It could be a hoax, but, honestly, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was real. The internet seems to have spawned some weird forms of logic and morals when it comes to this issues and it is astonishing how some people don't believe they're doing anything wrong with this behaviour and are surprised to be called out on it by the author.
It reminds me of an editor I dealt with once, who ran a paper zine - before the internet came along. I had sent her a copy of one of my stories for her zine and everything was going along swimmingly until she sent me back a section of the story for some reason. I can't remember why now, but it was something innocuous.
However, I just so happened to turn the page over and discovered that she had changed two lines in one paragraph to something completely different. I queried this and was told that she had 'fixed' it as she didn't think it 'worked.' I immediately wanted to know, of course, what other edits she had made without telling me and she sent back the story - with a whole slew of edits. Not just fixing typos, but actually rewriting sections that she felt she could do better. And she was completely unrepentant when I challenged her. If she didn't think that the characters could have made it up to the top of that hill in the time I'd given them - she changed it. If she didn't think a character would say that - she changed it.
What really irked me though was that if I hadn't by sheer luck spotted that first change I would never have known until after the story was published. She certainly didn't feel she needed to mention it!
She got increasingly annoyed that I felt aggrieved and even employed a friend to go over the story and tell me all of her changes were right and I was wrong to protest. Finally, I told her to...well, I was polite, but let's just say the story was withdrawn for consideration.
But it still amazes me to this day that she felt she could just rewrite the story to better suit her own idea of it and all without believing she needed to let me know what she was doing. She seemed to believe that once she accepted the story for publication in her zine, copyright was transferred to her and it was hers to do with as she pleased.
LabRat
