What the heck is it with people plagiarizing?

[MorningGlow]

I can't believe my eyes. Last week, I was finishing up editing a novel for a friend, and WHOMP, on the second-last page, there was a big chunk of text lifted from Wired magazine--of all places (yikes!)

Last night, I was working on a magazine column I ghostwrite for two people. I looked over the notes they sent, and for some reason decided to drop a sentence into Google. WHOMP again--there was a whole paragraph lifted from a blog.

I am SOOOO glad (and grateful to my guardian angel) that I caught both of them, because as an editor (in the first instance) and representing the magazine editor (in the second place) (she trusts me enough that she doesn't expect what I send her is going to be plagiarized), I could have gotten into some hot water.

I could use the excuses that the novel isn't going to sell many copies (if it ever gets published) and that nobody is going to catch the text lifted from a blog and dropped into a column in a trade magazine, but I can't. Because it's not about getting caught, it's about ethics in the first place. Does anybody have those anymore?

Sigh. Okay. I'm done ranting. But I'm still going :wtf:

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. I've noticed that a lot of what is happening is a reflection of how we

do things in business.

Take the legal profession. The number of lawyers who actually come up with novel thinking are few compared to those who rely on Lexus to do all the work. You type in one word, and all the cases come up showing you which precedents to use and how to apply them. So, if there is a bad judgment made somewhere along the line, you probably won't have a lawyer that will see it, unless you show it to him yourself.

I do have a question about plagiarism, for anyone who has an answer. What happens if you're writing and you come up with a hook you think is great, and it is creative and unique, at least you think it is, but later it gets published and someone finds the wording similar in another writing which you may or may not have read before. But it's not a whole paragraph word for word, just ideas that parallel each other and maybe a sentence or two that might be spot on because they were talking about the same thing. How do you differentiate it when ideas are the same? There are millions of writers, how could there not be similar writing patterns? Again, not whole paragraphs, but a hook in a sentence, for example.

[MorningGlow]

2. I also think it's a result of how easy it is to look things up on the Web

"In my day" (insert cranky old fart voice here), you'd really have to jump through hoops to plagiarize. I mean, research consisted of reading at the library, interviewing people, etc. Unless you intentionally copied, by hand, a chunk of text from an article or a book you found at the library, then typed it into your own book or article, you were most likely not going to end up plagiarizing. It used to be a conscious decision.

Now, with the ease of the Web, we can look up a million articles, and cut and paste from someone else's work with a minimum of effort, and not think anything of it.

Personally, I don't have a problem with lawyers being able to look up precedents and use them, but if they lifted some other attorney's closing arguments for a similar case and just changed the names and specifics of the circumstances, THEN there'd be a problem.

I guess, to answer your last question, plagiarism is kind of a gray area, and it depends on how much you pick up and how identical it is (and whether you did it on purpose). However, it's hard to prove you did it by accident--remember, George Harrison got nailed for using three of the same musical notes as the Chiffons. And plagiarism of ideas and writing patterns is harder to prove than lifting actual words.

I guess I should be grateful that my idiot clients lifted the very words. The novelist e-mailed me, "After I heard from you, I ran the text through Copyscape, and it told me that only 80 words were the same." I had a dickens of a time trying to get him to understand that 80 words is 80 words too many!

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. copyscape. Thank you. I'll plug in my novel sentence and see if

anyone has ever said it before.

Sounds like you might know the answer to this: If you're writing a fiction for the commercial market, and you create a story line that involves some new medical condition which is described on a on-line medical journal (The whole fiction you created in your head is based on similar such articles) can you quote that article as long as you give the on-line journal credit? Do you have to contact the web person and ask for permission if you give them footnoted credit, even though your commercial story is fiction?

[MorningGlow]

4. You can quote anything as long as you source it

Because then you're acknowledging that it's not your idea, but somebody else's..."and here is the name of that somebody". That makes all the difference in the world.

I ran into the same deal with the novel I was editing--the author mentioned the brand name of a product used in alternative health circles. Then he included part of an article extolling the benefits of the product. My first question to him was where did the article come from, and he told me that he wrote the "article" himself, as fiction (he told the truth--I checked!), so that was okay. But we agreed that since the product itself was real, perhaps we should include the name of the inventor and contact him just to be polite and let him know his product was going to be mentioned in a novel--cover our bases, so to speak. The guy was thrilled and couldn't have been happier to hear we were going to include it. So even if a quote and source is what you need to be legal, you win friends by double checking anyway.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Thanks, MG.

I take it you're an editor?

[MorningGlow]

6. No problem TBC!

Yes, I'm a freelance writer and editor. My last full-time job was as an associate editor at a magazine; I was there for four years before I decided to stay home and spend more time with my toddler--but work keeps finding me! That's okay, though--our bank account could use the green.