Degrees of plagiarism: where do we draw the line?

[trinityofone]

I really don’t want to make this post. I’m not a big fan of fandom politics, mostly because fandom is my escape from real-life politics—both the big D.C. headache and the everyday social kind. But as I am oddly in a position where a lot of people read this journal and (I assume?) care about what I have to say, I feel it’s my…responsibility, I guess, to say something about this. Everyone’s favorite topic: plagiarism.

I’ll admit, I’ve been reading the latest incarnation of the Cassandra Claire plagiarism debacle over at bad_penny. Like the whole Ms. Scribe saga, I find it fascinating the way I find most human drama fascinating. However, there are some issues related to the various plagiarism charges that make me uneasy, and that’s what I want to talk about.

From the account, I think it’s clear that Cassandra Claire plagiarized Pamela Dean, and I think that’s pretty inexcusable, and made worse by how badly she handled it. My opinion on this is meaningless; I’m not even in Harry Potter fandom. But it’s the issue of the other quotes she used that has me worried.

My previous experience with the Draco Trilogy was that a few years ago (2002, I think) I read “Draco Dormiens” and enjoyed it, and started “Draco Sinister” and got bored pretty quickly and didn’t finish it. By the time I started reading it, the disclaimers regarding the Buffy quotes, etc., were already in place—which was good, because I recognized a lot of them (the Red Dwarf stuff too—yay Red Dwarf!). I had mixed feelings about them being there: some of them were fun, even—or especially—when I recognized them; others seemed out of place. Whatever. To each his own.

What’s bothering me now, however, is how angry people are getting about the “plagiarism” of those quotes. I’m sure in some sense it’s a matter of degree: Cassie Claire clearly plagiarized a ton from Pamela Dean, and on top of that, each of those borrowed Buffy quotes must seem like a slap in the face. Especially if her fics are praised for their witty dialogue and none of what’s being quoted is hers—the semi-recent incident with the American President fic in SGA fandom springs to mind. Anyway. I want to make it clear that I am not defending Cassie Claire.

But. I have now started seeing people leveling accusations of plagiarism against her specifically for her use of phrases like “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake” or “Daylight’s burning”—attributing those quotes to Chuck Palahniuk and Veronica Mars, even though neither of those lines is unique to those sources (I can still very clearly hear AD Skinner saying “Daylight’s burning, agents” to Mulder and Scully). And even if they were, I would argue that some level of quotation has to be allowable without obsessive, scary attribution. I mean, “real” authors do this all the time—for them it’s called allusion. But where is the line? When does something stop being allusion or fun, in-jokey reference—and become plagiarism?

I think this is an important issue for fandom to address. I think this is an important issue for me to address, because I am an author who loves allusions. My fics are full of them. And just like the American President mini-scandal, which broke right before my reel_sga fic was “released,” made me nervous, this makes me nervous, too. Am I doing something wrong?

I want to clear the air about the references I have made in my fics. Call it a preemptive strike—hopefully a completely unnecessary one, but I want to give us a springboard to discuss this. I also want to be honest. And if I am doing something wrong, I want to know.

The following list is from memory, so please feel free to point out anything I have missed. It is also not meant to be completely comprehensive; if I included every “And here I alluded to T.S. Eliot”-type reference, we’d be here all week. These are just the ones I feel might be potentially controversial. Again, if I’m missing something really obvious or bothersome to you, please tell me.

•The U.S.S. Indianapolis contains dialogue (and singing!) direct from the movie Jaws. This may be inappropriately attributed. My only author’s note is “Jaws is one of my all-time favorite movies, so: a little tribute. *g*” The characters in the story also make references to the book and the movie, although they don’t specifically mention the title. When they speak the borrowed lines of dialogue, they could be construed to be quoting.

•Little Things was thought, by many people, to have been inspired by episodes of both The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, neither of which I have seen. It was actually inspired by a short story by Aimee Bender in her collection Willful Creatures. Looking back, I see that I did not mention this; I probably forgot. The inspiration didn’t extend any farther than the idea of tiny people being held prisoner by big people, which was also apparently utilized by the TV episodes. Nothing was quoted, but Bender still possibly deserved a mention—if for no other reason that she’s an awesome author, and you should read her book.

•Dissonance contains an unattributed line from the movie The Goonies; Rodney says Chunk’s line about pushing his sister down the stairs and blaming it on the dog. I left this unreferenced on purpose; I wanted it to be a fun in-joke for other fans of that movie. At the time, I thought that was no different from having John say, “The truth is out there!” and freaking Caldwell out in Coming Soon to a Galaxy Near You! Now I’m not so sure.

•Human Vacillation marks the only time anyone has actually raised the plagiarism question to me. A reader, who I won’t name unless she wants me to, asked me why I hadn’t cited Neil Gaiman’s story “Changes” for the concept of “Reboot,” which in that story is a drug that alters your sex. Gaiman’s story is without a doubt an inspiration for “Human Vacillation,” as Gaiman himself is an inspiration for much of my work. However, it had been a long time since I’d read “Changes” (I last read it in 1998, the year Smoke and Mirrors came out—and frustratingly haven’t read it since, as I can’t find my damn copy!); I didn’t consciously use the reboot metaphor previously used by Gaiman, but the fact remains that I did use it. I quickly added an author’s note citing Gaiman as inspiration (as well as Virginia Woolf, because it never hurts to be thorough). I don’t see any problems with “Human Vacillation” now (except that the middle sags a bit and I can’t finish the damn sequel!) but in the interest of fairness and completeness, I thought I should mention this.

•Blow the House Down is, as I say in the author’s notes, “heavily inspired” by David Rakoff’s book of essays, Don’t Get Too Comfortable. Here is my note in full: “This is heavily inspired by David Rakoff’s book Don’t Get Too Comfortable, especially the essays “Beat Me, Daddy” and “Love It or Leave It.” Some of the things Julian says in this story were quoted or paraphrased from the actual Log Cabin Republicans Rakoff spoke to.” I am now not sure that this disclaimer is complete enough. I mean, I don’t specifically cite the whole “I can change him” idea, which comes direct from Rakoff—or is that covered by “inspired”? I don’t know.

•A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours is my reel_sga fic, based on The Searchers. By their very nature, reel_sga stories were meant to be inspired by films. So much (if not all) of the plot of this story is taken from The Searchers; I borrowed quite a bit of dialogue, too—certainly the classic lines, like “That’ll be the day!” and the “Don’t ever ask me!” speech, are not mine. But a person unfamiliar with the film (and many of my readers said that they hadn’t seen it) might not realize that. This was my note on the subject: “A heavy, heavy debt is of course owed to the film The Searchers—director John Ford, who made the west glorious and gave us one of the most iconic opening and closing shots; writer Frank S. Nugent, who wrote dialogue equally iconic (some of which I borrowed—the really good stuff, probably *g*); and John Wayne, who gives an absolutely incredible performance. The film just came out in a beautiful new special edition DVD—at the very least, you should all rent it!” Short of attributing every line of dialogue that I used (which still leaves the paraphrased bits—and the plot?) I’m not sure what else I could do. Yet this still feels uncomfortable close to the American President situation.

