Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic The Internet is Public Domain! Copy at Will!

Not really. I'm guessing everyone here knows better than that. Not that we haven't had a few plagiarism issues from time to time in the fandom, but they've been blessedly rare.

So...

Did anyone catch the Cooks Source debacle going on today?

They apparently lifted her period piece about apple pie and printed it [though they did apparently give her credit]. She emailed them asking for an apology and a donation [amounting to .10 a word] to be given to a journalism school. This was the [eventual] response from the editor:

There's now a Facebook page set up for other violations to be reported - including Paula Deen, Weight Watchers, and even a Disney subsidiary.

And the rewrites? 'Fixed' the period piece spellings etc and made them modern. That doesn't so much improve a period piece...

Of course, if this somehow ends up being a big ole hoax, then I may as well have apple pie on my face...

[While I suppose it's possible this case is, that many reported ones seems unlikely to me.]

I was just coming here to post about this. The actions of this women (the editor, not the author) have left me almost speechless. I have to admit I'm somewhat enjoying the public flogging she is receiving.

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

Apparently more or less everything published in the magazine was lifted from one or another web site - not just blogs, but fairly big magazines etc.

Which is why they may be hearing from Disney's lawyers some time soon, one of the sites belonged to The Mouse. I'd sooner try to steal from the Mafia...

And Martha Stewart. Another site had a comment about Martha's lawyers turning her into a puree, with a nice decorative garnish.