Word to Your Mother

First I think I need to give some credit where credit is due.  I don't want anyone to think I'm plagiarizing or anything.
A huge thanks to Justin Hall for creating the first ever blog.  Without him I certainly wouldn't be here, blogging.  Really, we all should be crediting Justin in each and every one of our posts because, well, every blog post that we make WITHOUT giving him credit is a win for plagiarism.  For more information on the history of the blog, please be sure to check out the bastion of all knowledge.
I simply can't go on without thanking that one dude in the tights and the tri-corner hat for thinking it a marvelous idea to publicly announce his general likes or distastes for books in print via locally type-set and hand-cranked newspapers.  Without this unknown gentleman (and you know it's a dude because bitches didn't typeset) we simply couldn't compile coherent thought enough to simply review, let alone add in succinctly placed animated images to better convey our feelings.  On a smaller note, one can't overlook the rise of literacy rates of the general public during that same time.  Thank you, minions, for rising above the mire and paving the way for people like me.
And look!  Even more credit is due to the 18th century!  The rise of the book advert!  Hooray!  Now if you want to talk the beginnings of true advertising you're going to have to go supernova old timey, back to the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians.  They were all about the adverts.  Except their billboards weren't mechanized.  But the book advert?  That coincides with the unwashed masses getting learned and wanting to read them wordy lumps and create discussions with each other and whatnot.  So big up to you, men of history, for thinking to spread the word about the awesomeness of books and giving me the idea to do the same.
Okay?  Are we good?  Is anyone else going to piss and moan about how horrible it is that someone is taking someone else's idea, putting their own unique spin on it and creating their own thing?  Yes?  Then go read Rachel's (Parajunkee's) post about plagiarism versus etiquette and check yourself.  At the rate people are throwing fecal matter at the rotating devices about meme stealing you'd think we'd need to credit the act of book reviewing itself.  Book covers in sidebars?  Credit.  Blog post titles?  Credit.  Blog post signatures?  Credit.  Book covers in reviews?  Credit.  The use of the word 'the'?  Credit.
But that's different--HOW?  How is that different?  I've actually had a feature meme stolen.  Not taken and put a different spin on it.  Stolen verbatim.  That's plagiarism.  You know what else I've seen?  A similar idea altered and added into the book review itself.  Do you see me losing my shit about it?  No.  Because, SHOCK, people can have similar ideas.  It happens.  But I don't expect to be the be-all-end-all of this particular meme and any variations thereof.  That's just insanity.  So really, just because someone posts about the books they received for that week, adding in, or not, whatever else it is they want to add, doesn't make them indebted to a single Al Gore-ish I INVENTED THE INTERNETS blogger because they happen to be bigger and popularized a particular aspect of it.  I'm not going to nitpick the differences between plagiarism and etiquette because Rachel does a good enough job of that.  But let's cut this shit because it's annoying.  The concept of advertising books was not invented in 2007.  Get over it.
Now, just to be clear, YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT IDEAS.  It's impossible.  The copyright office won't accept it.  Blogging tips, book reviews (generally speaking), snark, the word 'and,' these things are generalities.  Again, this is something that Rachel talks about in that same post above.  Everyone has ideas and they're going to overlap, sometimes unintentionally.  Common phrases, common topics, common themes. It's bound to happen.
Where the line is drawn is where you start copying syntax, set-up, timing, wording, execution.  That leaves the "general ideas" behind and broaches into the world of downright plagiarism.  You can find a billion and one blog posts about how to make your blog successful, how to get readers, how to utilize social media.  Whatever.  All of these guys are going to touch on the same subjects but they should read as individuals.  How many projects did you do in school on the same subjects as classmates but they ended up coming out completely different?  Duh.  Differing execution is possible.  But when your paper sounds awfully close to Billy's over there someone's going to have some 'splainin' to do.  Right, Ice?