Is the answer, then, that this sort of fic shouldn’t be written? Or that allusions to other works shouldn’t be used at all? Or that even the slightest reference or quote should have to be cited? I hope not, but having some flexibility unfortunately makes large-scale and much clearer cases of plagiarism easier to ignore, or excuse—maybe even easier to exist. I’m not going to psychoanalyze Cassie Clare, but I do think that the person who wrote the American President fic, for example, honestly did not realize that she was doing something wrong. But she was.

So how is what I am doing different? Is it different? Please feel free to tackle any of the examples listed above, or any examples from other fic of mine, or (making an effort to please be polite, please) other fic. Where do we—as a fandom, as Fandom—draw the line? No one is going to make up rules for us. What are our own?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I kept deleting and rewriting this, mostly since it never concerned my personally. You know that I never finished my reel_sga fic because I took such cares to subvert the film and skew it all only to have someone say it was just like the film *shrugs* and after After You (http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/443805.html) someone asked me how many times I'd watched Cube - and I'd never seen it at all, nor knew the plot. I don't work this way.
Your specifics I'd have to discuss that in chat with you. I sometimes notice literary influences in your writing, but not anything specific, just an awareness that you are widely read or studying English Lit.
Some people cite way too much for my taste (I get too distracted by all unnecessary notes); some don't do it at all and yet I see their whole fic as a riff on any Whedon show.
So bottom-line: if someone lauds you for a specific line, you tell them it's not yours, or you're a thief. That's the only test for me, whether the author does or not.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

1. I'm still sad you didn't finish your reel_sga fic. It was definitely its own unique thing, and it was great.

2. Maybe this weekend I can get on chat. Right now I'm at work. *sigh*

3. I can't escape literary references completely; they are a huge part of my life. But I am concerned with the question of what is acceptable and what isn't. It's a really tough question, and one I doubt I will even begin to be able to answer in any satisfying way.

4. So bottom-line: if someone lauds you for a specific line, you tell them it's not yours, or you're a thief. That's the only test for me, whether the author does or not.

Okay, well at least I've never done THAT. But there's still a little bit of worrisome ambiguity: I'm bad at responding to feedback; if I miss a piece feedback praising something not entirely mine, is that sin by omission? How paranoid should I be? *g*

[amireal.livejournal.com]

The difference that I see is in the ratios for one thing.

And for another, when you *do* use large chunks, the other source is at least MENTIONED. And personally, one line isn't cause for concern.

The big thing I see is that her entire work was made of other's works, and she is claiming it as her very own and then when caught, claiming she possibly has permission.

The other thing that bothers me is that, personally, hers was very badly done, but that's neither here nor there.

It's the Tom Stoppard argument for most things though. RnG is not plagiarism but fanfic.

You are upfront about what you do on purpose if it deals with a large part of another source, or are honestly influenced by another source. Personally, influence is a tricky thing, I mean, when do I have to start attributing using wormholes in original fic? (which I have and will be doing again)

[kudra2324.livejournal.com]

It's the Tom Stoppard argument for most things though. RnG is not plagiarism but fanfic.

what an excellent way of putting it.

[boochicken.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you saw this too... I'm a bit afraid to comment, given that I've only skirted the periphery of most fandoms I've followed (X-Files, Buffy, HP, and now SGA). But you've discussed the issues very thoughtfully, so here are my two cents.

In my opinion, it's one thing to write a story like those from reel_sga, in which the reader knows up front that the basic plot, certain aspects of characterization, and even some dialogue were created by someone other than the reel_sga author. I'm not going to read The Sound of Music a la reel_sga expecting something original; I'll read it to see Rodney McKay in a nun's habit, and John Sheppard as emotionally constipated Captain von Trapp. (Which isn't much of a stretch from canon, but anyway). To me that isn't plagiarism because anyone who hasn't lived in a cave for the past 50 years knows The Sound of Music, and only the person in the cave next door would be stupid enough to claim authorial credit for it.

The bad_penny saga strikes me somewhat differently, in that a.) I don't recall that the Pamela Dean scenes in the Draco trilogy were attributed, as homage or otherwise, and b.) at the time, Pamela Dean's books were out of print, so it seems unlikely that the audience would be familiar with the quoted material. I think it's inevitable that people are going to remember choice bits from television, movies, what have you, and that those bits will inevitably make their way into their work. (As an example, and also for transparency's sake, I realized mid-way through my indulgent SGA vampire AU that I'd lifted an idea from ltlj. I deleted the reference and credited it to her in my next post.) But to see whole scenes copied in a story deemed original, with sentences lifted verbatim without attribution -- that leaves a much different, and bitter, taste in my mouth.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I was totally afraid to comment over on bad_penny, too. I'm not sure if this post is braver, or just as cowardly.

Your interpretation of reel_sga is exactly what forcryinoutloud, siriaeve, laytoncolt and I intended when we founded that community. HOWEVER—the issue arises as to how that's different from the American President thing. My gut reasoning would be that the American President story failed to do any reinterpretation, but that's a very personal stance, which is what makes this difficult.

The Pamela Dean thing was, OTOH, pretty damn blatant, once it was discovered. But just because the plagiarized work was largely unknown and thus not immediately spotted doesn't make it worse (or better) to rip-off. If I'm in good faith borrowing from something that not too many know, or that I think is well known but turns out not to be (like The Searchers) how responsible am I to make sure people realize that it's NOT MINE? I mean, if I have someone say "May the force be with you!" in a fic, nobody is going to think that I'm trying to pass that off as mine. But the catch phrase "That'll be the day" wasn't nearly as well-known as I thought. Did I then err in quoting it (and other lines) unattributed? What about the famous speech from Jaws? Etc., etc.

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

Delurking to comment, but: as someone who was in the HP fandom and as someone who was once friends with Cassie Claire, I think the issue is that she's always credited for her "witty" dialogue. When people talk about her fanfic, they always use quotes she took from other sources. The few parts of her stories she didn't take from other sources and came up with herself are pretty much never praised. So when you're in fandom with someone who is considered the funniest and wittiest and bestest ever, and yet pretty much all her dialogue comes from other sources... well, it's annoying as hell. People say, "You're so funny, Cassie!" and then they list a bunch of Buffy quotes, and Cassie goes, "Gee, thanks!"

(I have my own issues with her borrowing from other sources in that as a humour writer, I work hard to come up with my own witty dialogue, and then Cassie Claire just steals from tv shows and everyone thinks she's sooo funny. Not that I'm bitter or anything.)

