Guest Post: Marilynn Byerly Explains Plagiarism

Plagiarism 

QUESTION:  What is plagiarism?  If I borrow an author’s style, is that plagiarism?  

Plagiarism is a very complex issue.  The most obvious example is a writer who has cobbled together many paragraphs of someone else's work with their own words as cement.  

A less obvious example is someone who uses someone else's work as a template to their own.  Each scene is a rewrite of a scene in someone else's novel.  

Another very common form of plagiarism is cutting and pasting text from a nonfiction source into a novel.

Famous writers certainly aren't exempt from being guilty of plagiarism.  Janet Dailey's flagrant plagiarism of Nora Roberts' novels is a perfect example.  (JD was proven guilty and had to pay restitution.)

  

Not so famous writers are also found guilty of the same thing.  Some years back, a teenaged novelist had her first novel pulled off shelves when readers found that she'd patched together several other books to create her own.

Copying someone’s style isn’t plagiarism as long as you aren’t copying content.  Many new writers try to emulate a favorite author’s style because they haven’t found their own yet.  After a few years, gained confidence, and the sheer difficulty of maintaining someone else’s voice, most develop their own style.  

As a reader, if you feel that the two books are so similar that it might be plagiarism, you should contact the publisher or the author, express your concerns, and let them decide whether this is plagiarism or not.  

Most authors have websites with contact information as do publisher websites.  

Marilynn Byerly On Fan Fiction

This week, a couple of copyright-related topics caught this author (Rowena Cherry's) attention.  Facebook is abuzz (if you know where to look) with a story about someone who might be called a permissionless innovator taking screen shots of other people's photographs on Instagram, blowing them up, allegedly removing any watermarks or embedded attribution, and selling the images for tens of thousands, with no payment  to the copyright owners.  This disruptive enterprise appears not to be in compliance with Instagram's TOS
https://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/

Secondly, allegedly on FanFiction.net there is a discussion of what one might call the literary equivalent, where someone is alleged to have copied works of short fiction written by various authors from DeviantArt and posted these stories under a different name and title. Unlike what has been alleged about Instagram, DeviantArt appears to this author to have a very good copyright policy, and prohibits "lifting". http://about.deviantart.com/policy/service/

And so to Marilynn Byerly's advice to published authors about fan fiction. Marilynn gives conditional permission for authors: "As all my articles on copyright are, you are welcome to use it with attribution and a link back to my site." 

http://marilynnbyerly.com/fanficandcopyrig.html 

Fanfic or fan fic or fan fiction -- stories written by fans using someone else's world. For example, lots of kids write their own Harry Potter fanfic stories. 
Readers and writers of fanfic often ask about the legality of writing stories using media or book characters. 
IN A LEGAL SENSE, fanfic is a copyright violation, but the owner of the copyright can choose to ignore it or prosecute it at their discretion. 
The essential rules of writing fanfic are-- • If the owners of characters in any media are fanfic friendly, it's okay to write and share it as long as it's not for profit. • If the owners of the characters, etc., in any media aren't fanfic friendly, don't share your fanfic in that universe if you don't want to be chased by lawyers disguised as pit bulls. • If the owners of the characters, etc., are friendly to fanfic but ask that you not write slash (heterosexual characters taking a partner of the same sex) or erotic stories, don't write it. Appreciate the creator's generosity in allowing you to use their universe and respect their wishes about their characters. 
Lots of fans like to thumb their noses at the copyright and trademark laws for various reasons, but it boils down to a matter of respect and thanks. If you enjoy someone's work, don't screw them financially, trash their characters, or disrespect their wishes on the subject. 
How does this relate to those of us who write original fiction? 
According to most publishers, we should ask readers not to write fanfic using our characters because it endangers our copyright. If you aren't averse to fanfic, you should check with your publisher before allowing it. 
Copyright violation is much more severe if the violation is in the same media. In other words, fanfic is more dangerous to the fiction writer's copyright ownership than it is to a movie's copyright. 

Marilynn Byerly 

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/ 
http://marilynnbyerly.com 

Happy Memorial Day!

Rowena Cherry

Should First Sale Doctrine Apply To Intellectual Property?

Marilynn Byerly has graciously consented to allow me to repost an article she posted on her own "Adventures In Writing" blog in November 2013.

Marilynn's comments are important as the USPTO is about to host a Roundtable on the topic of copyright reform with regard to whether First Sale Doctrine should apply to digital works, and as a group of Berkeley lawyers attempts to start a "grassroots" movement to change (weaken) copyright protections under the law--which I infer is for the benefit of Amazon, Google, libraries, and freetards-- but not for professional authors.

Should eBooks Be Resold Like Used Paper Books?

The Department of Commerce is asking for comments about 
Digital First Sale and the possible changes to copyright law
 that would allow an ebook to be resold.  

Here’s my letter.

The biggest problem with the resale of “used” e-books 
is e-book piracy.  Some think that cheaper books mean less reason to 
pirate books and that’s true to a certain extent, but used e-books also
mean that authors and publishers will no longer be able to prove 
that an online copy has been stolen.

Right now, publishers and authors license their books to specific 
resellers/distributors like Amazon Kindle, BN’s Nook, and Smashwords. 
If a book is available at any other site, the publisher and author know 
instantly that that book is pirated, and they help the authorities take 
these sites down.  

These sites are fairly common, and some look like legitimate 
book-selling sites so the consumer is no wiser that they are buying
 stolen books.  Some of these sites actually sell the books, others 
are scams which steal credit card information and install viruses 
on the victim’s computer.  

If e-books are sold used, the scam sites will be able to fly under 
the legal radar.

Pirate sites will claim that their books are being given away for free 
by legal owners so they can continue their dispersal of illegal copies.  

If e-books are sold used and a site or individual can sell thousands 
of copies  of the same ebook by saying that they are selling one used,
there will be no way  for the author/publisher to prove this.  
This will essentially make book theft a crime that can’t be punished.

Even readers who want to do the right things by buying legally won’t 
be able to tell who is a legitimate reseller and who isn’t.  

Readers looking for bargains will buy illegal books instead of legal 
ones, the profit margin for authors and publishers which is small now 
will plummet to the point that publishing will no longer be profitable
for anyone, and those who make the money will have done nothing
to create books.  

Allowing the sale of used e-books will destroy all value to copyright.

Marilynn Byerly, Author

Thank you, Marilynn Byerly.

My best wishes,

Rowena Cherry