Young Writers Society

First, if you haven't read this excellent article by Snoink, you should do so now.

Plagiarism was always something in the back of my mind. I knew it was wrong, but rarely thought about it. However, on another website, there was a user who plagiarized for a poetry contest. In addition, a recent work I reviewed here was found to be plagiarized. As I thought more and more about these two cases, I kept wondering, why did they do it? What good comes out of plagiarizing?

The answer is none. If you think everyone is going adore you for a work you didn't write, you're wrong. You may get positive praise at first, but how can you feel good about it? It's wrong on so many levels. By plagiarizing, you're cheating both yourself and the original author. You're cheating yourself because you aren't developing your talents and instead you're robbing the original author of their hard work. But, how do you know if it's plagiarism or not? Take a look at this writing gooder blog post.

What is plagiarism? Take it away, Snoink. You described it better then I ever could.

Snoink wrote:And just for those of you who don't know what plagiarism is, plagiarism is when you take some or all of an author's work and use it under your name instead. So if you don't give any credit to the writer who you are quoting, this is a form of plagiarism. And, if you post a story or poem under your name when it was actually written by another person, this is considered plagiarism as well.

Okay, so what if someone said something, and you really really like what they said and you want to use it in your story or paper? That's perfectly fine, as long as you give credit to the original author, like I did with Snoink.
Edit: Sorry, but it's late and I'm suffering from a bout of insomnia. Well, you can't publish a work that isn't yours and say, "oh this belongs to so and so". Citations should be applied to short paragraphs and other phrases used to help your own original work.
I understand that this post isn't going to completely eliminate plagiarism. It will still happen, but really, do you want to be banned, not just from YWS, but from pretty much any site that hosts some form of writing? You'll be shunned in the real world.

If you're too lazy to read this entire article, just know that nothing good can come out of plagiarism.

"Okay, so what if someone said something, and you really really like what they said and you want to use it in your story or paper? That's perfectly fine, as long as you give credit to the original author, like I did with Snoink."

This is actually wrong. It does not matter if you like what they said or how they said it, you cannot use it simply because you give credit to it. Sure a lot of things you can do this for, but ideas, excerpts, and other data cannot be taken and placed into another body of work simply because you cite it.

Copyright supersedes plagiarism worries. If you do not own it or are not using it under fair use, it doesn't matter what you do to it, it's illegal anyways. Fanfiction is illegal under this. Characters and settings are not your own, but yet people impose original ideas or even entire stories and they are still breaking the law.

George Lucas with Star Wars fanfiction for one, it didn't matter if you made up a new story, new characters and plot, if you were using Star Wars you could be brought into court on it. Whether or not you sold or distributed it. Most publishers do not care much for free work with small followings, but know this, it is plagiarism and copyright infringement. All of YWS fanfiction section is a massive liability then? Not entirely, it is only a few specific entities that care enough to stomp out public postings of fan-fiction. As such these authors and their characters and creations are not allowed on major sites like FFN. They are also in their right to do it because it is not you who created the idea or world. Just remember that.

In short, all fanfiction is plagiarism by definition. The only thing that protects authors is the fact its not worth it to drag people into court unless they are profiting off illicit fan works, usually.

Jianfre wrote:This is actually wrong. It does not matter if you like what they said or how they said it, you cannot use it simply because you give credit to it. Sure a lot of things you can do this for, but ideas, excerpts, and other data cannot be taken and placed into another body of work simply because you cite it.

I realize that. It was about 1:00 am and I was suffering from a bout of insomnia while I wrote this. I realized it was wrong a few minutes after this was posted, and as you'll see, I've edited the main post to include this.^^

Err... I thought the reasons for plagiarism being bad were pretty self explanatory, to be honest.

Just sayin.

Citing ideas, data, and excerpts is perfectly acceptable as long as you give credit. It'd be absurd any other way; how would you ever accomplish a research project for one? But, such use must constitute fair use. In judging what is and is not fair use, courts look to four factors:

- Purpose and character of use (basically, are you making money from it?
- Nature of copyrighted work (fact or fiction?)
- Amount and substantiality of the amount used
- Effect on the market for the copyrighted work

The most important factors are the first and fourth, although all four are important.

So the way Elinor quoted Snoink is perfectly fine. It was for a non-commercial use (factor 1), and the amount used was very small (factor 3). The other two factors aren't worth mentioning for this example really. The nature of Snoink's copyrighted work is expository which doesn't cause the analysis to lean one way or another, and since there is no market for Snoink's article, Elinor's quoting has no impact on it.

So yes: ideas, excerpts, and data may be quoted in other articles (again, how would you do a research paper?). Yet, only as long as such use is a fair use. You can also never copyright data per se, although you may copyright the analysis of that data.

With regards to fan-fiction on Internet forums, the legal area surrounding it is hazy. Unquestionably, trying to sell a fan-fiction novel is a infringement upon the rights of the copyright holder. But on Internet forums where the impact on the market of the copyrighted work is negligible and the author does not make any money, the legal rights have never been settled. That is, the issue of Internet forum fan-fiction has not been raised in a court of law. Until it is, people are free to argue whether it's copyright infringement or not (I lean toward the latter).


Some other notes...

Plagiarism is not illegal. What's illegal is an infringement of copyright. So for example, you can plagiarize entire poems by Emily Dickinson (this isn't true in Europe by the way) without fear of litigation. Yet of course, it's still morally wrong to do so.

Also, fan-fiction of any pre-1923 work is fine. That's why the author of "Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies" is able to sell his novel without the authority of Jane Austen's estate. The reason behind the 'pre-1923' part just has to do with copyright terms and a confusing amalgam of statutes. Suffice to say it won't be 'pre-1924' until 2018 (at which point you'll be able to increase it by one year every year, so 'pre-1925' in 2019 and so on and so forth until you hit pre-1978...).

Plagiarism itself is not illegal, but that is because it is typically under copyright infringement. I had originally put a piece in about fair use, but I think the point of this topic was not really about fair use but more for writer's stealing another's work. That is why I trimmed it and made the key note, copyright supersedes plagiarism.

Most people don't sell their fanfics, but there was a time when it was done. Which is why LucasArts went after such people. Though most people will never have to worry about this as long as you don't try to self-publish one. I seem to remember a fake Harry Potter book 7 going around that some one wrote a few years back. That is what I mean by illegal, its copyright infringement AND plagiarism. Though the court doesn't care about the plagiarism they do care about infringement and profiting off another's work.


Really the key point for 99% of us:
Just don't copy/paste and call it your own. Or try to sell it.