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

*nods* Yes, I think you're right: if all of your jokes are from someone else, and you're praised for being funny, that's a problem—the exact same issue that caused the American President thing to, well, burble. So I agree with you in principle, but again worry about degree. What if 2 out of 3 of the jokes Cassie (or whoever) was being praised for were her own? One out of 3?

Maybe the answer's this: quotes can be used as a joke if the fact that they're an outside joke is part of the joke to (some of? most of?) your readers. Otherwise: not cool.

[kudra2324.livejournal.com]

i don't think you've done anything wrong, although i'm too sleep-deprived at the moment to articulate where the distinctions are. intent is always a dangerous thing to base an argument on, of course, because some person, somewhere, will always have "not intended" a consequence that the rest of us would have seen coming as though hailed by a welcoming flock of pink flamingoes, or something, but i think that there is a very big difference between purposefully alluding to something and trying to pass it off as your own. there's a very big difference between borrowing wholesale chunks of text vs. snippets of dialogue - and i'd go further to say that it makes a difference if the character uttering the dialogue might reasonably be making a reference on purpose, or not. if rodney mckay makes an off-handed remark about flying being simply throwing yourself at the ground and missing, i'm going to be amused by the reference, not under the impression that the writer is trying to take credit for the line. if rodney gives a 3 minutes speech lifted directly from macbeth, i'm going to be extremely puzzled and fairly certain that the author should have acknowledged the source unless the title of the fic is "atlantis puts on a production of the scottish play." although i suppose even there there is some gray area - a muttered moment of "out out damn spot," depending on context, would probably seem totally fine to me.

the thing is, much of literature is an allusion, one way or another, to something that came before, and we'd have to throw out an awful lot of really good and really famous writing in order to exorcise every un-cited allusion. an allusion, when well done, works less well if it is cited, i think. and so much of literature plays on the reader's expectations of what is "real" and what is "borrowed" - look at eliot's "notes" on the wasteland, for example, which are largely just an exercise in fucking with the reader's mind even further than the wasteland might have already done (not that there's anything wrong with that - i love the wasteland).

i'm rambling, but those are my two, not very articulate, cents.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I think you make some very good points. The "is it in character" question is interesting—a lot of the problems that people had with CC's fic is that she made British wizards seem like California Scoobies, and that was...weird. I mean, I guess it doesn't technically matter if your quoting is IC or not, but on some level, if you're striving to make ALL material, borrowed and original, IC, the whole endeavor seems more...appropriate.

if rodney gives a 3 minutes speech lifted directly from macbeth, i'm going to be extremely puzzled and fairly certain that the author should have acknowledged the source unless the title of the fic is "atlantis puts on a production of the scottish play."

I kind of want to read this fic.

an allusion, when well done, works less well if it is cited

Yes! That was my reasoning with the Goonies allusion—and wow, I just used "allusion" and "Goonies" in the same sentence. But it's a tough thing. Is it just pop culture that can't be alluded to un-cited? That seems snobby. I dunno.

In summary: T.S. Eliot rocks.

[(Anonymous)]

the act of appropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one's own creation.
ucblibraries.colorado.edu/about/glossary.htm

Now words or phrases that have fallen into common usage are not plaigerism at all. But I think its important that people realize that even ideas are considered the author's intellectual property. You do not only need to quote directly from an author to steal from them. I realize how tricky this is in fandom, where we are using the ideas the authors give us to create our fanfiction. So if another writer in fandom uses another fandom writers ideas or similar plot or characters, how are we suppose to respond to that...I think we should be polite and use disclaimers like we do when we say that the author's characters or plot is not our own...The line we draw, I think, is out of respect for the person we are drawing ideas from when we write...

-- anashi

[an-kayoh.livejournal.com]

What I think is a big problem with all the accusations people make against authors of fanfiction is the automatic belief that "you _stole_ this from so and so author or such and such movie." As limitless as the English language may seem, there are billions of people who speak it and millions of writers who use it. There is a limit to how many different ways words can be combined.
Now, dialogue is something that is hard to randomly copy, but ideas are not. There is such a concept as "simultaneous development," the incidence of two isolated populations developing the same piece of technology, sometimes at the same time. It is entirely possible for two people to envision the same story concept, but maybe only one of them goes on to make a Hollywood movie and the other applies it to their Harry Potter au.
For example: When I was 8, there was a movie about a "witches academy," about a rather inept witch learning about spells and potions. This was before Harry Potter and wasn't very widely dispersed. But I'm willing to wager that if that same movie were produced today, critics would label it as "hanging on the coat-tails of Harry Potter" and "derivative." The point is that J.K. Rowling couldn't have seen this movie when she conceived Harry Potter (in '91, right?) and the movie-makers couldn't have possibly seen her notes before the book was published in '97.
In the end, you can't say "you copied this, you evil plagiarizer" in the case of concepts all of the time. I mean, romance novelists have to have run out at some point, right?
As for dialogue, get your own.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

When we're out here in making-no-profit land (to make it clear: we're not talking about copyright infringement, which in a very oversimplified nutshell is your right to make copies, rather than plagiarism, which is passing off someone's work as not-their-own), the objective rules are incredibly simple, to me.

Was it made clear that someone's hard work was used in the making of this fic?

When we put "by Methefan" anywhere that means we are taking *ownership* of everything that follows. We sat down and wrote something. We did not, perhaps, create the universe we are writing in, and the community standard is that we're not passing it off as our own, because if we were writing a television show, it would be on television. But we are taking ownership of the hard work we put into writing the fic.

It's not enough to brush it off and say it's all subjective. It's just not. The subjective part is really the community standard. Did people recognize Pamela Dean's work? Not everyone. Did a huge chunk of the audience recognize Buffy? Probably. Did the people who read The Waste Land recognize all the allusions at the time? Given the heavier emphasis on the classics at the time and Eliot's audience -- yes, they probably did. It was like quoting Buffy. No one, however, disputed that Eliot a lot of time and agony writing it. It was just that his audience wasn't going to be someone who'd never read Latin.

But the line itself is very simple, and easy to find. Does the audience think this chunk of work was by the author, when in fact it is not? That would be lying. Plagiarism is *misleading* the audience based on the words that are on display. (In other words, everything you put into text is what we have to take at face value; you can't go back and say I didn't *mean* to do it if it's right there in writing and we can line it up like a row of Red Rackham's parchments. That's Tintin by Herge, btw.)

Now there are all kinds of community standards for the use of others' work, from pastiche to parody to allusion to simply quoting it. Lois Bujold quotes Robert Frost, and although I had to look it up the first time, she made it clear in the story that it was a *quote*. Stargate Atlantis uses a manuever that was recognizably a Star Wars trick, and then nudges the audience with "I saw it in a movie." Or Star Wars itself, which includes in its publicity and lore the fact that Lucas was into Campbell and therefore borrowing from a lot of existing mythology. Ideally if everyone attributed (read: RESPECTED) their sources, we could follow that story-line all the way back to dancing bulls of Minoa.

