toward poor, defenseless plagiarists everywhere.
y’know, my daughter seems to think that when she’s sick, she shouldn’t get in trouble for misbehaving. And that if she’s already being punished, and then gets sick, the punishment should be called off. Then again, she’s seven.
And Jennifer Armintrout – damn you, woman. I haven’t had to watch Dora the Explorer in almost two years – I had expunged all memories of Dora-related songs, and now thanks to you one is stuck in my head:
I’m the grumpy old troll
who lives under the bridge
I’m the grumpy old troll
who lives under the BRIDGE!
Exactly. It is so stupid that someone on death row will get leniency because they’re sick. I’m sure that they do things this way to cover their asses in case they get sued. I don’t believe in the death penalty, not when the innocence project has found 20,000 cases where people were wrongly convicted based on faulty testimony and cleared based on DNA. However, if we must live in a society where we must allow it we should be logical about it.
Until we value our own work, no one else will. It’s that simple.
Lori,
You’ve confused me with holly and I’ve conflated you with snarkhunter for confusion all around. I am not saying that plagiarism is okay. I am saying that what you call plagiarism, according to a rigid definition, I may consider a valid use of someone else’s work in creating a new work. Sampling in music comes to mind. There’s always tension between a creator’s ownership and control of their work and other people who want to use it to make something new. If things tip too far in either direction, I think it is bad for readers. I think the subject has to be discussed with some attention to nuance.
I think too much is lost if you say a line of dialogue from one book can’t be used in another. It sets the filter too fine, and it takes away the artistic license of a writer at the same time it denies the reader a chance to judge for herself the merits of an author’s use of the work. That isn’t the same thing at all as saying that what Cassie Edwards did should be defended on the basis that somebody somewhere wants to read her book.
Edwards is such an extreme case that I think harping on it undermines the chances of a fuller discussion. I wouldn’t want a publisher to have a policy that said a single sentence was enough to get a book bounced. Too much would be lost. But the other end of the scale is just as bad.
My time is up. But it has been good exchanging viewpoints.
There ain’t NO beatdown like a Nora Roberts beatdown. Damn, woman, I think I love you!
Ahem. Anyway….. I don’t understand (again) why this is garnering sympathy posts for CE. I understand why people are sympathetic about her health. What happened to her sucks. And I get that crazy people are sending evil mail, but I gather that was posted mainly to catch everybody up on stupidness that is still happening. But…..but…..WHY is the issue of plagiarism getting sympathy votes here? WHY? The lawyer side of me can clearly take any cut and dried issue and make it fuzzy enough for me to make money on, but this is really not that complicated. And this has never REALLY been about CE anyway. The person (or people) who sent that message are clearly trying to keep the issue front and center in romancelandia for their own purposes. If CE is as sick as all that, I’m sure this is the LAST thing on her mind. And if she has recovered, I’m sure that this is the LAST thing on her mind. This, to me, sounds like when James Frey blamed God and everyone (Oprah) for believing his book instead of blaming himself for lying and saying it was a memoir. Circ went WAY up the longer that contrived controversy went on when, really, everyone was pretty much over it already. CE has releases coming up (which I won’t be buying for my library) so is this an attempt to get her name back in the news so potential buyers can see what all the fuss was about? I just don’t get how a person taking someone else’s words and using them for their own gain (monetarily, scholarly or what have you) can be justified at all. At some point in the process, plagiarizilla (to get away from just CE) copied what someone else had written and stuck their name on it. End of story. What happens to that person afterwards, regardless of whether or not they had been caught, whether or not they have cute grandchildren, whether or not they’re young or old, experienced or not, it doesn’t matter. They took the very thing someone gets paid for and tried to pass it off as their own.
And US authors: register your work! Yes, copyright is extended to you the minute you set quill to paper. BUT, registering opens up a few more legal doors to you in the case of infringement, even cases of “innocent infringement.” Whatever the hell that is. :o)
Hope, sorry for the confusion. That’s what I get for sneaking in to SBs when I’m supposed to be reading about the eightfold path to good policy analysis (no I am not making that up).
