I was talking to Jordan Castillo Price yesterday about the rampant problem of stealing an author’s proprietary work, either on pirate sites where wholesale downloading
of books is taking place 24/7, to outright theft of a writer’s intellectectual property. So I suggested that she post about this topic since many authors have been victims of this ongoing problem in many forms. Here’s Jordan post –
Yesterday morning, I received a disturbing email. A fanfic writer had taken my first published novella, Among the Living, changed the POV from first person to third person, changed Jacob and Vic to Arthur and Merlin, and had begun posting the story as her own work.
I then had to leave the house for six hours. And I love my iPod touch, but it sure ain’t no iPhone. I looked for hotspots to peek in on what was going on, but to no avail. I had no choice but to let the issue go on without my attention.
While I was waiting to run home and see how everything shook out, I thought a lot about the nature of creating works for public consumption: art, music, comics and fiction. What drives us to create? What do we receive in return? Does money matter? I was listening to Harvey Pekar talk and he made a big show of trying to figure out when he was going to get his check — but really? If he was in it for the money, would he have chosen comic books as his medium? And would the filmmakers of American Splendor have tapped in so poignantly to him and his everyman’s life?
It seems like there are a couple of ways to steal from an artist: take their work, or take their ideas. When ebooks go up on file sharing sites, the theft is financial. Authors do not receive royalties for those books, not unless the reader were to go back and buy a legitimate copy of said work. I’m guessing few of them do. They pat themselves on the back for making a promise to consider purchasing from a legitimate vendor in the future, maybe, if the mood strikes them and the planets are in alignment. And they tell themselves they’re “supporting” that author.
That’s the most typical way my work is stolen. The prevalence disturbs me so deeply I’ve hired some trusted associates to deal with it so I no longer have to see to it personally.
But the content theft — that was a new one for me. It felt different, somehow, to know some stranger took it in her head to change a few words of my story, post it, and bask in all the attention she was getting for her subtle characterization and great dialog.
Once someone in the community realized what she’d done, the community policed itself. And that was wonderful to see. If you’d like more grisly details, you can find them
on LiveJournal. (link to http://jordan-c-price.livejournal.com/74089.html)
Since I have your attention, I thought I’d break down some varying levels of artistic borrowing and stealing.
Homage – this is a subtle, or not so subtle, nod to the work that has gone before in an artist’s genre. You see a lot of it in film. The first scene in Brotherhood of the Wolf, for instance, is an homage to Jaws. You see lots of homages to Hitchcock’s classic shower scene in Psycho. An homage implies respect, and a certain camaraderie with the audience. It says, you’ve seen this, we’ve seen this, we think it’s great, and we’re trusting you to “get” it.
The most subtle of homages is almost like a secret handshake. (For instance, I’m not enough of a film buff to get that Brotherhood of the Wolf thing; it was explained to me. I was busy reading French subtitles.)
Derivative Work – when musicians take samples from existing songs, when authors write stories in existing universes such as Star Trek or Star Wars, and when fans write fan fiction, we’re all doing something called a “derivative work.”
Authors who write in franchised universes (like Star Wars) are writing derivative works with permission from the copyright owners. When they contract to do that work, they’re entering into an agreement with the copyright holder.
Fanfic writers are also creating derivative works — stories set in sandboxes other writers have created, with their characters. Much fanfic is based on media, and I wonder sometimes if media is more tolerant of this copyright infringement because most shows are created by teams of writers, directors, actors and crew. They’re accustomed to other people playing with their toys.
Single authors often are not used to seeing their characters say and do things that they haven’t directed those characters to say and do. I don’t have any data to back this up, but I notice that the fandoms where the creator is one person, one author, seem to have more legal action taken against them than the fandoms based on TV series — and I wonder if it’s because novels are deeply personal to their creators in a way that TV series are not to their collaborative crew.
Plagiarism – the representation of another artist’s work as your own; a claim of false authorship. Plagiarism is considered a separate act from copyright infringement, though both may occur at the same time.
Copyright infringement – the use of an author’s copyrighted material without his or her consent.
