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.

sorry wendy, just the line about superman "the lover" and clark, as 2 diff. people reminded of one of your fics - maybe "a conscious choice"? anywho, lines of it do seem familiar, so its probably been stolen from several places...

I'm so sorry - and angry! - that this happened to you and your wonderful story, Kathy. I'm glad, though, that it was brought to your attention so quickly and hope FFN will get the story down soon. It's awesome how FOLCs look out for one another!

Looked over it briefly, one line from the M part screamed at me as familiar. It, at least in part, is from A Conscious Choice: The Morning After by Wendy Richards and Yvonne Connell.

Oh!!!

Well, that makes two times that Yvonne's been plagiarised, then. She wrote the love scenes in that story, not me!

Thank you, guys, for checking it out for me. I appreciate it! And, of course, the 'author' has actually just copied and pasted the story from where it already is on fanfiction.net!


- Wendy

After whoever it was said that about Conscious Choice I went and looked at the 'Morning After' file - searched for 'Superman the lover' and sure enough big chunks of it are from there - not quite all but most...

Carol

ETA: Of course, I've already commented on it since she posted it in one big chapter so I can't comment again and call him/her out on the nfic plagiarism... Who does this stuff? /me doesn't get it...

I wonder if some people know it's wrong and do it just to watch people get mad at them. Kind of like trolls.

Actually, Wendy, the relevant scene is available on ff.net here:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/23890/1/A_Conscious_Choice_the_morning_after

(again that link is to a rated M fic)

So they may not necessarily have access to the restricted forums/Anne's Place.

Yes, I realised that and edited my post, Lieta And I reviewed on ff.net pointing out that the 'author' had very skilfully managed to copy and paste from two different web-pages.
(http://www.fanfiction.net/r/5213445/) It amused me :rolleyes:


Wendy

Yes, you would think that in a section of ff.net that sees as few additions as the LnC section (I rarely even check it as it seems as though at least 90% of the current authors post here as well) that the perpetrator would realize that adding a plagiarized fic THERE would be incredibly obvious.

Kathy, did you actually submit a report to stop_plagiarism? If you haven't, I strongly recommend that you do.

- Wendy

And there I go, right into the "embarrassed and apologetic" category.

For the record, I love Yvonne's writing and have often raved about it. I was annoyed and being flip because I thought the little thief had written the other stuff herself in a lame attempt to "make it her own" and I lashed out without even reading it closely. I just knew it wasn't mine. Sorry, Y.

Though I must say, the fact that she took another story from FF.net to add?? That just boggles me even further. And here I'd been wondering if I should be posting all my fic to FF.net myself as a way to protect this from happening in the future. Obviously not!

ETA: I haven't reported it to the LJ site yet, Wendy. I have a mental block about how to do things like pasting screen caps on LJ -- it's been years and I still have to consult the FAQ each and every time, LOL -- and as such, it would have required more mental effort than I had energy for today.

I wonder if I could say something else... if somebody hasn't already done so.

I've noticed that in many of the fandoms they want us to give reasons why they should make us a member. Even in this one (for the NFanfic access) we have to state explicitly that

"I'm a fan of L & C and older than 18. So, please grant me access... blah blah..."

So, why not add another field in which we ask them if the members-to-be know what plagiarism is and ask to to solemnly swear not to do it? If they don't know what it is, then please go google it, learn what it is and come back later!!!

I mean, it would at least prevent them (those who actually have something called conscience) from giving an excuse like:

"Oh is it wrong? I never knew. I thought stealing words is not actually stealing..."


It was just an idea...

Karen's kindly offered to help with the screencaps, Kathy. All you'll need are links to them. You can post those links, along with links to your fic and the one of mine and Yvonne's (which is here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/23890/1/A_Conscious_Choice_the_morning_after ).

Hope this helps!


Wendy

Kathy, if you've already got the screencaps, you can upload them somewhere like flickr, LJ\'s scrapbook gallery , or you can see if your ISP has free webhosting. Once it's uploaded, all you have to do to link them is do one of the following:

<a href="http://linktopicture.com/folder/picture.jpg">Picture 1</a>

or

<img src="http://linktopicture.com/folder/picture.jpg">

If you need the screenshots made and uploaded, I can do those for you.

