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

I just got a private message from a wonderful FoLC alerting me that I've been plagiarized on FF.net.

ETA: This link goes to a M rated story, so don't click if you prefer not to read nfic (or aren't of age to do the same.) It's not my sex that's included there; upon closer inspection, it seems the only change she made to my story was to add her own explicit descriptions to the opening love scene, which I had removed for the PG-13 version on the Archive.

I just posted a scathing review, calling the author out, but I'm not really sure what to do next. The person who alerted me says s/he will be reporting it to the admins of FF.net, but would more people doing so make it more likely that we get results? Is there some button I should be looking for to click on the site to alert the admins as the legitimate author? Can we flood the little thief to get her drummed out of the site?

And dammit, she posted the nfic version, too! Which totally violates the terms of the nfic archive, btw ... don't we still have that rule that you have to promise not to redistribute the stories found there? Grrrr.

(Though it does make me wonder ... who the heck steals the second part of a series? Wouldn't you think she'd post WFBL first? I mean, it kind of explains the backstory ...)

Help me, oh wonderful fellow FoLCs! I need the cavalry to come to my assistance.

Oh Kathy!!!! I am so sorry!!!!

This thread is about another case of plagiarism on ffnet [I think I didn't reread the thread] but there's some stuff in there. Wendy is good about knowing what to do/who to contact etc and I'm sure she'll be by in a bit.

That's awful on so many levels...

{{{KATHY}}}

Carol

Last time around, those in charge of ff.net were quite swift in removing the offending story. Which will be some small consolation.

To save you going through the entire previous thread, one of the important links posted there is for a group called Stop Plagiarism, who will out the author. You can find them here, Kathy, if you want to get going on reporting her there:

Stop Plagiarism

LabRat

Thanks, guys. I went to the old thread and followed Wendy's advice:
I now have a screenshot of the stolen story (and of course I have links to the original; gfic should be good enough.) I've also emailed the "author" in question to tell her that I knew what she'd done and will be sure to save a copy of anything she sends back.

Oh, and my review on the story -- the first review; caught it right away thanks to a stupid thief who didn't even change the title! -- has been posted, so everyone should be able to see it.

Fortunately, it's her first story -- under this nickname, at least -- so we don't need to go hunting for the authors of her other postings.

Of course, if any of you want to spam her on my behalf, I certainly won't object.

I posted a review - but if I recall, last time around it took a while to appear. I'm tempted to email the little git - except I can't for the life of me remember what log-in details I used last time I registered. (Which is the story of my life, really.)

But do keep us up to date with any response you get, Kathy. And be prepared for the plaintive "I didn't know I was doing anything wrong..." excuse, which, sadly, seems to be standard these days.

Pity we can't match her with a membership here or at Annesplace, so we could revoke her membership. Actually...can you PM me her eddress? It's a long shot, but you never know, if she was dumb enough to use the same story title, perhaps she used the same eddress on both accounts...


LabRat

To use Carol's words:
{{{{Kathy}}}}

You know, maybe in addition to the disclaimers authors should also add a footnote explaining plagiarism and why it is wrong. Just so the 'oh, that's not a cool thing to do?' response is invalid. After all, who knows what sort of sociopathic tendencies those twerps have. They really might never have heard of this concept commonly referred to as stealing

Michael

Now that I've taken a more detailed look, it appears that she did not actually steal the nfic version, but rather, stole the gfic version and added her own sex to the opening scene.

Everything else in the story looks identical, though. For some odd reason, she only added her own sex to the opening love scene, not to either the middle one or the end one. Maybe it was too much work for her? :rolleyes:

Just don't want anyone who actually follows the link to think that I wrote the sex in that opening scene. Trust me, mine is better.

Argh - I reviewed but it'll only let you review once per chapter and since she posted the whole bloody thing as one chapter...

Ah well.

That's interesting that the opening scene isn't yours Kathy - wonder if, since she stole everything else, if she stole that from someone else and pasted it at the beginning...

I tried to review again, too, Carol, with the same effect. Oh, well, maybe the next person who wants to try it can enlighten the readers about the sex scene. And I wondered the same thing, if she'd stolen it from someone else or thought adding a few lines here and there would somehow cosmically cover her.

Hopefully the story won't be up long enough for anyone to think I wrote those additions.

I'm so sorry, Kathy!

I can't believe that anyone would do that!!!

I hope 'her' story will be removed soon.

Kathryn

Unbelievable.

I started new college courses last week, and in one of them, there was a "plagiarism quiz" with links to the school's official policy laying out in great detail about how you should always do your own work and not steal anyone elses. It's very sad that they need to tell college students that.

PJ

Yeah - cuz it *always* works too Pam... :p 10 of 40 papers I got last semester had some level of plagiarism in them...

What do they teach in high school English?

Huh? The perpetrator is from the Phillipines? Just like the last plagiarist posting his not very own LnC fanfiction on ff.net. And this one certainly registered after the last one was thrown out. Coincidence?

Btw, the plagiarist's email adress is sixmahogany@yahoo.com - just in case anybody wants to write a love letter.

Okay, just wrote a review of my own, complimenting the author on his/her substandard work on rewriting the opening scene.

That's just so horrible! How do they have the heart/ brains? to do it?

I'm so sorry for you, Kathy. Your stories are so good and I hate to see them reproduced under somebody else's byline...

Hope they clear it out soon and ban that 'author' . I'll write to ff.net, too.

Oh, now that's just twisted!

LabRat

Aaawwww, Honey, we do know that! Yours are one of the best here.

I think that... that 'scum' is copying from them and some even help :p ...

But what profit do these "author" people get by pretending to be someone else?

Oh, good grief! to quote Charlie Brown. How can anyone in this day and age not know plagiarism is frowned on, especially by the real author of the piece? I have never bought the idea that they don't know. I knew it by the time I was in third grade!

I guess the only thing we can do is continue to be vigilant and report it when we find it. I'm sorry it happened, Kathy. I haven't had the experience yet, at least that I'm aware of, and it's one that I hope I never have to deal with.

Nan

sorry to hear about this. I just checked the link, and I think part of the opening love scene is from one of Wendy's nfics - some of the language caught my eye and reminded me of one of her stories....don't know why anyone would d this, i mean, what kind of satisfaction would you get? you're anonymous and you know you stole it...sheesh. its pathetic.

Hey Just caught this thread now. Sounds like you've done everything you can, Kathy, and it's now just up to ff.net to remove the story - which they will; it just generally takes them a bit of time to get around to it. The stop_plagiarism mods will also add that person to their list of known plagiarisers, also.

Sorry to hear this has happened to you!

And I don't recognise that opening scene at all, Sarah; it really doesn't look to me like anything I would have written. Could be wrong, of course; I do have a lot of stories out there, but it's not remotely familiar.


Wendy

All kidding aside, the sex scene she has added to the story isn't bad -- and if it does turn out to be stolen from someone else in FoLCdom, I'll be embarrassed and apologetic for insulting it just because I was in a bad mood. But yeah, she clearly thought that by changing the opening scene, no one would recognize it as the same story. I mean, she even kept the title. How stupid does she think we are?

LJK wrote:
Oh, that's very interesting, Lara. The way these serial-plagiarists work, that wouldn't surprise me at all. It seems like I've heard of a lot of cases where they just wait a few months for things to calm down, then create a new account and start up again. I guess it means we'll all have to keep our eyes open.

Thanks for all the support and the reviews on FF.net. We've pretty much guaranteed no one will think it was her story, LOL. No reply yet from the two emails I've sent her (not that I'm really expecting a reply), nor from reporting it to the admins of the site, but I'll keep you all posted.