Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Ack, I've been plagiarized!

Yeah, but while it may be a compliment to her writing, the person is also suggesting that Kathy is too dumb to find out that her story has been stolen.

With compliments like that, I'd rather have someone tell me I look fat today and NOT steal my work.

Thanks, guys, for the support. I really appreciate it.
LOL, Jenn! That Zymac, especially, is pretty darn ineffective, isn't he?

And I agree about the "how dumb was she?" aspect of this particular plagiarist. Most of them at least change the title to hide what they've done, but she didn't even bother doing that! I can only assume she thought that since the story was posted back in 2002, I was long gone from the fandom and no one would be around to call her out.

CM, all my stories are on the L&C fanfic archive. You can find a list of them here . Thanks for your interest.

If you want to read the stolen story, I should point out that 1) it's actually the sequel to another story, though each one does stand alone, and 2) there are nfic versions of each (ones that I wrote, not with scenes inserted from other authors, LOL). Those can be found on the nfic archive, or from me directly. The first story in the series is called "When Friends Become Lovers" and the second (the one that was plagiarized) is called "When Lovers Become More".

And then you can join the puppy dog faces hoping to see When More Becomes Everything someday .

Carol [who loves Kathy ]

Kathy, I'm so sorry this happened to you - and, of course, to Wendy and Yvonne, too! I just left my review on ff.net. I hope the story is taken down quickly.

Huh?
/hijacks thread/




(puppydogds were out)

Michael

Now, back to the real purpose of this thread.

It strikes me that the idea of plagiarizing anything related to Lois and Clark is interestingly ironic. After all, in the LnC universe, one of the core elements of why Lois is… well, the way she is… traces back to her experiences in having her work stolen multiple times.

I guess I find this sort of theft most troubling because I simply can’t see the underlying motivation. When I think of what must move someone to steal in this way it makes my head spin. There are various reasons to write and then post a fanfic:
1. You may have an idea that you want to share.
2. There is the sense of participating in a community. (The LnC community is particularly great!)
3. Completing a work brings a feeling of accomplishment.
4. Of course, positive feedback never hurts either.

When someone steals like this, all that they could possibly get (that I can see) is #4 and that will be under false pretenses. I have trouble seeing how this sort of act would do anything other than make you feel worse for the experience.

But then, I just don’t understand people sometimes.

Bob

Oh, yes! YES! YES! YES!

Will you?

You guys are wonderfully encouraging. Thank you!

(And regarding Bob's reference to Lois's past, I can't deny that when I found out, one of my first thoughts was to paraphrase, "I won an award for that story; didn't even thank me for my 'input'." LOL!

OK, as for the deal with WMBE ...

There is a chance it will be written someday, though I can't promise when. Obviously, if I had a magic wand, it would have been written years ago. Ditto if I had some way of uploading the scenes in my head directly to the screen. But I still do have the file and have even added to it here and there over the years. I even toyed more than once with posting my outline, just so everyone could see what is going to happen next in the universe and how L&C are going to make it to the altar. But even when I was busily writing for other fandoms, I could never quite give that story up. I always held out hope I could return to it someday. And now that I'm back in FoLCdom ... well, the chances are better.

The thing is, it's a long story. Maybe even a monster story. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I ran a word count on my outline. Not the scenes I have written so far, mind, but my outline. It's over 11,000 words. The outline! It's completely overwhelming.

But I have done some work on it lately. The 92 bullet points (!!) have now been broken down into four sections, as that particular universe works its way through Ressurection (part 1), TF/TJO (part 2), IR (part 3), and WWW/ATAI (part 4).

My hope now is to tackle each part in turn, maybe even posting as I finish each one instead of waiting until the whole thing is done. But even that is a ways off -- "WMBE: Resurrection" is the furthest along, but I still only have 8 of its 29 bullet points actually written. So all this is my way of saying, "I'm still hopeful, but fear we may all be reading it in our rocking chairs at the retirement home."