Now see Ice here, or is it Mr. Vanilla?  Winky?  Learned the hard way that even though you add a couple of extra notes onto an already popular intro you can't call it your own, completely different or in any way not pass it off as you being a total douche and stealing someone else's stuff.  Bowie & Co. will notice, right Bobby?  A couple of notes does not your work make.  I mean, no wonder this guy totally broke down under his own pent up douchery years later.
So what did the nice tool box learn?  That you can't just take someone else's entire shit, sprinkle in a little of your poo and call it totally yours and be done with it?  Hmm?  Without credit attributed?  Hmmm?  That's right.  We're all big kids.  Totally edumacated.  Let's not toss around half-assed comments that you didn't know what plagiarism was.  That you totally thought you were working under Fair Use or Orphan Works or Feigned Ignorance or whatever.  Let's not start thinking we can strip off the Apple logo on an iPad and start calling it Pear and it's totally our own making because IT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE AN IPAD.  Totally.  Let's not patronize people and insult their intelligence, shall we?
We know Queen and David FUCKING Bowie when we hear it, man.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Fool me three times and you're stumping around footless because you've shot them off.
I'm smarterer than what I'm generally given credit for.  Now for some of the REAL thing -

Fucking shenanigans.  Seriously.  Can we go a quarter without this shit exploding in a flaming blaze of stink?  Please?  Is that too much to ask?  Three months?  To quote Tom Hanks playing Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own, "Start using your head.  That's that lump three feet above your ass."  There's no crying in baseball.

SERE* is Not a Blogging Technique

You are quite possibly a luddite if you haven't heard about The Story Siren issue going on. Cuddlebuggery released the news with Smart Bitches spreading it with a post about an accusation of plagiarism on Kristi's part of a few fashion blogs, Beautifully Invisible and Grit and Glamour.

WTF? <-- My initial response. No way. You mean to tell me that Kristi, of The Story Siren, she who lectures on the woes of plagiarism, she who herself has been plagiarized, ripped off someone else's posts? Is it April 1st? So I began reading the posts on the fashion blogs, complete with screen caps, IP address and stats far too sophisticated for me to find on my own blog. But I knew what I was looking at. Then Kristi's initial evasive, half-hearted apology** without it being an apology. WTF?

The more I read the more my heart sank. Kristi's blog was the first I came across in my pre-blogging ventures. I read nearly all of her archives (at the time there wasn't too much). We chatted in her comments. She was the nudge I needed to start book blogging. She was a great support when I was a young blogger and was never anything short of nice to me. I met her at a couple of BEAs and again, absolutely lovely. People have said otherwise but I always disregarded it. That was never my experience.

As the years carried on and my style formed a life of its own and Kristi grew exponentially, a distance grew. I'm not going to lament on it or anything. Life happens. I still sleep at night. So while I wouldn't call her a friend now there was still some level of acquaintanceship there and I always provided her with an obligatory respect. I may not have read her blog regularly anymore but I still kept it in my sidebar and in my RSS reader. She was YA book blogging. Mention book blogging at BEA and her name would be right at the top of the list, if not the first name. You can't ignore that. And I respected it for the work she did to make it what it is; to be, in my opinion, the epitome of YA book blogging. Sure our styles differed greatly but . . . respect.

Until Monday.

This whole issue has affected me in ways that it rightly shouldn't do. Destroyed would be a good word. Don't get me wrong; I didn't put Kristi on a pedestal or anything. But the helping hand she offered to so many people, me included, completely came crashing down. All the work, the posts, the help, a lie. The closer I read into the proof the heavier my heart got.

No, I'm not angry. I couldn't muster up that emotion if I tried. I'm disappointed beyond words and ashamed of the hypocrite Kristi's made of herself. Even before reading the comparisons and setting my thoughts in stone, this was my initial scope of the situation -

• Kristi went outside of the usual book blogging community to rip posts with the presumed idea of not getting caught. 
• Kristi was caught, presented with evidence by the accusers and denied the plagiarism occurred.
• Accusers persisted and Kristi caved, sort of. With neither a confirmation nor a denial she apologized for something that was wrong but may have been unintentional and asked to keep it all private, presumably to preserve her reputation. 
• The book blogging world exploded and Kristi's reputation shattered. 
• Kristi issued an evasive "apology," appearing to be more concerned with her standing with publishers and authors than readers and then corrected herself. 
• Shock ensued as people tried to wrap their heads around their feelings about this. 
• Kristi issued a second "apology" stating she never denied the original accusation of plagiarism months before. 
• My opinion solidified.

This wasn't a post I wanted to jump into. I needed to read everything again and let it simmer. It needed to process. And I'm still processing it. I'm still shocked that someone who knows what it's like to be plagiarized actually plagiarized someone. It hurts my heart and makes me so incredibly sad.