And I understand about not wanting to cut off means of expression, but I really do think there are generally ways to have literary conversations that don’t involve plagiarism.
The example the comes to mind right now is Wide Sargasso Sea. It can be read on it’s own but anyone familiar with Jane Eyre can clearly recognize what Jean Rhys was doing. Plenty of people hate the book for messing with a classic, others love it for exploring and furthering the world of that novel or for being good on it’s own merits. Regardless, Rhys didn’t steal from Charlotte Brontë to accomplish her writing goals.
No two ways about it, plagiarism is wrong! I recently had two of my works blatantly plagiarized and in one instance, the person even claimed, by inference, authorship of my latest book – an autobiography, for heaven’s sake! It hurts, and it’s wrong!
Not ony that, hours of your time is eaten up defending your work and getting the offender’s site down. It’s a time vacuum.
I’d rather be writing.
Thanks, I found it and one other site. The suspect passage has been cleared of plagiarism as well as errors of spelling and grammar. Yay me! 😀
I’m a bit late to weigh in on the How Opal Mehta… debacle, but I believe it was not in fact written by committee, as previous posts have suggested. As I understand it, Ms Viswanathan (sic?) had written a rough draft of a YA novel in high school, and mentioned this fact to the image consultant her family
had hired to help get her into Harvard, who reacted more or less with: “Oh my God, you’ve written a novel?! How great is this? We have to get it published right away!! This is gonna look fantastic on your resume!!! OMG squee!!!!1111” and thus a piece of work that never should have seen the light of day (and was probably never intended to) ended up getting hyped to the skies. (And zero props to Ms V. for going along with the whole thing, BTW—I want to make it perfectly clear that I am in no way defending her acts of plagiarism or anyone else’s.)
I haven’t read every single post (hangs head in shame), but I think I get the general drift.
Anyone who even thinks of buying into the argument that plagiarism should flatter the victim, and is no big deal anyway (and I think there is only one person here who has suggested that), should reflect very carefully on how that argument lines up with the one that states that a woman who gets raped (a) really wanted and enjoyed it, however many times she said ‘NO!’, and (b) even if she didn’t enjoy it (what’s wrong with the silly slag? She frigid or sumfin’?), was ‘asking for it’ simply by being female.
Well, I suppose that those of us who work hard and long over our writing, who take care over our research, who labour over edits and bibliographies, and who finally see our work in print, are ‘just asking to be plagiarised’ because our words are out there, for the world to read. I publish non-fiction, which means that, on the whole, I don’t get paid much for writing, but I would be OUTRAGED to see my work quoted without proper acknowledgement.
Morgana claims advanced academic credentials (you’re not the only one here with higher degrees, dearie), so she should know very well exactly how one incorporates the research of others into one’s work without stealing from them. There is no reason on earth why CE’s reading on ferrets or anything else could not have been woven into her novels without using the words of published writers. She could have used her own words – and although novels don’t have footnotes, novels can most certainly have acknowledgements and bibliographies.
She misbehaved. She has not apologised. NOBODY else bears any responsibility for her situation.
Okay, I’m not going to tell the whole story here, for privacy considerations, but for those commenters who are afraid that a casual attitude towards plagiarism is epidemic among today’s college students . . . no, it isn’t. Not really. I recently had a freshmen student accidentally commit plagiarism, and she was horrifiedby what she’d inadvertently done. Yes, I’m sure it was inadvertent—it was a truly weird software glitch between a very old computer and a new printer that somehow ate quotation marks, I checked the computer and printer in question AND she’d originally provided appropriate citations for the passages that *should* have been in quotations marks—but the point is, when she realized what had happened, she cried. And not just because she thought I’d flunk her if she couldn’t convince me it was an accident, either, at least not in my opinion. She didn’t just apologize, she groveled; the thought of committing plagiarism made her literally ill. I think she’d have been less stricken if I’d accused her of eating babies.
So the good college students do “get it,” I’d say. Just for the record . . .
Mary, you are absolutely right. I am a senior at Queens College, and I would be so upset if I ever accidentally plagiarized anything. I have always been meticulous with my citations. Most of my friends are the same way, and when I had told them about the Cassie Edwards thing last year, they couldn’t believe it.