That said, I have been working on something else, and although it's going to be a long story, too, I've been making slow but steady progress on it for the last few weeks. In fact, the whole plagiarism thing didn't so much anger me, as it did annoy me over the distraction from my current story.

Thank you all for your support. You have no idea how much it means to me!

yeah, that's sort of what I figured, too. You know, I do wonder when the first plagiarist will claim 'but I didn't even sleep with the author so it should be okay'

Michael

My first inclination is to say *RUN!* but I want to read WMBE too so I won't say that...

And it is in Labby's inbox waiting for some wonderful GE to end up with it in *their* inbox .

Carol

On the plus side, though, Google makes it really really easy to get caught. And there are software packages specifically designed to catch plagiarisers. A class or two ago, in a discussion thread, somebody said something high-falutin'. The professor replied that it was a quote from a website (he had the URL) and in future please use your own words.

And all my professors have stated that you can't use Wikipedia as a source. At all. It might give you an idea of where to look for info, but it cannot be relied on, should not be quoted, and is ineligible as a reference.

PJ

My best friend had an assignment in an asian studies class to critique a wikipedia article. Everything from failure to provide sources to inaccuracies was cited.

She was surprised when, in the article she chose and researched, there were quite a few direct quotes used without references.

And this makes it hard for those who have done their work and end up being copied - they get accused of stealing the thief's work. That's happened to me. I mean, how many ways are there to say 'Tomatoes need to be planted when the soil is warm.'?

True. And I dunno why using certain common sentences such as definitions or even stereotyped answers to certain common questions in stories would be considered plagiarism.

I mean if I were to say,
"Hi. I'm Lane, Lois Lane."
then does it really mean that I'm stealing Ian Fleming's (or whoever's) words, especially if I really liked my martini "Shaken, not stirred."

In fact, none of the words/sentences I've learned ever since birth are mine. I copied my parents...

What I mean is, somewhere along the way, I might have been influenced by the so many great books and stories that I've read and the words of certain authors who've influenced me are so engraved, etched and carved into my mind that I might have unconsciously (without opening any such material for the usual ctrl+C and ctrl+V) reproduced them in my own stories.

Is that copying? Or stealing words?

There is a thin line between 'being inspired by' and 'blatantly stealing.' It thins a lot more when it comes to academic works and other publications. A few words here and there, a turn of a phrase, a simple sentence, while could be pointed out exists here, here, and there, can be attributed to chance or embedded memory, or something that just can't be worded well any other way. But when you start stealing chunks, such as several sentences in a row, full paragraphs, or in this case, full works, it becomes quite obvious that someone took the easy way out. Wikipedia, of course, is full of examples of this, taking full chunks from varying websites.

Most professors notice this with students, especially those in class, when the paper's voice sounds a lot different from the student's voice. When it's something read by a large audience, such as a newspaper, magazine, or work of fiction, there's bound to be someone who has read the original source and will point it out. And when it comes to a tight-knit group like ours, it makes it just as easy.

I put my two cents in as well at ff.net.

Wonder how much longer it will take for the story to come down?

Plagiarism FAQ

This might help you out a little, CG. It was written for the Archive - by Wendy I think - a time back, after one of the plagiarism events here in FoLCdom.

LabRat

From the FAQ:
Yup! Having never ever written anything before L&C stories, it's good thing I followed the other FoLCs example and included disclaimers wherever I thought was necessary. I think that's the only thing that differentiates between
I did know that plagiarism meant stealing someone else's work/idea, but I never knew that there were so many ways to do it. And this link - Statement on Plagiarism by Charles Darling mentioned in the FAQ was really helpful in showing the distinctions.

Thanks, Labby.

I'm so sorry this happened to you, Kathy.

I just left a nice little review of my own (and must admit to a certain amount of pleasure at being mean and sarcastic!)

Darn pregnancy hormones!

I certainly hope that the "author" of this fine story is outed and your work removed out from under Super Duper Stupid's name...er, I mean Super Dupper cutie.

I believe they've removed the story. I just tried the links out, and the link to the story takes us to a
But I think the *author's* registration hasn't been canceled.