Authors, you’re not helpless here. You may or may not choose to litigate if someone infringes your copyright, makes derivative works without your permission, or plagiarizes your work, but the most important step is in registering your copyright. Why take this extra step if, according to US copyright law, your copyright is automatically protected from the moment you create your work? Because then the argument “but I wasn’t making money off it” can’t be used against you, since you will be able to sue for statutory damages. It’s so important, I’ll say it twice. If your literary work is registered before the infringement takes place and you opt to litigate, you may collect statutory damages rather than actual money lost.
According to Wikipedia: The basic level of damages is between $750 and $30,000 per work, at the discretion of the court.
Plaintiffs who can show willful infringement may be entitled to damages up to $150,000 per work. Defendants who can show that they were “not aware and had no reason to believe” they were infringing copyright may have the damages reduced to $200 per work.
Personally, I’m tired of needing to know this kind of stuff. I want to tell stories, and I find it frustrating that there are people on the Internet willing to say, “Yay, Jordan’s new book is out, I’ll post it to this file sharing site then go crow about it to all my friends. I’m crazy about her work!” And I’m dismayed that I even tried to pick through the circular logic of the writer who thinks it’s fine to take Among the Living — and the whole PsyCop premise — change some names and call it her own because she’s not making money. She’s violating my copyright, pure and simple.
What does give me hope is the integrity of the fanfic community, which policed itself and got her plagiarism removed.
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Ugh, as a fanfic writer myself this just disgusts me. It’s important to me to respect the creators, not only of my fandoms, but all creators. The only things I can take credit for in my fanfic stories are the storylines and any original characters I create. This thief can’t even claim that much!
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This idiot just fails on so many levels. How can people be praising the story anyway? I’m sure the plot is good – since it’s yours! – but it would be some very unlikely cosmic coincidence if your Jacob and Vic were exact matches for the characters of Arthur and Merlin. So the “Arthur” and “Merlin” of the plagiarised story must be totally out of character. Of course I see plenty of fanfics where the only resemblance to the canon characters is their names, so I assume this person is one of *those* writers.
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I see they made the usual pathetic attempts to justify the unjustifiable. I wish just once one of these gits would hold their hands up and say “it’s a fair cop” when caught, instead of flailing about howling about “opreshun!”
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I can’t even understand it in the fanfic world. If money is involved, then that’s an understandable motive, the thief makes a financial gain. Despicable, but understandable. But posting someone elses work in order to garner praise of themselves? How does that even work? How does it boost a person’s ego when they didn’t even write the work that’s being praised.
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It’s an interesting point about a single author fandom being more sensitive to fanfic than the ones created by many people. I suppose it could also be a case of if the writer is still working with those characters, they’re less happy for other people to mess with them until they’re done with them.
I like that you bring up the storyline! In the plagiarizer’s argument, maybe it would have been okay for her to lift my entire storyline too, if she’d reworded it more. (The US Copyright office would disagree. I’ve read their stuff carefully.)
I always thought spinning the new storylines was the funnest part of writing fanfic. I can’t imagine why anyone would skip that step. It’s really the whole point.
Hah, by that argument I could write a story about a boy wizard who goes to boarding school and does all the exact same things as Harry Potter did as long as I rewrote it in my own words and gave people and things new names and expect to get away with it it. Definitely doesn’t cut it! Of course there are common tropes and plot ideas that crop up in lots of stories, but if they’re arranged in the exact same way as someone else’s there’s no way to claim that’s not copying.
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Putting the characters in situations they never encountered in canon is definitely one of my favourite things to do in fanfiction.
Ha ha! Make sure they all communicate by tying their messages to chickens.
Bloody hell. I love the bit in the self-justifying screed where we get the threat that if fandom has changed so much that this sort of story is no longer acceptable, she’ll take her ball and go home and you won’t be able to read her wonderful story any more. Speaking as a dinosaur of a dead tree zine publisher, there’s nothing new in thieving gits trying to take the credit for someone else’s work, but the change in fandom would be if said thieving gits *didn’t* get called on it once spotted.
Ha ha, yes, and the comment “if you have extra money” you might want to check out the original.
