If you look in the right places, you’ll see the internet simmering this week over many different cases of plagiarism brought to light. Some of it is mind-boggling. Some is just pathetic.
Wait, didn’t I write this post last year? Yes, something similar. This may become an annual thing.
Amazon’s Kindle and CreateSpace may have been the best inventions in the world for self-published authors. (I may try to join the ranks of the self-published sometime soon, so I understand this very well.) But that same free, easy publishing (plus relatively high ebook royalty rates) has spurred a rash of brazen plagiarism and unethical, if original, for-profit writing.
Kindle and CreateSpace are to publishing as nuclear power is to the world’s energy future: incredibly useful if managed responsibly, but chronically lethal if not. Kindle and CreateSpace can be the California Gold Rush for some self-published authors. They can become Chernobyl for others.
Amazon does not tend to police uploaded work for plagiarism issues, only the more-sensationalized problems of outright pornography, child abuse, and extreme violence. (And even in those territories, Amazon seems to apply widely-varying standards.) It’s not Amazon’s core function to police intellectual property theft. The logistics alone are insane.
This is where the internet, search technology, and networks of authors and readers come in very handy – on both sides of the battle. Some estate/trust copyright holders are thrashing it out long after the contested works should have gone into public domain. Some living copyright holders are just now discovering their work has been stolen. Some plagiarists fall back on sympathy ploys or bizarre excuses. Some make return attacks, or escalate to criminal threats.
I am an unrepentant fanfiction writer. I draw the line at selling it in unchanged form (and frankly, most fanfiction can’t survive separation from the framing stories that inspired it).
Likewise, I can’t see the point in trying to pass off someone else’s unattributed original work as my own. The ease of research now makes that pure folly. I can copy and store any text, then compare it with online databases to see if anything matches. Public schools and universities are using more sophisticated versions of the same search technology to spot pirated term papers and other required assignments.
So anyone doing this, repeatedly and openly? Has to be young, or stupid, or obsessed with self-validation to a dangerous degree, or possibly all three. There are darker reasons, but I have good reason not to air them in public.
The world is very big and very connected. Similarities eventually get noticed.
Some writers plagiarize because they think that’s the only way they can build a huge backlist quickly enough to draw in maximum profits. (Their Amazon sales ranks usually tell the opposite story of steep drops in rank after publication, instead of the steady pulse of real word-of-mouth advertising.) They’re counting on sympathetic, credulous readers who will rise to defend them against any perceived attacker. When the plagiarist pirates images or text from a company known for aggressive intellectual property management, shit gets real. Expensive lawsuits happen, families are shocked, lives are ruined, and reputations are shattered.
The secret here is not – as I’ve begun to see in Twitter posts – ‘Don’t Get Caught!’
Don’t start plagiarizing for profit.