Has it really been a whole year since the plagiarized ferrets? wow, where did the time go…
Plagiarism = BAD.
My 5th grade teacher told us that before assigning us book reports – and followed that with a long (feeling) talk about proper citations and why bibliography pages are REALLY important, and that using the words from a book exactly as you found them without quotes and a citation was plagiarism, which was stealing someone else’s words, and was wrong. I think she said we could get expelled for it. My 6th grade teacher told us that using words directly from a book – even the dictionary or an encyclopedia – without quotes and a proper reference was plagiarism and he would do his best to see us kicked out of school and that such things could get people taken to court (though on reflection, I think he was trying to put the fear of God/the courts into us). For that matter, every English teacher I’ve had through middle and high school covered that using the same words as the source material without quotes and citations was plagiarism and was bad – I even had one that said we’d get a zero on a report if we cited wrong – not ‘didn’t cite’ but cited improperly.
In college, the ‘plagiarism is BAD, if caught you will FAIL, be kicked out of my class and on second offense kicked out of the university for life, degrees can be revoked from now until Judgment Day if we catch you after the fact’ got covered by every English professor, my Psychology professor (who was very pleased to tell us that he wrote our course book himself), the Anthropology teacher, the History Professor, and it got covered for two hours in the first quarter intro to the college mandatory class.
To my husband’s dismay, I have written fanfic (he keeps asking ‘why do you waste your time on that when you could be writing things you could sell?’) and I have to say that most of the fanfic communities that I know about take the view that plagiarism is a Very Bad Thing – be it academic, or fanfic (people can work very hard on their fanfics) or – the Holy Grail to many fanficers – honest to God published Real Works, of the sort that someone may someday want to write fanfic about of their own. Most of us (at least, those of us who are over twelve – and there are more of us than most people would expect) KNOW that plagiarism is bad, we think it sucks, and most of us (granted, I’m not involved in any anime fandoms, or for a great many of the fandoms out there) stand firmly against plagiarism. Several web-sites that I know have not only said ‘it’s a bad thing’ but have established Halls of Shame with the handles of confirmed plagiarists as well as what they tried to steal and where it came from, as well as any other aliases used by the thieves (yes, they did use the term thieves). More than a few were caught because they tried to lift the work of an author, change the names, maybe the fandom, and slap their names on it. But many people read in multiple fandoms (like people here might read more than one genre of romance – maybe you read historicals and paranormals) and someone read it and said – hey, this looks REALLY familiar. The site managers would be contacted, sometimes the first author that the readers found the work by, and questions would be asked – starting with ‘do you also post under the name ______?’
Having some of your work stolen is not flattering. It is horrible – it left me feeling cold, sick to my stomach, and left with the feeling of ‘this can’t be happening.’ It also left me the urge to find the person who tried to steal my works – and I do work hard on my fanfics – and squash them like a bug (not that I could squash a person, but the feeling was there).
validation words – board19 – yes, a board of 19 should come back with a strong ‘Plagiarism = Bad’ verdict.
and provided46 – yes, some authors have provided 46 citations
Funny how one troll disappeared and almost immediately afterwards, another appears. With a similar free and easy attitude to both English construction and ethics. It’s positively spooky.
Amanda, I’m profoundly sorry to have caused you pain by mentioning your situation, but I’m glad to know what happened, and I personally would never buy, read or review one of Massa’s books because of what she did. I am in no doubt she was as guilty as sin, and it sucks that she played the copyright law to make it impossible for you to gain the justice you deserve. I hope people reading your account will spread the word.
Snarkhunter, I wasn’t calling Novik a plagiarist. I was grouping her with other successful novelists who have been accused of, or willing to admit to copyright violation (at least as JaneyD defines it, and though I don’t want to get into it, Novik herself is someone prominent in disputing that definition.) From what JaneyD wrote further, it’s clear she means people who have attempted to profit from fanfiction – because as is abundantly clear, profiting from plagiarism is hardly a career killer.