Borrowing only goes without saying when the community standards are set up to recognize the source of the allusion. In other words, writers are obliged to cover their own asses here, because who knows what the community standards are. There are, of course, accidents of the subconscious, and yes, it's possible for a whole lot of readers to draw the line in bold between an accident and deliberately keeping the book open next to you, or quoting from memory. It's subjective, but if it's utterly clear to the audience, then there's very little gray area.

And aren't writers at least trying for clarity when they communicate?

It's kind of like kindergarten. If you use the crayon, put it back in the box.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I agree with about 99% of this. I think the idea of respecting one's sources is very important. The problem I see is that, on some level, it's impossible to anticipate what people will recognize or not recognize. I expected more people to be familiar with The Searchers than actually were, for example. Further, what if you really want to reference something but you know it's not going to be popularly familiar—like Rakoff, for example? Can you not do it? Or maybe you citations just need to be more complete when the material is less recognizable? I would very much support that, actually.

I'm amused that you mention Lucas' influences: the scene where Luke rushes back to find his aunt and uncle murdered is clearly taken from The Searchers. I would say "great minds," but I don't think I want to be so linked with Lucas anymore. *g*

[siria]

I think part of it comes down to ratios. It's not an exact thing, no; but there is a certain element of 'I know it when I see it', and when it goes above a certain level of quotation and lifting, then it edges over the line.

Especially when what is being re-used aren't some iconic lines--I mean, you know I haven't seen The Searchers, but even I knew of the 'That'll be the day' line--to make a point or a joke, or to resonate with the audience, but instead narrative or chunks of dialogue because the writer is too lazy/conceited to write them themselves. Terry Pratchett does that kind of thing very well; he satirises or parodises using lines or imagery taking from pop culture sources, but sparingly. He uses when it's needed, but no more.

However, even that's not a sufficient test some of the time. I mean, look at T.S. Eliot. The man wrote some of my favourite poetry of all time, but enormous chunks of what he wrote was taken or paraphrased from earlier sources. Some of the time, it's recognisable to a fairly literature reader. At other times, he's working from sources which even I would consider quite obscure, and the references he uses are incredibly dense. He certainly doesn't disclaimer everything he uses, not by a long shot. But the difference is that he is using those sections to say something about the western canon of literature, and that he is using them to create something new. He's not letting other people's word suffice for him; he's not relying on them; he's taking them and reshaping them and using them to say something unique. That is the difference for me; though of course, ymmv.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

See, that's what I meant about Eliot, except you said it twenty billion times better. :D

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

I think that "Little Things" is an example of using a common sci-fi or fantasy trope-- "big people capturing little people" goes back as far as Gulliver, etc., and the fact that it's common enough to have been featured in both The Outer Limits and the Twilight Zone means I, for one, would not assume you were trying to pass it off as your own super-original idea. A lot of SF, like a lot of fanfic, doesn't depend so much on originality as it does *execution*-- that's one reason why I think people make such a big deal about CC's quotage. Anyone can write "Harry falls in love with Draco because Draco's not so bad after all," and hundreds of people *do*. But it takes talent to write that story and fill it with creative magical creatures and mythologies and hilarious dialogue-- *that's* what makes a story great, the little frills and flair that the individual author brings to her execution of a common idea. So when it turns out that CC steals her McGuffins and action scenes from obscure fantasy novels, and her dialogue from TV, then you're left with really nothing at all to say "but she's really a good writer even without that!"

Your sources are well-enough attributed, I think-- like others have said, the fact that "a rush and a push" *is* a reel_sga fic tells the reader right up front that you're going to be drawing heavily on a particular source. (There were several reel_sga stories, mostly comedies, that I felt didn't attribute dialogue well enough, just because I could *tell* when they were quoting, because John and Rodney's 'voices' suddenly changed.

But using a really generic line like "That'll be the day" isn't comparable to making John say (for example) "The key to faking out Elizabeth is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom. A lot of people will tell you that a phony fever is a dead lock, but if you get a nervous Elizabeth, you could land in Carson's office." That's way too specific and it doesn't even *sound* like John, you know? It sounds like Ferris Bueller.

A couple of people in various fandoms have written really great movie-inspired fics-- there's a Casablanca-inspired Angel fic that's really awesome. But I think obviously the key is to not *just* do a search and replace. John, Rodney and Teyla *wouldn't actually do* everything and *say* everything in exactly the same way that Rick, Ilsa and Victor would. If the characters aren't true to *themselves*, if the plot and dialogue don't reflect that you've changed the characters around, then you're not actually *writing*. You're just playing with paper dolls because you think the characters look really cute in different outfits.

Your other cites seem fine. Maybe the one for "Blow the house down" could be more specific, but I think "*heavily* inspired" gave me enough of a clue at the time. Your Jaws cite-- Jaws is one of my all-time favorite movies, so: a little tribute. *g*-- is totally enough attribution for me, especially considering that the *title* is another Jaws reference (and that your cite is up in the header instead of tucked into a footnote.) And in the scene where they quote the Jaws lines, I think you *do* make it clear that they're quoting: Rodney sees John "covering for other actors" and when John starts singing, "recognizes this cue".

Finally-- honestly, I think saying "no one is going to make up rules for us" is a little misleading. There are plenty of rules and guidelines (complete with gray areas) already out there as far as what counts as inspiration and what's fair use and what's plagiarism. I honestly don't think fanfiction is any different than published fiction (or writing for tv) in this matter. (Except that we don't have to pay when we use song quotes as, what's the word I'm thinking of-- you know, like how Steven King does it, as a header before the sections of his bigger books.) But my point is, I think that we as fandom usually at least *attempt* to draw the line (when it comes to plagiarism) just exactly where everybody else does.

[kudra2324.livejournal.com]

(Except that we don't have to pay when we use song quotes as, what's the word I'm thinking of-- you know, like how Steven King does it, as a header before the sections of his bigger books.)

epigraph. the first time i used one in a paper, i spent WEEKS trying to find the word because it's hard to describe, and people kept looking at me strangely when i tried to describe that i meant. not to be confused with epitaph :).

[sage]

What you're doing IS different because you're reworking extant ideas into completely new and inventive shapes -- AND you credit your inspirations.

Damn near everything is derivative in some manner, which is why it's so difficult to be a great writer or artist: we've got millenia of people who've already done it, and likely did it better. But casting an old story in a new light or reframing it in a fresh context is totally valid.

Plagiarism isn't.

However, fusions like reel_sga, that take known source material and turn them on their heads, DON'T strike me as plagiaristic at all. They're fanfic, but they're fundamentally original in their approach to merging disparate universes into a new whole.