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Ya think?
Ebooks are so convenient, maybe too much so. If you published your stories in print for a few months and then released an ebook, that might delay the thievery, but it wouldn’t stop it.
The ‘you’ is not directed only to you, Jordan, but to any author. And the publishing companies.
So, I’m blaming the medium, the net, and not the thieves. (trying to be a bit funny here)
John, I agree, ebooks are WAY too convenient for piraters. I’ve considered going all-print because I’m so sick of electronic theft, but a few members in my Yahoogroup assure me that would make me very unpopular among my readers.
I still can’t believe how she is trying to justify her theft. And I can’t see Arthur and Merlin in the story, how would it even make sense?
I love how the fandom policed itself. I love fanfic. I loved being able to write the characters I loved in different adventures. Especially when my beloveds died… Coming up with ways to change that or bring them back was fun and a challenge.
Just changing the POV, a few words and character names doesn’t do it for me. And I’m glad she’s been reported to the communities.
Registering Copyright is a must, I just wish they had a bulk discount ;o) Especially if you write a lot of short stories.
Hm…interesting thought. A bunch of short stories put out as a single-author collection could be registered for one fee.
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I was very much into keeping my dead villains alive, too
Oh, please don’t go all print! As someone whose physical bookshelves are groaning under the weight, I love that ebooks are so much easier to store. From following TeleRead and Dear Author, my understanding is that print books are not immune to piracy, either, even if it’s a bit more technically challenging to do so.
Anyway, all my ebooks are either legal free downloads or purchases and I intend to keep it that way.
Not to worry. I’ve already decided it seems more fair to stop the copyright violations at the source, so rather than punish everyone who prefers to read an electronic book by going print-only, instead I’ll be aggressively defending my intellectual property rights against those who are violating it. My plans have been in the works for a couple of months now. I’d give you the details but then my keyboard might self-destruct
The excerpts from the British girl’s site read more like an adaptation. Like when we take a British TV script and adapt it to the U.S. market (i.e. The Office). But what I don’t understand is WHY she did it? She is not making money, there doesn’t seem to be any real creative outlet for her and she acknowledges the story isn‘t her‘s. I have friends who write for TV and film and they HATE doing cultural adaptations, they find them boring as hell. What did the British girl do all this work for?… a few compliments on a blog? It seems like a colossal waste of time to me.
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Jordan – Let me also say PLEASE don’t go all print. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. The illegal downloaders (freeloaders) wouldn’t paid for the content under any circumstances, so eliminating or delaying ebook releases would just punish the people who do spend their hard earned $ to read your stories. What I would be pissed about is people getting pleasure from my work without my consent (sounds little like rape – creepy).
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Now enough about plagiarism, go back to writing some great original stuff for us to buy. You can get your revenge by making one of the ghosts Vic sees a pathetic British blogger who died from a computer virus that crossed over into the real world!
Diane, it’s not an “adaptation”, it’s stealing. Jordan didn’t authorize an adaptation, and the plagiarized result repeats her original work word-for-word with first-person pronouns changed to third. Don’t sugar-coat theft with words like “adaptation”. I’m already pissed off enough about this situation.
Hi Diane, I’m really glad you explained what you mean about “adaptation” because at first glance I also thought you were attributing the plagiarizer with a lot more credit than she deserved.
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I don’t agree with, “You wouldn’t have sold those ebooks anyway” because the statement is right up there with “But it’s good publicity” in things that make me feel absolutely no better when I’m seeing my copyright violated. I think it’s the type of thing authors say when what they actually mean is, “I’m afraid to invest my time and money legally defending my rights, because I’m sure it will suck and I hate the confrontation.”
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I’m super-thrifty and I work at a library. How many books do I buy? Almost none. But when I absolutely want to read something and it’s not available through the library, I break down and buy a copy. (And if I get it through the library and I love it so much I need to own it, I also buy a copy.)
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I’m certain that for many of the infringers and thieves it would be the same. If my work were not available for free download because the Internet was scared of my legal representation, then they would either have to do without, or break down and pay the $1 to $6.49 pricetag.