(((((Kathy)))))

Well, that's a back-handed compliment if I ever heard of one. Obviously this person loved your story if he wanted to claim it as his own. Cold comfort, I'm sure.

I added my review to the story. There isn't a single review there that isn't from one of us.

Go get'em!

Hmm, when originally scanning the first scene, must have hti the page down button twice or even three times (which happens when my computer needs a few seconds to do whatever it is a computer does when it doesn't react), missing one whole page. No wonder I had the feeling that something was missing in that scene (which made me think it was bad).

No offense, Yvonne!

Thanks to Karen and Wendy's help, I submitted the evidence to the Stop Plagiarism LJ community last night. It's awaiting moderator approval right now, but I'll post the link once it's up so you all can see what comes of it. The story is still up on FF.net, but I do find it funny that all nine reviews are from FoLCs calling her out, LOL.

There's a reason I've been a FoLC for so long. I love this community!

I posted a review. How pathetic. I hope that plagiarizer is ashamed and embarrased enough not to try this again.

OK, my mom took Collin shopping with her, so now I have time to put on my pink armour and come rushing to Kathy's defense.

Not to defend the person who stole your story, but I think the Internet has so badly blurred our concept of plagiarism that some people may not understand what it is anymore.

Look at the number of web sites that copy language directly from other sites without attributing the information to an author. I was recently doing research on "kidney failure in dogs," and of the first five web sites I found, four of them said the same thing, in almost identical words. "Research" used to mean going to a number of sources and copying the pertinent information from each onto a note card, then summarizing it in your own words, with reference to the sources. Now it means going to Wikipedia (unless your teacher has warned you that they will be checking the Wikipedia entry, so you find a different site), highlighting the text, hitting "copy," and pasting the language that you have found into your own document. Since the person doing the "research" hasn't actually typed any of the text, they have no motivation to go to the additional trouble of stating it in their own words.

I don't read ff.net, but does it make you pledge anywhere that the person posting the story must be the actual author? Or do some people think they can simply post a story that they like?

So I realize that you're outraged, Kathy (and I would be too), but in a sense it IS a compliment to your writing. I'm going to have to look for your story and read it myself now.

Yeah, but while it may be a compliment to her writing, the person is also suggesting that Kathy is too dumb to find out that her story has been stolen.

With compliments like that, I'd rather have someone tell me I look fat today and NOT steal my work.

Thanks, guys, for the support. I really appreciate it.
LOL, Jenn! That Zymac, especially, is pretty darn ineffective, isn't he?

And I agree about the "how dumb was she?" aspect of this particular plagiarist. Most of them at least change the title to hide what they've done, but she didn't even bother doing that! I can only assume she thought that since the story was posted back in 2002, I was long gone from the fandom and no one would be around to call her out.

CM, all my stories are on the L&C fanfic archive. You can find a list of them here . Thanks for your interest.

If you want to read the stolen story, I should point out that 1) it's actually the sequel to another story, though each one does stand alone, and 2) there are nfic versions of each (ones that I wrote, not with scenes inserted from other authors, LOL). Those can be found on the nfic archive, or from me directly. The first story in the series is called "When Friends Become Lovers" and the second (the one that was plagiarized) is called "When Lovers Become More".

And then you can join the puppy dog faces hoping to see When More Becomes Everything someday .

Carol [who loves Kathy ]

Kathy, I'm so sorry this happened to you - and, of course, to Wendy and Yvonne, too! I just left my review on ff.net. I hope the story is taken down quickly.

Huh?
/hijacks thread/




(puppydogds were out)

Michael

Now, back to the real purpose of this thread.

It strikes me that the idea of plagiarizing anything related to Lois and Clark is interestingly ironic. After all, in the LnC universe, one of the core elements of why Lois is… well, the way she is… traces back to her experiences in having her work stolen multiple times.

I guess I find this sort of theft most troubling because I simply can’t see the underlying motivation. When I think of what must move someone to steal in this way it makes my head spin. There are various reasons to write and then post a fanfic:
1. You may have an idea that you want to share.
2. There is the sense of participating in a community. (The LnC community is particularly great!)
3. Completing a work brings a feeling of accomplishment.
4. Of course, positive feedback never hurts either.