As far as where the line should be between crediting general inspiration and crediting outright borrowing...I don't know. Quotes need attribution obviously, but we get inspired by all sorts of things through the course of our lives. There's also a difference between ripping off a cool image and sending a fannish shout-out to a writer we admire. Sometimes credit is necessary, but sometimes it just seems gratuitious. I think the key is tied up in the notion of 'authorial intent', but I don't know if that's something anyone can quantify.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Quotes need attribution obviously

Unfortunately, I don't think it's quite so obvious. ALL quotes? Even really common ones? It's a weird, shaky little line.

However, fusions like reel_sga, that take known source material and turn them on their heads, DON'T strike me as plagiaristic at all.

What about ones that don't reinvent or reinterpret so dramatically? What about stories that are just retellings with the SGA (or whatever) characters, and are completely upfront with that? And how does THAT differ from the American President thing, where the author said the story was based on the film, but took all of the dialogue verbatim—and was praised for it?

It's so hard! Which you clearly recognize, so I'm sorry if this comment seems like an interrogation. I don't think ANYONE has the answer to these questions. It's tough.

[neery.livejournal.com]

I'm not really all that sure where I stand on this isse, but I definitely think you need to consider your audience. If you write for a bunch of fandom geeks, you probably don't need to cite every line from Buffy, because the majority will recognize it anyway. A quick "Some lines taken from/inspired by Buffy" is more than enough.

In Buffy fandom, you may not even need to do that much, if you use some of the more well-used quotes.

There are still some people who aren't going to recognize the lines, but as long as they're a small minority, and you don't actually accept praise for those lines, I wouldn't worry about that too much. It's just not possible for everyone to get the in-jokes; that's why they're in-jokes.

On the other hand, if you're using lines from someone most of your audience has probably never heard of, you need to be pretty specific about what you've taken -- not only "some lines by David Gemmell", but rather "most of the dialogue in the scene with the poisoned dart taken directly from..."

Anyway, I don't think you have anything to worry about. I always thought your disclaimers were pretty clear.

[ladycat777.livejournal.com]

*noses in*

Actually, um, that's created some bruhahas in buffy fandom. There is a very well beloved S/X story that weaves in and out of season five, including scenes that are slightly altered with exact dialoge transference. And the poster in question did cite that it was not her writing and was very very clear that she was quoting and using it in this slightly altered reality.

The problem? She didn't specify what she quoted. So, anyone with half a brain and memory for the eps in question knew what was a quote and what wasn't and was satisfied. A few people who did not remember acused her of plagerism. I seem to recall that they were brushed off since it was very clear that she knew exactly what she was doing, and said so, and the only leg they had was copyright infringement, if they wanted to go that rout, not plagerism, but she still ended up 'tagging' which sections were hers and which were the shows.

Which doesn't actually challenge your statement, because I think you're right -- audience and degree very much matters -- but it's not as cut and dried as I could wish, especially in a fandom that prides itself on trying to sound like Joss.

[saturnalia.livejournal.com]

Random side-note before we get into the heavy stuff: Back in my first semester of Uni, I had to write an essay on plagiarism, from which they took our marks for the whole of that module. Tragically I put it off until the last minute, stayed up until 3am writing the first half, fell asleep and woke up at 3pm the next day with only two hours before the deadline in which to frantically type out another 1,000 words on plagiarism and dash into town to print and hand it in. Needless to say, it wasn't one of my best marks of the year ;) Anyway, this whole plagiarism debacle is bringing back some bad memories, I can tell you! *grin*

Back on topic: Personally, I think it's a matter of degree. Using one unattributed quote in a fic seems perfectly fine to me, especially if it's someone like John who would likely quote pop culture all the time. Using several quotes may be pushing it if they're all from one source; best to put in a quick disclaimer like "Some of John's lines are taken from such-a-film, which you should all watch because it's awesome." However, if you start using unattributed quotes all over the place all the time the way Cassandra Claire seems to have, that's clearly going too far. Especially if the people saying said lines wouldn't have had much pop culture exposure like, say, Draco- how would he possibly have watched so many Muggle movies to be able to quote them all by heart? (Well, that's possibly more a case of stupid writing rather than actual plagiarism. But still.) Besides, the Buffy/Red Dwarf/whatever quotes are not the main issue, I think; people are angry at Ms Claire for the blatant plagiarism of Pamela Dean's work, and since they're not familiar with that text it's translating from "I can't believe Cassie plagiarised!" into "I can't believe Cassie plagiarised from my favourite TV show insert-name-here." At least, that's the way I see it.

Er, I have a feeling that I may not be making myself very clear here, so I'll move on.

A reader, who I won’t name unless she wants me to, asked me why I hadn’t cited Neil Gaiman’s story “Changes” for the concept of “Reboot," ...

*wince* That's my comment we're talking about, right? Ack. I didn't at all mean to imply that you were somehow plagiarising Gaiman; yes, the metaphor you used was the same, but the way you used the concept was different enough that I thought it fell under the cattegory of "influenced by", rather than "stolen from" the way some of Cassandra Claire's scenes were. For one thing, it was clear that you hadn't just sat there with a copy of Changes and typed a paragraph out word for word; I can't find my copy right now either (omg conspiracy theory! *grin*) but I do remember that the phrasing was rather different. And I certainly don't think that there's anything in any of your other fics that can be compared to the plagiarism on a grand scale that Cassandra Claire carried out. So yes, I think that what you're doing is completely different.

[roaringmice.livejournal.com]

There was a story I wrote where I used Gaiman's Neverwhere as the basis. I didn't site it because that would have given the entire storyline away, and I needed to keep up the mystery. But it was definately based on some of the themes from Neverwhere, and that was purposeful. I was hoping that someone would notice, but I didn't want to give away the "joke" first. And the first person who noted that, I congratulated.

Otherwise, I always site a source, and I always ask permission before I use the resource. However...

I read a lot, and seem to keep a lot of that tucked into my memory. I've had two or three times when I've written a story, then months later, went back and re-read it (yes, I'm a glutton for punishment) and went "Oops!" at a line or part of a scene.***

***The actual language I use is a bit harsher.

With distance, I can see influences that I didn't realise I was using when up-close. At that point, if I can trace the source, I try to let the original source know that I "took" the material, and provide a link so they can see. I also, if possible, edit the original to site the source. I don't remove the text or story because it's too late - it's been out there. The best I can do is apologise, ask for late-permission, and site that source as soon as I realise what I've done.

Because I may be an idiot at times, but at least I'm an apologetic idiot.

[batdina.livejournal.com]

none of what you reference above is a problem for me. I teach high school English, so the issue of plagiarism comes up at least a half a dozen times every year.

The MLA Handbook is pretty clear on the subject. It's also pretty clear on the difference between a quote and a theft. Plagiarism is theft. Or to quote the MLA, Sixth Ed, sect 2.1: (and this is a quote *g* which we know because what preceded it was a citation for it)

"Plagiarism refers to a form of cheating that has been defined as 'the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person's mind, and presenting it as one's own' (Alexander Lindey, Plagiarism and Originality [NY: Harper, 1952]."