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You’re so totally right that the thought of someone enjoying my work after they steal it from me is downright creepy! It’s actually quite disturbing to think they might steal something like Camp Hell, which probably takes 6-12 hours to read, maybe read it a couple of times. So I’ve entertained them for like half a week, and they don’t even feel they need to toss 6 bucks in my open guitar case. It’s a very yukky feeling, if not like rape, then like a peeping Tom with no way for me to plug the peephole once it’s there. A perpetual peephole!
Thanks, Jordan, for this information and thank you, Wave, for providing her the opportunity to post it. To say I was shocked when I heard about this happening would be an understatement. Why would anyone want to blatantly plagiarize like this, literally stealing someone’s work, word for word, and then passing it off as her own and basking in the complimentary feedback. How would she like it if it happened to her?
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One of the things that disturbs me most is the plagiarist’s smug sense of entitlement and her glib and endless supply of rationalizations, e.g., “Plagiarism isn’t an inherent moral wrong – it’s an issue firmly bound up in economic and patriarchal issues.”
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WTF? You might notice from the comments in Jordan’s LJ that someone dug up a link proving that the plagiarist was building her rationalizations as far back as 2007.
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Has the writing community changed so much since the rise of the internet? It seems like there is a younger generation that expects that all information and entertainment to be free of both price-tag and author attribution?
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I remember reading a post on the DearAuthor website in which one of them attended a RWA workshop on plagiarism given by Nora Roberts (who has been famously plagiarized), and she was shocked that hardly anyone else attended. Does no one care about this issue, especially among twenty year-olds today?
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I’m not criticizing fan-fiction communities. The community that was co-victimized along with Jordan handled this situation well. They greatly improved my opinion of the fan-fiction communities in general and the ability of its members to take action on issues of right and wrong.
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I notice that the plagiarist has locked down her LiveJournal and made it private. Clearly she didn’t expect the LiveJournal community to react with such disapproval, which is about the only way to get through to someone this self-centered: through social rejection.
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That or a lawsuit. She got really lucky that she dodged that bullet. But did she honestly think that she would get away with this sort of theft inside her community and no one would care? Not be too dramatic, but have basic concepts like “Thou shalt not steal” changed so much that now anything goes on the www?
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I’d encourage anyone who has been plagiarized to report it to places http://community.livejournal.com/stop_plagiarism/profile> because it establishes a record of abuse.
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Sometimes, at least in this case, social censure can actually penetrate the immense self-absorption of someone like this plagiarist because if they care about nothing else, they definitely care about how “cool” they look in the eyes of the world. It never helps to just shrug it off and look the other way.
Hi Val, thanks so much for all your thoughts on this matter! I know you feel passionately about intellectual property and this type of thing really toasts your bun.
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I really like how you explore the whole social censure aspect of the situation. If a fanfic writer is paid in the social currency of attention and compliments (which is a theory I’ve held for a few years), and then experiences the type of dramatic social censure this plagiarist did, isn’t that a social equivalent of a huge, honking lawsuit? Boy, talk about someone’s plan backfiring on them big time.
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Unless she has the fanfic equivalent of Munchauzen syndrome, and any attention is good attention. What about her beta reader? You know, the one cleaning out all those dreadful “Americanisms” from the text? She knew full well what was happening too and evidently thought the plagiarizing was a grand idea.
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I agree that the Merlin fanfic community wasted no time in cleaning house. Hopefully I can now count a few of them among *my* readers, since they were enjoying the story until they realized it was plagiarized, and then felt duped and dismayed.
Jordan, you said: “… and then experiences the type of dramatic social censure this plagiarist did, isn’t that a social equivalent of a huge, honking lawsuit? Boy, talk about someone’s plan backfiring on them big time.”
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She should suffer more, in my opinion. You’re right, this issue does toast my bun.
Val – You totally misunderstood me. I wasn’t defending the plagiarist. Adaptations require legal licensing of the source material of course. That goes without saying. I was just commenting on how adaptations are not usually a desirable exercise for the writers legally paid to do them because there is little creativity involved. I was trying to figure out why the person spend all that time to do it in the first place. It seems like a lot of tedious work just for some compliments on a blog.
