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the BNF dance, or, Plagiarism is a Crime
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August 10th, 2006 - 09:09 am
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![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif) bad_penny is full of plagiarism accounts these days, isn't it? Plagiarism brings ALL the HP BNFs to the yard, it seems.
I'm suspicious now.
More correctly, I'm /annoyed/. Y'all, this is becoming a witch hunt. That's not okay. ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) white_serpent has some great points -- there's obvious plagiarism going on there. But about a third of the quotes she's using to prove plagiarism ... aren't. I do not buy this comparison:
"You're in Gryffindor... you're idea of a cunning plan is 'everyone oon the count of three'"
~DS
"One two three? One two three isn't a plan, it's Sesame street."
~ Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
as an example of plagiarism. It ain't. Expression of vaguely similar ideas, using completely different language, is ... oddly enough, it seems to be writing! One might attribute the vague similarity of ideas to inspiration, or possibly having said episode on tv while writing said chapter.
That's not plagiarism. About every third reference, and two of the four of the quote comparisons used on the fanhistory wiki, are false accusations. I'm resorting to definitions here: "the copying of someone's ideas, text or other intellectual property and claiming it at one's own" (wiktionary). Intellectual property is trickier, but wiktionary says "any product of someone's intellect that has commercial value, especially copyrighted material, patents, trademarks etc".
Specifically debunking the above quotes as plagiarism, Sesame Street made be trademarked but it passes as an acceptable cultural reference, the idea of counting as a reference to Sesame Street is nowhere mentioned in the passage from the DT, and there is absolutely no similarity at all in the phrasing.
Look, I am by no means defending Cassie from the plagiarism charge -- even one instance is enough for trouble, and the long quote cited in Part III of white_serpent's write-up is clearly plagiarism. But I invite you, before you lynch me too, to take a much closer look at Part XII.
The claim of plagiarising from Tanith Lee in Chapter 14? Unlikely. There's not enough textual similarity -- and similarity of plot in that low level of detail is not plagiarism. It's still copyright infringement, but I doubt anyone who writes fanfiction can speak against that.
"As for the sword/dagger with the opal: the line about symbols was cited to Wolfe's novel, so I looked at the nearby lines in Draco Sinister and noticed the description of the dagger. I did a search through the book on Amazon for the word "opal." I found another beautiful weapon with an opal in its hilt. You may think it's not particularly similar, but, hey, interesting coincidence, isn't it?" This is complete and utter bollocks. A gemstone in a weapon is not a basis for assuming that Cassie swiped the idea from someone else.
The comparison of Chapter 14 with Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon, Chapter 9 is also bollocks -- look at what's bolded! If white_serpent bolded the parts that she considers plagiarism, I really wish she would learn what the word means.* What's bolded are usually single words or very short phrases. This cannot possibly be considered textual plagiarism (direct lifting of text), or plagiarism of ideas (the ideas expressed are far too common; this is meant to refer to detailed and specific ideas such as that of having to kill every shape a shapeshifter wears). It also cannot be intellectual property plagiarism, for the same reason.
I will restate: similar ideas, however suspicious they might be, are not plagiarism. That type of plagiarism is intended to refer to highly detailed and specific ideas -- this is not it. The farther I scroll down that page, the less actual plagiarism I see, and the more misplaced zeal there is. The majority of the quotes compared on that page could be cited by a simple statement of "Some ideas and scenes inspired by [book], [author]."
This is a witch hunt, y'all. It really is. For all that Cassie Claire did clearly lift whole paragraphs from a few books, her plagiarism is by no means the whole-sale ripoff of the entire sci-fi-fantasy canon that some people are making out. What she wrote is not good writing. It's not pastiche. It's not an homage. It's patchy, and irregular, and pieced together -- but it's mostly not plagiarism, either.
Mostly, it seems to be a rather bad attempt by a young writer to include as much popular fandom as possible in a fic based on an extremely popular fandom. She made the hugely stupid mistake of lifting a few scenes from a few published books, thereby plagiarising. This demand for absolute, MLA citation of every single little word she might possibly have gotten from an immersion in fandom is absurd. And the continuing search for other plagiarism in her works and in the works of her erstwhile supporters and friends is equally absurd.
Come to your senses, y'all. Really. The story is out there for people to judge now, so let it lie.
*Which inevitably leads me to think of the quote "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." which most geeks and many others know is from the Princess Bride. I suspect, however, in such instances, citation should be as the Tux Penguin -- it may remain uncited (considered common knowledge) until such time as someone asks. |
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