It's entirely possible to allude to the work of someone else without stealing it outright.

The MLA goes on to say "Plagiarism involves two kinds of wrongs. Using another person's ideas, information, or expressions without acknowledging that person's work constitutes intellectual theft. Passing off another person's ideas, information, or expressions as your own to get a better grade or gain some other advantage constitutes fraud."

Plagiarism is also separate and distinct from copyright infringment. I think fanfic gets lost somewhere in this gap, myself. Many times plagiarism is a moral question, but not a legal one.

It seems to me that the reel_sga challenge played right into the gap between the two, but in each case both the writer and the readers knew going in that there was going to be some serious borrowing, and in each case, we all knew what was being borrowed.

In the case of allusions to others' works, at some point we all get to say that plots and story ideas are somewhat common to us all. Sometimes the reader sees something I/you didn't intend, and on the one hand "neat, I did that" and on the other hand "um, nope, I didn't do that."

As an aside, if you really feel the need to cite whoever as inspiration for Little Things, best acknowledge Jonathan Swift while you're at it. Personally, I don't think you needed to say anything at all. Little people being controlled by big people is also a biblical trope, after all.

[turtlespeaks.livejournal.com]

I think there is a line between both quoting and stealing, and also levels of intent and reasons for intent.

Say, I'm still working on my Maltese Falcon story for SGA (oh the nightmares I have over this fic. *cry*). I am of course going to have to use scenes from the movie. But my intent is not to sell these scenes to people as my own work. I say that this is from the movie, so people should in fact expect to see familiar dialogue. That is also to say, I cannot just copy every scene from the movie, word for word and just change the names. That would be plagerism.

If I want to use well known quotes, then in fanfiction I should be able to. How many movies/shows/sketches out there make good on lines from Spiderman, the Matrix trilogy, or ever Star Wars. Adding in these quote are almost a play on culture and such, and a lot of the time they are so well known you don't have to post where you got them. If I have Ronon suddenly go "I'll be in my bunk!" everyone laughs and knows what I'm talking about.

But if I were to put ever line from Serenity into a fic I write, and pass the dialoge off as my own, then I am stealing.

My intent actually has to be to steal, to use something that isn't mine with the purpose of pretendeding that it is completely original. This counts for ideas as well, but it gets scetchy there. If I over hear you, or have a letter from you detailing copy righted matieral, or if you were to post a small drabble somewhere, and I use the exact same story line, but with a few changes, that's stealing, but if we were to by chance manage to come up with the same basic plot, but I was able to prove that I didn't even know about your idea or even you, then that is not stealing, that's hive mind.

So what I'm trying to say is there is a difference from using well known lines, like you say from the Goonies, and putting them in with the purpose to both see who catched it and to make a motion to a well known work, and then there is putting a line in Goonies with the full conviction that this is YOUR WORK, YOU MADE IT UP OMG STFU IM LEAVIN'!!!!!!!

Technically, all fanfiction is plagerism. We are in fact using characters and worlds without the creator's permission to use them. We are posting them publically, and though we have disclaimers, we are in fact plagerizing someone elses work for fun. But there can be levels of it all.

Plagerism at it's core is about intent. So is any type of stealing. No one is going to yell at you for having Rodney say sarcastically "Holy Smokes Batman!" just like Stargsate completely gets away for quoting Star Wars and Wizard of Oz all the time. But when your characters have a whole conversation that is taken from someone else's work, or if they go to a world that is someone else's story, and it ISN'T satire, and it ISN'T cited, then your plagerizing. For heavy content things, like, say, Jack Sparrow goes to Atlantis, you have to mention that Jack Sparrow is Disney's creation.

It really get's complicated at some level, because it's often times hard to see where line actually is. I had at least three teachers devote several days to the use of quotes in stories vs. quotes in essays and the different uses and level and rules for each. It gets so very weird after a while.

So in essance, I cannot take your fic and say I wrote it, but if I write a fic and have John yell "Why does everything I love have Rabies?" and you quote it, you have to say you got it from me, BUT if I were to have John quote a well known line from Hitchhiker's Guide then that is alright, I could site it or wait to see you catches it. Author's do things like that all time time, Especially Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen, though they are clever about it (Good Omen's is AMAzing for it's use of quotes).

AND NOW I should probably shut up.

[veracity]

I think, perhaps, the problem people have with Cassie Claire is not that she used quotes (very few things said in life haven't been used before) but the fact she wasn't honest from the upstart. We're online. You can't look at someone, watch their body language and say "You're lying. Just be honest and let it be done." You have to depend on integrity with people on the computer. That if someone thing comes out, that the truth will be acknowledged, not repeatedly spineless with excuses and blame-gaming instead of just owning up. That is essentially what upsets a lot of people, I think.

Like you, I saw instances of “Well, that’s not particularly noteworthy.” Then of course it becomes a matter of “did she just squee over the same episode the line might have been yanked from recently?” If so, then it’s easier to pinpoint and note. I’m not saying that she did and should be jumped on for doing it, but if it can be, well there’s a lot more circumstantial evidence.

She pushes the excuses around, or says "Well, I discussed with Pamela Dean, so it's moot." No, it's not. She only contacted after she had been caught red-handed. It was never "Well, I did this, and yeah it was extremely stupid. Let's move on and I'll never do it again." Trust is important, it helps bond a community - which the internet is - and it's up to us (those that participate in this place) to take care of that. We have to look out and notice these things, call on them, because we're lucky to be able to actually write/vid/graphic/art/whatever in fandom at the creator's allowance. It's not a right, but a privilege.

Actions speak louder than words, too. Which I realize just contradicted what I said at the beginning. The thing is that’s the actions of people that are just letting it be swept under the rug of “it was years ago so it doesn’t matter” or “who cares, it’s just fan fiction” that I’m speaking of. They’re the ones that are letting that behavior come across okay and making the rest of us look it’s accepted, which isn’t necessarily true.

As a group, on any fandom, we tend to take the privilege for granted. We all do it, and it will continue to be done because it is human nature to take things for granted (not just in fandom, but anything we want/have). However, that also places that burden on the same group to watch out and make sure we're given that same privilege, to prove that we are aware away of what is right and wrong. The fact CC didn't own up to it, and still doesn't judging from the pouring of excuses or inability to be honest on the subject, puts the rest of the fandoms at risk. By that, I mean if we can't say "No, that's wrong" then why should the people that gave us the worlds inspired from at risk? CC’s had many years to alter or cite the very clear references she’s stolen from, and yet, chose to just slap up a half-hearted disclaimer and be done with it (excepting the Dean references for above stated reasons). If you use someone else’s work and ideas, then at least have the courtesy to do it when it’s being written and properly cited from/at.