Diane, I misinterpreted what you said earlier and I shouldn’t have implied that you were defending her. I see your point now. Why on earth would someone go to this much trouble to steal? Was she that desperate for attention?
[...] Today Jordan Castillo Price is talking about Plagiarism, in other words, stealing someone’s proprietary work and intellectual property, and she makes some recommendations about what authors can do to protect themselves. Please check out Jordan’s post here. [...]
Well, I’m not an author, never read/written fan fic, however I can see the appeal of writing new adventures for Harry Potter or Spock and Kirk. Authors don’t produce fast enough for our liking so we make up our own stories. Seems like a semi-natural inclination to me and makes sense. But to take a story that exists and just change the names and not even give them a new adventure but recycle one you’ve already read seems … weird? As someone said, why?
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You mentioned that the awards for cases are as low as $750 so I can see authors’ unwillingness to pursue a case. If you still need an EDJ to survive while being an author, it’s unlikely you can afford to spend $10,000 (and with lawyers that doesn’t take long) to win $2,000 even if you are making a statement. The time, effort and money may seem so overwhelming as to be impossible for some.
Totally, Tam, I absolutely get the appeal of writing “The next great adventures of…” your favorite guy, because damn it, he should never have been killed.
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The only reason I could see to plagiarize like that would be for the attention. I don’t see how anyone could even bask in the praise the readers were giving for all those aspects of the text the plagiarizer had not even written. That really is a head-scratcher.
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I got those figures from Wikipedia so I’m not sure what the usual “take” is. I would think the loser has to pay court costs. Honestly, though, for me the principle is secondary to the money. I might be poor, but I have an awesome credit rating, so thieves beware
I talked about this to a friend and we talked about how plagarism is cultural and time defined. Up until two centuries ago it wasn’t uncommon to copy ones work and add your own changes. There are many many different versions of manuscripts (Gawain and the Green Knight being one of them) and it was even considered an honour to be plagiarised. It is only something of the last century that it is considered bad and that there are things like copyright
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This doesn’t mean that I agree with plagiarism or piracy. However… I do understand the need for it.
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Sometimes I think authors and publishers take the whole no fanfic or copyright infringements too far. Not taking into account the content of fanfic, I would find it an honour if someone considered my work worthy of fanfic. (Not of course that it takes much for fanfic to appear)
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Back to the subject of copyright and in extension a bit, piracy. This is something that I’ve said before and that I can’t stress enough: the copyrights as they exist now do not apply to the age of cyberspace. They are OLD OLD OLD OLD. We try to apply old laws to new material. It just doesn’t hold. It’s like trying the apply the old welsh laws on divorce to divorce nowadays.
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If people would spent as much time trying to find a solution that would hold up in cyberspace as they are complaining about it, we would be there already.
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I know I know. People are not going to like this. And yes I know as much as I talk about looking at copyright differently, I still feel for those authors who loose money because of it. Sorry, but I can’t feel sorry for other parts of the entertainment world.
Here is my final post on the subject before I move on and let it drift into cooler waters, but I don’t think I can let that last statement lie without puzzling it through for my own edification and sense of closure.
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Larissa said: “I talked about this to a friend and we talked about how plagarism is cultural and time defined. Up until two centuries ago it wasn’t uncommon to copy ones work and add your own changes. There are many many different versions of manuscripts (Gawain and the Green Knight being one of them) and it was even considered an honour to be plagiarised. It is only something of the last century that it is considered bad and that there are things like copyright.”
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My thoughts? All right, plagiarism used to be tolerated in historical times. So did vendetta murders and polygamy. We’ve become a more law-abiding society since then and therefore I fail to see Larissa’s point.
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Larissa said: “This doesn’t mean that I agree with plagiarism or piracy. However… I do understand the need for it.”
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My thoughts? Really? I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why is there a need for plagiarism or piracy?