Janey, I know of no fanfiction writer ‘prosecuted’ for copyright violation relating to fanfic. I know of people sent C&D;letters, I know people who have pulled their work from public sale as a result of the opprobrium of other fanfiction writers and fans, and I know of a small number of authors who have been aggressive in stopping people playing in their universe and so on (which has not been a great move for them, actually). The whole problem with fanfiction is the lack of legal precedent and defining what is and isn’t copyright infringement.
For the record, I used to write fanfiction, am open and proud about that fact, and I don’t believe every instance of it is copyright violation. It’s an issue untested by the courts. But even if tomorrow it was slammed down as hard as music sharing, you would never stop people writing or sharing their own creative interpretation of what they love. I despise any author who would try to do so, though I have some sympathy with attempts to prevent confusion, profiting, and passing off. If the creative interpretation is actually damaging the original writer’s career, the writer has full right to protect it. But almost all creative interpretation is done out of sincere love and with no desire at all to profit or to harm.
Um, do you have any idea if they even tried to? Or if they would have used their fannish names? I don’t think you’ve demonstrated anything.
Cassandra Clare *before* she got her contract, was widely known to have stolen large chunks of material from people like Joss Whedon and passed it off as her own. After she got the contract, the extent of her pilfering was fully explored, and it was clearly demonstrated she had stolen from a number of authors, including a children’s writer – all material still under copyright too. It was of no interest whatsoevr to her publisher, and Clare is still the intimate of authors like Holly Black, and other people in the industry, with no consequence to her reputation at all. The message was clear – the pro industry doesn’t care what fanfiction writers do so long as they don’t make money out of it, and they don’t care about your ethics, so long as you have a saleable book.
Which is what has happened in Edwards’ case, Dailey’s case, etc.
I’ve seen so many people expressing confusion over plagiarism, not just in this blog but on other sites and sometimes at schools. It gave me a moment of wondering is maybe, just maybe things were being explained differently at the fundamental level now.
So I gave my kids a quick question. I decided to ask each of them about the matter for a much younger input.
I asked my son (currently in 7th grade) if he knew what plagiarism was – his answer ‘that’s when you take stuff that other people said about stuff and put it in your stuff without saying who wrote it’ and then I asked him what his school had to say about plagiarism. His eyes got very big and he made a shocked face before saying DON’T.
So then I asked my daughter (currently in 3rd grade and prone to silliness) if she knew what plagiarism was. She said ‘is that being in a play?.’ So I asked her what her school had to say if a person took someone else’s words and put them in one of their papers without saying where they found it. She got this big eyed, jaw dropped expression and said ‘I didn’t do that. Did someone do that? You’ll get in trouble.’
There you go, it’s simple enough for a nine-year old to get it. Why do so many adults have a problem with that concept? (probably a question many teachers have been asking for years, and now being asked by more than a couple publishers, I should hope)
validation word – process66 – yes, there might be 66 steps int he writing process, but none of them are stealing someone else’s writing. THat’s why it takes some time.
Yeah, but both Cassie Clare and Dailey are known plagiarizers. The way you phrased it led me to assume the worst. Sorry. :/
I guess I am not familiar enough with Novik’s career (although I love her books and am forever grateful for Yuletide)—when was she accused of copyright violation?
*headdesk*
Never mind. I got it. I’m being obtuse. 🙂
Clearly, I need to either eat, or drink less wine.
Or MORE wine!
YES! Preferably some good Australian stuff (good value right now) and some dark chocolate, and a pretty pool boy to feed it to you.
Sorry for being unclear. Naomi Novik is not a plagiarist, nor, I believe, a copyright violator, just a very good writer who writes both fan and original fiction.
The other people I mentioned…ugh.
I think the wine I’ve got now is Californian…it was the first reasonably-expensive-but-marked-way-down red that I saw when I popped into the wine store last week. (Ah, Pennsylvania. Must go to special stores for our wine. And different stores for our beer.)
For dark chocolate, a nice (almost) homemade soup and really homemade biscuits will have to do. For the pool boy? Well…there’s the *cat*….
@Ann Somerville—Definitely agree with you on the CC situation. I won’t buy her books OR those of anyone who promotes or associates with her. Before her first book came out, there was a bit of buzz on the web and on various email loops that it had some of the same, uhh, problems as the fanfic, but I never heard concrete details on the outcome of any of the investigations that were rumored at the time.
