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

[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.

[threnodyjones.livejournal.com]

I'm only going to comment on this one particular thing most likely, since I have oh so very, very many words about the whole issue... In regards to the AP thing though, it could be argued that there was no *chance* to reinterpret the story. I mean, the author had only gotten what, 20? 22? minutes into the movie? Something like that, before the brouhaha started. She could have gone a certain distance with a male/male pairing in a male/female paradigm before the story would *have* to be reinterpreted in a far more original way.

My whole issue with the AP thing was that in her original A/N she *said* that she had just watched the movie the night before and that there she substituted J & R for the leads since the President's name was Sheppard. Apparently the screams came from the fact that she didn't credit *Aaron Sorkin*, not that she didn't credit the movie, even though some people tried to make it out to be that way.

Now, the BS in all this that gets me is the rewrites of episodes, wherein the author is essentially novelizing an episode. We the readers get A/N's like "Spoilers for Hot Zone" or "Home spoilers - I don't own 'em!" and *nobody* makes a beef about the lack of crediting like the AP debacle.

But then people kept taking it futher and further to the point you've reached with your post: exactly how much citation is needed for an *effing fanfic*? There *were* some people - and I honestly (if hopefully wrongly) got the impression that Alyse either supported them or was one of them - who felt that *everything* needed a citation, up to and including "May the Force be with you."

My hand to god, everytime I post a story in the SGA fandom from here on out, I'll be making EULA's look short with my credit notes, just to make a point.

But I think it does come down to the fact that fandom is going to have to decide whether stories/challenges like reel_sga are 'permissible'. Is putting slash-goggles on when 'rewriting' an SGA episode more permissible than what happened with the AP story? If so why? What about the authors who post NO credits or disclaimers with their stories? Why hasn't fandom come down on them just as hard? They certainly didn't invent Sheppard or McKay or Zelenka or Weir, unless there's something they aren't telling us. Since the law of 'reasonable judgement' has apparently gone out the window, authors do have every right to demand answers from those running the fandom.

Oh, wait...

God. *hangs head in shame* This was the short version. I'm so sorry. I told you I had issues.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

I'll admit, yes, the story was a WIP, so yes, we did not get to see the full extent of what she was going to do. But, from what there was, she didn't seem to be doing any more than copying and pasting. I read the first part of the story eagerly and as someone only semi-familiar with the film (I've never even seen it all the way through) but I knew right away that she was just switching the names, because she missed one—Aiden was suddenly and accidentally "Lewis." That smacks of plagiarism to me.

Furthermore, the story—like much of CC's work—was in part (and I would say a large part) being praised for its witty dialogue, dialogue that the author didn't write and, at least by omission, took credit for. That's plagiarism too.

It was a difficult situation for everyone, but I think it was handled as well as it could be under the circumstances. And the author was apologetic and gracious, too—so props to her.

There *were* some people - and I honestly (if hopefully wrongly) got the impression that Alyse either supported them or was one of them - who felt that *everything* needed a citation, up to and including "May the Force be with you."

I don't remember seeing anything like that, but then I miss a lot of stuff. And there is at least one person in this thread who does think that, but she's being very polite about. Personally, there are plenty of things that I think it's okay not to attribute. It becomes a question of degree.

Is putting slash-goggles on when 'rewriting' an SGA episode more permissible than what happened with the AP story?

Er. I'm biased here, because unless the author's doing something radically different, that is not a kind of story that I tend to like. But, I think it's perfectly fair for someone to do so—IF the focus is on reinterpretation, not just vomiting up the dialogue, AND with the understanding that since it would be an SGA fic quoting SGA, the author would be less likely to be attempting to pass off the show's words as her own.

What about the authors who post NO credits or disclaimers with their stories? Why hasn't fandom come down on them just as hard?

Well, this is something I'm guilty of: I don't put general disclaimers on my fic. I never have; nobody's ever mentioned it to me; it seems redundant. I mean, OF COURSE the characters aren't mine. They're from SGA. But that should be clear from the context.