Just because it is fan fiction doesn’t mean plagiarism is any less important than if it were academic. It is still your reputation being put on the line.

These are of course just my opinions and intreperations.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

No, I think you're spot on: it really does all come on to honesty and trust. I was saying (down-thread, I think) that I hope I never have to be expected to cite everything I quote or reference, because it would become really tiresome and distracting. But if there's not some basic level of trust, it becomes necessary, and that sucks for everyone. So yes, Cassie's behavior, not her quoting, is what's truly bothersome. I'll strive to be better; I hope people call me on it when I'm not.

[trobadora]

I have no brilliant insight to offer on where exactly to draw the line with attribution, but I am seriously baffled that people even would lump plagiarism and allusions/references together. Plagiarism is attempting to pull the wool over the reader's eyes; allusions and references are there to be recognised.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I think the problem arises from the fact that CC was clearly plagiarizing with the Pamela Dean stuff, but her intent in regards to the other quotes is much less clear. And now everyone's, rightly, pissed at her, so accusations are flying left and right.

[cincodemaygirl.livejournal.com]

For the record, I think that reel_sga is at most tangentially related to these issues. I don't see where there's a problem with adapting a film to another medium/set of characters when the source material is very clearly noted and no profit is being made.

Also, to the person above who quit writing their story after being told that it was "too close to the film," I say SCREW THAT, because one of my favorite things in the challenge was that retelling of An Affair to Remember, which was extremely close to the film but totally absorbing. There's an art to adaptation that hasn't got a thing to do with plagiarism.

[mswalter.livejournal.com]

I'm just a lurker jumping in to add another opinion. I've been reading and adoring your stories for a long time, but am terrible at leaving feedback, so, apologies.

I won't touch the Cassandra Claire stuff, because it seriously makes me so angry to think about. On your end, I will go against the consensus a little and say that, as a reader, I would prefer it if you cited exactly what bits of dialogue are borrowed. And as a writer, I know I wouldn't actually want anyone thinking I wrote something that I didn't. In general, I always prefer giving (or receiving) too much information, or in this case attribution, over too little.

Especially in "Dissonance" and "Blow the House Down," I think attributing the specific dialogue is important. It's not enough for me to know that you borrowed some dialogue -- I want to know exactly which bits aren't yours. And I think that's only fair to the original author. I think it's just fine to borrow dialogue that is so ingrained in pop culture that everyone knows it ("May the force be with you," for example), the problem is, where's the line? Who can say when dialogue becomes common knowledge? No one can answer that. Which is why I think it's best to just go ahead and attribute all of it, even if you feel like a dork for telling readers where the obvious lines came from. In the case of "Dissonance," I read that story (and loved it), and I've seen "The Goonies" many, many times, and it didn't even occur to me that you'd borrowed a line from that movie -- I assumed it was yours. (But you should know that I have a terrible memory, so I might not represent your average reader.)

I have mixed feelings on not citing the specific dialogue used in "U.S.S Indianapolis" and "A Rush and a Push." Both cases are clearly based on movies, so of course readers are expecting concepts and maybe even specific dialogue to show up in your story. But especially with "A Rush and a Push," where likely a lot of your readers won't be familiar with the source text, I think you're better off being very clear with your attribution.

I don't understand why people think attributions in the author's note are clumsy or annoying. At the end of the story, just copy/paste the dialogue you borrowed and note where it came from. And honestly, if that's annoying because there's too much dialogue, then I think you're doing something wrong, you know? Borrowing bits and pieces is fine, but more than that, and at some point it stops being your story. (And I'm not saying you've done that, at all. I guess my own rule of thumb is, if it's a pain in the ass for me to copy/paste borrowed dialogue at the bottom of the story, then I've borrowed too much.)

Your other attributions, I think, are just fine. You've always done a great job of noting your inspirations and giving credit.

Yes, I do wish you'd more thoroughly attribute the dialogue you use, but I might just be nitpicky that way. So I just toss one more opinion into the fray.

I hope I haven't offended or come across sounding obnoxious. I'm so glad you posted about this and threw the question out there, and I'm fascinated by the responses. And I do love every one of your stories.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

1. No need to apologize; I am terrible at responding to feedback, so I am not allowed to complain! And 2. I'm not offended at all.

That said, I'm not sure I agree. I agree with the spirit of what you're saying, definitely—as I've said several times up-thread, I think it's always best to err on the side of caution with these things, and if anyone ever has a complaint about attribution (as with "Human Vacillation") I promise to immediately amend author's notes, etc. In reference to the Goonies quote in "Dissonance," I do think I will add a note there once this discussion is done (I want to wait because the topic is still on the table). NOT knowing that it's a Goonies line and not mine doesn't add anything to the story at all, especially after it's already been noted and hopefully amused somebody.

However, I think we hit a problem when authors are expected to attribute every line of dialogue taken from a film in a film-based fic (especially a really long one like mine—yikes). Part of this is because it makes what is (hopefully) a seamless union between two disparate sources not seamless—I was actively working very hard to make the story sound like a fusion of those two worlds, right down to the dialogue and the way the characters spoke. So I wanted Rodney to sound like a combination of Rodney-and-Martin and John to sound like a combination of John-and-Ethan. Part of the "magic" of the story, successful or not, was blending those two worlds so you couldn't tell what was what.

If you want, however, I'll go through and tell you exactly what came from the movie, and what was paraphrased, etc. (I was originally planning to do a DVD commentary, at which point some of that may have come up. I still might do it.)

The larger problem becomes, however, that I honestly do think that if all quotes were attributed, it would become really annoying. Not just in my fic, and for me as an author, but for other people as readers and for me as a reader. I don't want to be told for the thousandth time, to use somebody else's example, that "I'll be in my bunk" was said by Jayne in Firefly. I know. And pretty much every time I see that quote in another context, I laugh.

I guess on some level there has to be trust between the author and her audience. If you tell me that you really like line X, and line X was taken from somewhere else but I just say, "Thanks!" I've broken that trust. But as queasy as I feel at the thought of being considered a thief, I can't attribute everything I quote. It would end up looking like this annotated version of The Waste Land (http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/), which is cool as a supplement to the actual text, but not as a substitute for it, and not something I would even want to know existed until I had read the poem several times and drawn my own conclusions.

In short: honesty, and more DVD commentaries, are for yay. *g*

[quettaser.livejournal.com]

But where is the line? When does something stop being allusion or fun, in-jokey reference—and become plagiarism?

I think it lies somewhere in the numbers. A few references in a story is by no means plagiarism. For me, allusions and references help identify similar themes and tones that the story and the referenced material have in common and also illuminate a lot about the author. But when the references become a significant basis of character interaction then the problem of plagarism starts to arise.