When someone steals like this, all that they could possibly get (that I can see) is #4 and that will be under false pretenses. I have trouble seeing how this sort of act would do anything other than make you feel worse for the experience.

But then, I just don’t understand people sometimes.

Bob

Oh, yes! YES! YES! YES!

Will you?

You guys are wonderfully encouraging. Thank you!

(And regarding Bob's reference to Lois's past, I can't deny that when I found out, one of my first thoughts was to paraphrase, "I won an award for that story; didn't even thank me for my 'input'." LOL!

OK, as for the deal with WMBE ...

There is a chance it will be written someday, though I can't promise when. Obviously, if I had a magic wand, it would have been written years ago. Ditto if I had some way of uploading the scenes in my head directly to the screen. But I still do have the file and have even added to it here and there over the years. I even toyed more than once with posting my outline, just so everyone could see what is going to happen next in the universe and how L&C are going to make it to the altar. But even when I was busily writing for other fandoms, I could never quite give that story up. I always held out hope I could return to it someday. And now that I'm back in FoLCdom ... well, the chances are better.

The thing is, it's a long story. Maybe even a monster story. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I ran a word count on my outline. Not the scenes I have written so far, mind, but my outline. It's over 11,000 words. The outline! It's completely overwhelming.

But I have done some work on it lately. The 92 bullet points (!!) have now been broken down into four sections, as that particular universe works its way through Ressurection (part 1), TF/TJO (part 2), IR (part 3), and WWW/ATAI (part 4).

My hope now is to tackle each part in turn, maybe even posting as I finish each one instead of waiting until the whole thing is done. But even that is a ways off -- "WMBE: Resurrection" is the furthest along, but I still only have 8 of its 29 bullet points actually written. So all this is my way of saying, "I'm still hopeful, but fear we may all be reading it in our rocking chairs at the retirement home."

That said, I have been working on something else, and although it's going to be a long story, too, I've been making slow but steady progress on it for the last few weeks. In fact, the whole plagiarism thing didn't so much anger me, as it did annoy me over the distraction from my current story.

Thank you all for your support. You have no idea how much it means to me!

yeah, that's sort of what I figured, too. You know, I do wonder when the first plagiarist will claim 'but I didn't even sleep with the author so it should be okay'

Michael

My first inclination is to say *RUN!* but I want to read WMBE too so I won't say that...

And it is in Labby's inbox waiting for some wonderful GE to end up with it in *their* inbox .

Carol

On the plus side, though, Google makes it really really easy to get caught. And there are software packages specifically designed to catch plagiarisers. A class or two ago, in a discussion thread, somebody said something high-falutin'. The professor replied that it was a quote from a website (he had the URL) and in future please use your own words.

And all my professors have stated that you can't use Wikipedia as a source. At all. It might give you an idea of where to look for info, but it cannot be relied on, should not be quoted, and is ineligible as a reference.

PJ

My best friend had an assignment in an asian studies class to critique a wikipedia article. Everything from failure to provide sources to inaccuracies was cited.

She was surprised when, in the article she chose and researched, there were quite a few direct quotes used without references.

And this makes it hard for those who have done their work and end up being copied - they get accused of stealing the thief's work. That's happened to me. I mean, how many ways are there to say 'Tomatoes need to be planted when the soil is warm.'?

True. And I dunno why using certain common sentences such as definitions or even stereotyped answers to certain common questions in stories would be considered plagiarism.

I mean if I were to say,
"Hi. I'm Lane, Lois Lane."
then does it really mean that I'm stealing Ian Fleming's (or whoever's) words, especially if I really liked my martini "Shaken, not stirred."

In fact, none of the words/sentences I've learned ever since birth are mine. I copied my parents...

What I mean is, somewhere along the way, I might have been influenced by the so many great books and stories that I've read and the words of certain authors who've influenced me are so engraved, etched and carved into my mind that I might have unconsciously (without opening any such material for the usual ctrl+C and ctrl+V) reproduced them in my own stories.

Is that copying? Or stealing words?