Did you know that there’s a website called Famous Plagiarists.colm? Interesting, altho CE isn’t in there. Check it out. There also seems to be a few other websites of the same ilk.
Add me to the list of folks whose university will genuinely SUSPEND OR EJECT students for plagiarism and copyright violation. I have seen this happen. The best they could hope for, at OCAD in Toronto, was to go before the deans and try to prove their case. You got one strike, and if you could not prove yourself, you got suspended at the very least. In a school where three missed classes meant you were dropped from the course and got an auto-failure, two weeks can be a death knell.
Is it too harsh?
I don’t think so. Taking courses over again is dirt cheap compared to the sort of money a lawsuit can sap from you. Unfortunately, the thing that speaks loudest in cases like these is cash. The best way to get attention is a punch to the wallet.
Also, LOL at kids NOT CARING so very very loudly.
vc: public48 -SPAMTROLLS and nosnensical accusers! Showing undies in public 48 ways since the genesis of the interpipes! …No, not funny, sorry. 🙁
OK, it only took me three days to get through the comments ;-), but now I have read every single one. GO ME.
I went to a very prestigious college in the U.S. Southeast. We had an Honor Code, and we had to go through a whole ceremony and recite it and sign it before we were allowed to begin our college careers. For every exam and paper we did, we had to sign our names to a disclaimer saying we were abiding by the Honor Code. And we had an Honor Council to decide on all code-related matters.
Yeah, needless to say, my college took honor verrrrrry seriously.
The major premise of the Honor Code dealt with plagiarism. Turnitin.com and similar tools were available while I was in college, but none of my professors used them, and they still don’t. They don’t have to. We students lived and breathed that Honor Code. The only cases of plagiarism I heard of while at college (and this was a small college, so everyone knew everyone’s business) was inadvertent. But even in cases of inadvertent plagiarism, the Honor Council could decide to expel the offender from the college.
It absolutely flabbergasts me when I realize that not everyone shares my viewpoint that plagiarism is Evil-with-a-capital-E. I can’t imagine defending it, any more than I can imagine committing it.
Having worked as a writing instructor and writing center consultant, I have seen many cases of plagiarism that could have been avoided had the author been more careful. Plagiarism is most often the result of laziness on the writer’s part.
What gets me is how easily it could have been for Edwards to attribute in an author’s note or such her debt to the author of the monograph on the black-footed ferret and then to paraphrase the work rather than to rip it off whole cloth. Also, IMHO her dumping whole passages into her dialogue was just bad writing. It sounded stilted and odd. All in all, this is very worthy of mockery and being publically pilloried. Bad writing + outright plagiarism inspired a very serious and yet hysterically funny series of blog postings (and hence my introduction to SBTB).
What is also an interesting side note is that plagiarism is mostly an issue for Westerners. In other cultures, wholesale quoting without attribution is accepted and considered a method of honoring other authors. The belief on the writer’s part is that the reader is familiar with the source materials and doesn’t need any attribution. Our sense of individualism and authorial ownership is very unique to our academic and publishing culture.
From my perspective, when an author knowingly and willfully uses another’s work without giving credit, then it is cheating (as many others in this thread point out) and should not be tolerated. This is very different from alluding to or being inspired by another’s words/images/stories. In creative writing this distinction can be very hard to make; however, when whole phrases, language and images are just dumped into a narrative without being remade at all by the author, then I think it’s fairly clear that the author is going beyond the level of inspiration to intellectual theft.
/BTW Queensland is a great university. I could pull out world rankings if Morgana would like. Ediburgh is great, but of course it also depends upon what subject you’re studying. Whereas Aussie universities among the Group of 8 are consistently good across all subjects. Also, it’s much, much harder to get the highest marks at an Australian uni than it is from a British uni (yes, even Oxbridge). Trust me, I send tons of US students abroad to both systems and my student going out to Australia often get lower marks than they would here in the States. Whereas those attending British universities tend to receive equivalent marks to those they would get at home.