References should be like spices in a stew, not the potatoes or the meat. The majority of a story should be the author's own work, they should create the meat and the potatoes and the veggies. Otherwise, they can't rightly call it their stew.

But then there's the even harder distinction between influence and reference. There's that saying just about every English teacher I've had has told me, "You can't write in a vacuum."

We could note at the end of each of our stories the books we were in the middle of reading, the music we had on when we thought of the plot, the story we heard from Aunt Betsy about that thing with the neighbor's cat, but I doubt people would care much. They all influenced the outcome of the story and could arguably be references, but that's the kind of thing to be shared if people ask.

Where Cassie Clare went wrong was in not correcting people or acknowledging that those references were references and trying to take credit for them, not in using referenes themselves.

reel_sga is an entirely different thing. The entire purpose of the challenge was to adapt an existing film. Adaptations are different beasts subject to different rules regarding plagarism and references.

To continue with my food metaphors, an adaptation is like taking a big hunk of meat that tastes delicious all on it's own, but then cooking it in a different style, seasoning it in a fresh way. It allows for a spectrum of results, some close to the original piece of meat and others wildly different, but still made out of that same meat.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I LOVE your food metaphors! Except now I am hungry. *pout*

Where Cassie Clare went wrong was in not correcting people or acknowledging that those references were references and trying to take credit for them, not in using references themselves.

Yes, I think that's a very important point. With the quotes (not the Pamela Dean thing—that's separate) she went from an understandable, fuzzy, grey area to outright dishonesty; I also really hate how she used the quotes thing to deflect the Pamela Dean accusations. It's very Bush administration. *g* But yes: I think that in general if we all take care to be honest and to respect our sources, we'll be okay.

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

I firmly believe that it's a continuum (http://soupytwist.livejournal.com/234887.html), and a necessary one, and therefore there isn't a strict line to be drawn. Everybody's going to draw it in different places, and every case is unique, so there isn't really a general consensus to be reached other than "mean well, and do your best not to hurt anybody".

If it helps at all, I've never seen a piece by you that I thought crossed the line. Cassie's, I'd say, do: she conciously took credit for stuff that wasn't hers, and lots of the lines she copied are subtly changed in ways that make them harder to recognise. Additionally, she didn't use the lines to make a thematic point or show something about the character or to do something different with it. The reference doesn't... mean anything, it's not there for a reason other than to make people laugh at the same joke while making it look like Cassie wrote it. You've never, as far as I can tell, done any of those things.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

In a note of complete and utter irony, I have only one quote that I've borrowed.

In the Harry Potter AU fic Beg Me For It (http://www.icarus.slashcity.net/stories/begmeforit.html) I refer to "Lucius and the Death Eaters" sounding like a rock band.

Who did I borrow it from? Cassandra Claire.

I don't remember if it's a coincidence, if I wrote Beg Me For It before I read the Draco Trilogy or if the quote stuck in my mind without realizing it.

But you know, I don't think she's going to complain. :D

Icarus

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

*snerk* And hey—you do know that there IS a band called Draco and the Malfoys, right?

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Here through icarusancalion and I have a question and a lawyer's opinion (not mine) to offer.

The question is: what's the American President fic kerfuffle? (This because I am an Aaron Sorkin fan and shall gladly read anything inspired, copied, derived or otherwise stolen from him in any way, shape or form.

The lawyer's opinion was provided me by, er, a lawyer about the current hysteria (and yes, an intellectual property lawyer) so I trust it is relevant to the debate:

"Unless US law is very different from English on this point, Pamela Dean could never have prosecuted [C.C.]. She could have sued. Absent a number of factors none of which were present here (the profit motive, mainly) copyright infringment is a civil wrong (tort) which is actionable at the suit of the company or individual who has suffered the damage, and is intended to put them in the position, so far as money can do it, they would have been in had the wrong never occurred. Therefore, the commission of a civil wrong against one which has neither brought a gain for the perpetrator or caused you financial damage isn't really worth suing about, unless you want an injunction to prevent its being repeated.

That's why saying "plagiarism is theft" and "you have to admit it, she committed a crime" is inaccurate. It isn't and she didn't.

I might add that I am completely with you on the quotes thing - it is allusion, reference, wink at the audience, and any number of these combined. Terry Pratchett does it all the time. Should we try and define rules that are harder than the accepted commercial practice of pros?

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Okay, first: your icon seriously rocks.

Next, the question: the American President kerfuffle happened when someone wrote an SGA fic "inspired" by the film—but they used all the dialogue and basically just transcribed the movie with the SGA characters' names slotted in. They were praised a lot for their witty dialogue. Then, someone called them on it, the author apologized saying that she hadn't realized that she was doing anything wrong, and the fic was taken down.

There was some discussion on how that fic was different from all the reel_sga fics. (It wasn't part of the challenge.)

As for the legal stuff: to be honest, I don't really care about the legality of what CC did. I care about the morality, and morally, what she did was wrong. In plagiarizing Pamela Dean, definitely. In utilizing quotes from Buffy and other sources? Maybe not so much—but it becomes wrong if she then takes credit for them, even in the vaguest terms. Still, it's complicated—hence all this discussion!

[whiskeypants.livejournal.com]

people are being awfully wordy in their replies to this. i probably will be, too.

for me it comes down to a certain dichotomy, and it's not even necessarily whether it's credited or not. it's whether it's a tribute to cleverness or the very substance of cleverness.

the thing is, if it's the first, it usually gets credited, and thus is not an issue.
plagiarism is the realm of the lazy, the untalented, and the unaware. whether it is fanfic or a history exam, it's usually the same kind of people doing it--they want easy credit for work they almost did and they think they are smarter than their readers. sometimes they are.

it's also a matter of awareness, i suppose. when i am writing i am always, always aware of my influences. but i take those influences and make the end result mine. the majority of writers out there don't know how to do that. influence becomes the substance of a given story, and we all know about substance abuse [D.A.R.E. to keep crappy writers from writing fic!].

i would say that coming up with a fanfic code of ethics is a worthy goal, but it is something that will be difficult to do. everybody knows how difficult it is to do anything by a committee of hundreds of people on computers around the world, the minority of whom are bright enough to understand the necessity of it and are stable enough to avoid the inevitable flame wars that would ensue.

shunning/ignoring those who are guilty of it is only partially helpful; there will still be armies of ignorant readers who jump up and down at the crappiest fanfic, there will still be "writers" who think they can get away with it.

the issue, as ever, with ethics, is that they have to be personal and while we don't have to accept that for every talented, careful, honest writer out there, there are hundreds of assholes, that's really the case.

you are and will always be in that first group.

Where we are irrelevant and irreverent

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

I see you are being very serious today. Good for you. Ari says you can give him a blow job if you're feeling magnanimous. I digress. I saw these (http://www.cafepress.com/buy/entourage/-/cfpt2_/cfpt_/source_searchBox/copt_) and thought of you.