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Larissa said: “Sometimes I think authors and publishers take the whole no fanfic or copyright infringements too far. Not taking into account the content of fanfic, I would find it an honour if someone considered my work worthy of fanfic. (Not of course that it takes much for fanfic to appear)”
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My thoughts? Fan fiction is, as Jordan described it above, when someone borrows a writer’s fictional world and characters and then composes something ORIGINAL with those elements. Some writers might consider it an honor to have their work paid homage to in a fan-fiction but what happened to Jordan was theft of her exact words, which the plagiarist then passed off as her own. Two very different situations.
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My further thoughts? I’m sorry if I’ve misinterpreted anything Larissa has said because I don’t think it helps to try to muddy the waters here. The legitimate fan-fiction communities, whcih abhor plagiarism, would not appreciate being tarred with the same brush as the plagiarists. They’ve gone out of their way to be supportive and to show integrity regarding Jordan’s situation.
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Respecting the intellectual property rights of others is both a law-abiding and moral thing to do, whether or not we are in the modern age of cyberspace, and I don’t see why this would be even remotely difficult for anyone to understand.
Well…I didn’t say in this post that I agree with piracy or plagiarism. Not at all. I hate the lack of originality probably as much as you. I was just pointing out that our view of plagiarism has changed over the years.
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Hahaha have we really become more law-abiding? But that is an entirely different discussion
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During my studies on digital publishing we’ve talked about copyright quite a lot (focus was mostly on the Dutch copyright, though) and the outcome of a lot of discussion on copyright and the digital age was the same. Copyright as it stands now going to help protect (digital) authors. In fact most pirates will laugh at you if you start talking copyright to them.
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“Respecting the intellectual property rights of others is both a law-abiding and moral thing to do, whether or not we are in the modern age of cyberspace, and I don’t see why this would be even remotely difficult for anyone to understand.”
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It is. Trust me it is. There is a whole range of reasons why that is so hard. And i don’t mean any disrespect towards you, but it is people who are not willing to look different at copyright or the fact that it is not going to go away or change that makes it harder to find a viable solution.
And here I said I would resist the gravitational pull of this post and stay out …
But, Larissa, your response to my previous overheated post was so gracious. It’s a hard issue for me to face: plagiarism is a hot-button in and of itself. When it happens to a friend, it’s hard for me to calm down.
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You said: “And i don’t mean any disrespect towards you, but it is people who are not willing to look different at copyright or the fact that it is not going to go away or change that makes it harder to find a viable solution.”
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That’s okay, Larissa, I know you mean no disrespect. And your point is well-taken. With the advent of the digital age has come a new way of looking at copyright. I may not agree with it, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn more about it. By simply pointing out that this new viewpoint exists and isn’t going away, you’ve definitely given me some food for thought. Thank you.
Jordan – I think I understand how you feel. My work gets plagiarized frequently (I am a media business writer). My company’s lawyers told me they can send “cease and desist” orders but will not sue, because even if a financial judgment is awarded, damages are rarely collected (defendants file for bankruptcy) – so they would not justify the expense.
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Early in my career I felt cheated and was pissed that my company wouldn’t back me up, but I eventually realized they were right. My time is worth way more money producing new product for them to sell than chasing lost dollars down a black hole. I had a choice between being bitter and righteous or professionally and financially successful.
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Now when I learn another media company has stolen one of my papers, I just make sure their clients know they are untrustworthy; harming the plagiarist’s professional standing does far more damage than anything I would be awarded in court. Since your plagiarist’s currency IS their reputation, that should be even truer for you
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Anyway… that is just my experience. I hope you find a resolution that works for you.
I’ll bet that “cease and desist” still feels pretty good, Diane
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In my original post, I separated copyright infringement from plagiarism because they’re different, even though they might occur at the same time. My bigger financial concern is copyright infringement, so for me, it will be worth it to pursue the protection of my copyright.
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The plagiarism was more of a social issue in this case, although the plagiarizer was intending to do a “fusion” with my whole PsyCop series and post that for free online (a copyright violation) so there the issues get murky again.
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But this plagiarism isn’t something I needed to call the attorneys over. The fanfic community dealt with the situation faster and more thoroughly than any outside source ever could have.
[...] Oct 14: Read the Jordan Castillo Price’s post on this blog. [...]