There is a thin line between 'being inspired by' and 'blatantly stealing.' It thins a lot more when it comes to academic works and other publications. A few words here and there, a turn of a phrase, a simple sentence, while could be pointed out exists here, here, and there, can be attributed to chance or embedded memory, or something that just can't be worded well any other way. But when you start stealing chunks, such as several sentences in a row, full paragraphs, or in this case, full works, it becomes quite obvious that someone took the easy way out. Wikipedia, of course, is full of examples of this, taking full chunks from varying websites.

Most professors notice this with students, especially those in class, when the paper's voice sounds a lot different from the student's voice. When it's something read by a large audience, such as a newspaper, magazine, or work of fiction, there's bound to be someone who has read the original source and will point it out. And when it comes to a tight-knit group like ours, it makes it just as easy.

I put my two cents in as well at ff.net.

Wonder how much longer it will take for the story to come down?

Plagiarism FAQ

This might help you out a little, CG. It was written for the Archive - by Wendy I think - a time back, after one of the plagiarism events here in FoLCdom.

LabRat

From the FAQ:
Yup! Having never ever written anything before L&C stories, it's good thing I followed the other FoLCs example and included disclaimers wherever I thought was necessary. I think that's the only thing that differentiates between
I did know that plagiarism meant stealing someone else's work/idea, but I never knew that there were so many ways to do it. And this link - Statement on Plagiarism by Charles Darling mentioned in the FAQ was really helpful in showing the distinctions.

Thanks, Labby.

I'm so sorry this happened to you, Kathy.

I just left a nice little review of my own (and must admit to a certain amount of pleasure at being mean and sarcastic!)

Darn pregnancy hormones!

I certainly hope that the "author" of this fine story is outed and your work removed out from under Super Duper Stupid's name...er, I mean Super Dupper cutie.

I believe they've removed the story. I just tried the links out, and the link to the story takes us to a
But I think the *author's* registration hasn't been canceled.

Yes! They've finally removed the story, but the author's profile is still there. I don't know how they usually handle things -- I've been told they are usually faster to remove stories than this

Oh, and the stop plagiarism LJ site seems to be a bust for us this time ... the day after my post was put in their moderator queue, they posted to say that they were 2-3 weeks behind due to busy real life schedules and didn't expect to be caught up until later in the month. I sent them screen caps of the stolen story, so they'll still be able to verify the plagiarism, but with the story taken down and the author ignoring email, I doubt they'll be much they can do aside from add her to their watch list.

Still, at least she now knows that she won't be able to get things by us in FoLCdom.

Thank you, so much, everyone, for your awesome support. As I've said a million times before, I love this place!

I know this has mostly been resolved already, but I just wanted to say that I saw the reviews all of you wrote on FF.net and they led me to the site where the real story is located...and to this board.

I'm fairly new to FoLCdom, so I wouldn't have been able to recognize that the story had been stolen.

Hopefully I wasn't the only one that was led to the real story and the rightful author.

Welcome to the boards, livewithfreedom. Thanks for joining. You seem to be one good result of this whole deal.

Hi LWF!

So glad to have you! Glad something good came out of this nonsense .

Carol

Hi too, LWF! Welcome to the boards. You might try this site too if you are interested in Lois and Clark: http://www.lcfanfic.com/
There are over 3,000 stories (yes, 3,000) there.
regards
Artemis

Hi and welcome, LWF! Hope you have fun with us.

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Back to the plagiarist: I put him on author alert, so should he post another story, I will know. And have a look at it.

Stop_plagiarism got to this finally and a mod is investigating. The mod has asked if anyone has any more screencaps of the plagiarised story - I don't think it really matters too much at this stage, since the story is already gone, but if anyone does have any could you post them on that LJ thread? Or, if you don't have an LJ, send me a PM or post here with the link and I'll post them for you. (Kathy's in the middle of a move right now so I don't want to bother her).

Thanks!

Wendy

Just for the record, I'm not in the least offended, Kathy. I'm not even that bothered about the plagiarism - only insofar as it's a lazy, greedy, and rather pathetic thing to do. On a personal level, I couldn't care less!

My thanks to Wendy for bringing this to my attention.

Yvonne