Small Buffy playjerism wank...
Playjerism, omg! A friend -- who probably would prefer not to be named, the wuss -- dropped me an e-mail asking if I'd post this.

Once again, the Buffy fandom shows us that not only is imitation the best form of flattery, plagiarism is the sweetest form of revenge. Or something like that. remember_nomore has come under fire for plagiarizing a fic. Or two. Or maybe three. I'm losing count. Of course, she is the victim of teh_ev0l comspiracamy...an unnamed "hacker" has apparently been plaguing her for months now, and finally realized that the best way to hit her where it hurts is to post slightly-overwrought plagiarized stories both on an LJ comm from her LJ and on her story archive site. Such hacking talent gone to waste, when she could be doing computer fraud. It is to weep....

The original post

Plagiarism

It is my sad duty as moderator of the spiketara-community to alert people to a case of plagiarism. Sometimes two people have the same idea, after all we draw from the same source material, but when two stories are almost identical, when one story is lifted via cut and paste and posted under a different name, with only slight alterations, then it is a case of theft.

Fandom is where we express ourselves, our sandbox where we play pretend, where some of us invest large amounts of time and effort into writing stories about our favourite characters. In the Buffyverse we are fortunate, because we do so with the overt approval of Joss Whedon himself. Fandom is a shiny place that -- in spite of the occasional shipper war or kerfuffle -- brightens our lives. Someone who steals another writer's story also steals some of that bright lustre -- from all of us.</font>

The facts:

Today I received an email from moxie_fic, asking me to compare a story she'd written last year with one posted in our community three months ago. She was able to back up her authorship. She asked me very politely to take the story down and to please contact the author in question and request that she may also remove the story from her archive.

2003-10-08: moxie_fic archived a Spike/Buffy story called Killing me Softly at adult ffnet (you can see the date listed). She opened a thread at Crumbling Walls and posted the story to a Yahoo group. She also archived the story at her own site. She even won an award for the story.

2004-06-05: remember_nomore posted a Spike/Tara story called I can't want you....but I need you.. . She also added it to her archive Deepest Desire. The posting date and time are displayed in her archive.


And now?

moxie_fic has proven to my satisfaction that she is the real author of the story in question. I have tried to contact remember_nomore, but so far I have not received a reply. She lives in Florida, so I am assuming she has no internet access at the moment. Normally, I would not take advantage of the fact that she is incommunicado. I would give her an opportunity to take down the story and apologize, but it occurred to me that if she takes down her entire archive we will never know how many more ripped off stories her archive houses. It seems to me that all writers out there have the right to check if one of their own stories has been similarly lifted.

I removed remember_nomore from the list of members, but her posts are still there, so people can check if they are plagiarisms as well. Please keep me updated if other instances of story theft become known. Until further notice, this community is moderated, i.e. new members have to be approved by me.

moxie_fic has kindly given me permission to keep the story on our list, for now, so people can see the evidence for themselves.

Feel free to vent your anger in this thread, but try to keep it civilized. I am practically frothing at the mouth while I type this, but at the same time the knowledge that some people feel the need to steal someone else's fame makes me utterly sad.

Thank you.


The story posted by remember_nomore...
.... and the original

-- The extension

--- The original author rants, then deletes the rant, but leaves the comments

-- The defense

And more debate over the technical possibilities of hijacking.

Somehow, the supercriminal mind seems so petty when drawn into fandom grudges. But you never know...