My Take on Plagiarism
Just to prove to the world how un-political I am, I had no idea what any of you were talking about yesterday with the whole Obama and did he/didn’t he plagiarize a speech. Still don’t. But I do, of course, have opinions about plagiarism. I don’t think I’m being politically incorrect to go out on a limb here and say that plagiarism is a very, very bad thing.
I know about this first hand. A few years ago, I published a book called “Reinventing Romeo.” I was writing as Connie Lane at the time and the book was published by Dell, a division of Random House. It’s a classic fish-out-of-water story about a billionaire who’s forced to hide out from some bad guys. He’s given a new identity, and a house in Cleveland overlooking the steel mills. He and the federal agent who guards him (of course they end up falling in love…how can you even ask!) do things like play Bingo at the neighborhood church, go to a polka party and visit the local laundromat.
The book was pretty successful. It’s eight years old, and I’m still getting royalties. I even got a call from Hollywood about it from a director’s assistant. They were looking for a romantic comedy for Halle Berry. But I digress . . .
Like all authors, I Googled “Reinventing Romeo” once in a while, looking for reviews and such. I was surprised when one day, I found a fan fiction site that talked about the book.
Did I say “talked about?” What this site had done, actually, was what the “author” of the site called a tribute to “Reinventing Romeo.” She took my story, my characters, my dialogue, changed the names, put them in another city . . .
And published my book on line as her own!
I was outraged! I was incensed! I was royally pissed! I contacted the owner of the website and told her so. She didn’t get it. She was complimenting me, she said. She was showing how much she loved the book.
No, what she doing was plagiarism, pure and simple.
Frustrated, I contacted my Dell editor, who took the problem higher up. It wasn’t until the owner of that website heard from the Random House attorneys that she removed the story from her site.
How many other such “tributes” to our books are out there? I honestly don’t know. It’s frightening to think about, just as it’s frightening to realize that this woman never associated what she’d done with plagiarism.
Is our education system doing enough to teach kids exactly what plagiarism is? I don’t know that, either. I only know that as long as it’s easy to grab other peoples’ words, folks are going to do it. I also know that it’s nearly impossible to police. Plagiarism, copying, ripping and burning has nearly brought down the music industry. I hate to think that publishing is next.