In the case of the AP fic, the author didn't make it clear that the dialogue was not hers, but Sorkin's. Hence the problem.

[threnodyjones.livejournal.com]

Furthermore, the story—like much of CC's work—was in part (and I would say a large part) being praised for its witty dialogue, dialogue that the author didn't write and, at least by omission, took credit for. That's plagiarism too.

I didn't see the comments about the dialogue, nor the responses, so maybe that's part of my disconnect. I just remember the A/N that specifically stated that she was substituting in McKay and Sheppard, so like I said, possible disconnect.


AND with the understanding that since it would be a SGA fic quoting SGA, the author would be less likely to be attempting to pass off the show's words as her own.

But I think you're seeing where my devil's advocate argument can come into play? I like those stories too - *loved* them in SG-1. But I still see it as a bit of a double standard. Okay, so people are watching the eps and *know* it's not written by the author. That's for people who 1) watch the show and 2) watch it in the original English. Granted that covers a huge, huge majority of the people reading the stories, but still. There's a double standard there.

I'm just like you, I don't disclaim for my stories, for the same reason. It's *fanfic*, OBVIOUSLY they aren't mine. I've been through god knows how many plagiarism parties in the 15+ years I've been on the 'net, but this one really left a sour taste in my mouth, most of it from the post-AP discussions on how much authors' disclaimers should be regulated in the Plagiarism Free Zone.

[boochicken.livejournal.com]

Good points all, although I didn't mean to imply that it was somehow better to rip off a lesser-known work than a more popular one. To me that implies that you're very aware of what you're doing, since you've judged the portion of your audience likely to recognize the plagiarized bits.

I read a chapter of the American President meets SGA story, and my impression was that she'd basically changed the character's names. So Michael Douglas' character becomes John Sheppard, but still says everything he said in the original -- "We need to schedule more events where someone gives me a really big fish." It's a great line, Sheppard probably would say it -- but there's nothing new here, no touch of the author. Annette Benning becomes Rodney McKay, but he retains all the traits of Annette Benning's character -- and I just can't see McKay as a rabid environmentalist. I'd have less of a problem with it if McKay was be hired by Zelenka to push for more funding for scientific research, and he isn't intimidated by the White House, and he's goaded into insulting Sheppard to his face, despite the fact that he's the president. It's still not original -- but it's not a word-for-word copy, either. So we're back to the original question -- where does the line get drawn?

After thinking about it for a bit, I think there has to be a common sense standard. John can't say "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," unless Rodney responds with "Don't think you can get out of this by quoting Casablanca, asshole." I'd never heard of "That'll be the day," -- personally, I thought it was from the Elvis song that goes "That'll be the day/that you say goodbye," etc -- but if it's drawn from The Searchers, and you say that you've drawn heavily from The Searchers, then I think it's okay. Perhaps "When it doubt, point it out" would work as a guideline on outside materials? And if someone questions the authorship of a quote or idea, and they're right, you either take it out or add a proper attribution. I think that, ultimately, is what has pissed people off so much about CC's work -- not only that the plagiarism was so blatant, but that she offered such absurd excuses for it all.

As for commenting on bad_penny -- ha. You could throw a Genii-engineered nuke in there right now and no one would notice.

[boochicken.livejournal.com]

Argh, after reading some other comments -- I certainly don't believe that you need to attribute everything up to and including "May the force be with you!" Per my earlier point re: people who have lived in caves, no one is going to think you wrote that. And in that context my Casablanca example isn't the best either, because who doesn't know that particular quotation? But if you've got doubts about whether people will recognize a quotation as a knowing reference to another creative work, perhaps it's better to err on the side of caution and attribute it. Because that seems to be the other thing that's pissed people off hardcore; not only that she plagiarized, got caught, and reacted poorly, but that she built a reputation on work in which the choicest lines appear to have been written by someone else.

There. I hope that's clearer. I need more caffeine, clearly.