And her reaction to it all makes me even sadder. In my personal run-in with plagiarism, in every single case the plagiarist came out publicly and immediately admitted their wrong-doing. I don't really believe in accidental plagiarism in most cases but I'm not above believing things settling in subconsciously, forgetting where they came from and then marveling at your own genius for thinking it up (just not WHOLE posts worth of information). But there are ways to avoid that so let's not alleviate personal responsibility. It's still there. But they admitted it, apologized and it was done.

That's not what Kristi did. It wasn't one post but a pile of posts with eerily similar qualities (in set-up, style, relayed information, timing) to a bunch of other posts not belonging to her. She didn't come out and admit what she did. She denied it and then tried to cover it up. For months. Until she no longer could. Actions speak louder than words and her actions lead me to believe she was sorry she got caught. She was forced into apologizing and didn't do it of her own accord. And that really sucks.

What sucks even more is the pandering at her feet. I am disgusted to the point of nausea at comments in the manner of "Thank you for apologizing! Smile! Now we can move on!" or "You are so brave to apologize!  Stay strong!"  Do you have any idea what this makes the book blogging community, especially the YA community, look like? How many other plagiarists were afforded the same kindness and understanding? BE HONEST!

There was a point, a couple years ago, where I gave a young plagiarist the benefit of the doubt. She was being crucified even after apologizing publicly. She was a kid, I don't even think old enough to drive. I felt bad. So I tried to help her rebuild herself. Stupid me. She went right back to doing it again. It only takes once. Never again.

We as a community are rabid when it comes to plagiarists. They suck. Hard. If you've ever been plagiarized you know how it feels. It fucking blows. So when plagiarism erupts we pounce, lambasting and shunning the plagiarist into nothing. Because that's what they deserve. It's not like you can accidentally cut and paste entire posts onto your blog, with or without tweaks. So they deserve it. And Kristi deserves support and glowing puppy dog eyes because . . .  Are we going to start treating all plagiarists this way?  Are we trying to make plagiarism okay?

Don't get me wrong. Kristi is a different case. She's not some noob or a lesser known blogger that we can easily beat into submission. She's huge, popular, nice, well-connected. Do you know what this says?

WE HATE PLAGIARISTS! THEY'RE EVUL AND DESERVE TO FADE AWAY!!! unless you're big and popular and influential and then we'll just slap you on the wrist, shame people for saying mean things about you, give you squishy bear hugs and carry on with our lives.

Double standard much? For someone that tried to hide the transgression? That preached ethics while blogging a lie? That half-heartedly apologized only when forced to?  So is this the spooge on the blue dress or the undercover cop in the next bathroom stall? Yeah, we all make mistakes but the bigger people own them from the beginning. They don't lie about it, hide it, lie some more and then only when backed into a corner nominally admit to anything.

Kristi's actions have far greater repercussions then just fucking herself. It affects all of us. If the epitome of YA book blogging, the metaphorical leader of our roost, can't even live up to her own ethical standards, what's expected of the rest of us? People already sneer in our general direction. Do you think this helps? Do you think sucking up to a plagiarist just because she is who she is makes us look BETTER? Plagiarism sucks! Most of the time.

We look like assholes, guys. Giant, unwiped assholes. And I really, REALLY don't like having my reputation fucked by association. Not a fan. Which is why I'm distancing myself from Kristi. I'm removing her link from my blog roll and RSS feed and I will no longer connect her to my Added to the Pile posts. I can't in good conscience support or promote a hypocrite and a plagiarist. And I say this with an immensely heavy heart.  It makes me sad to do it but doing otherwise would force me to compromise my integrity. That's not something even on my radar of consideration. I've discussed all of this at length with my fellow lady YAckers. We've hemmed and hawed over it. Looked at it, or tried to, from a bunch of different angles. We ended up pretty much in the same boat and this was my decision as a result. It took evaluating, thinking, conversing, knowledge. I don't feel I'm doing this in haste but after careful thought.

This decision is mine and mine alone. I'm not asking anyone to take any kind of action. Please, for the love of god, don't bully Kristi. I'm sure there's very little anyone else can do to her that she hasn't already don't to herself. Plus you look like a total douche and don't do us any favors. Not to mention it only victimizes her ("oh poor Kristi for getting harassed!"  Srsly?  So it wasn't harassing when it was done to the other, lesser, plagiarists?) when she is the LAST person that can be called a victim here.  I'm just asking you all to think about what it means to rally behind someone that's broken quite possibly the only steadfast law we have amongst book bloggers. What this makes the community look like.

It's not about forgiveness or moving on. It's about sticking to our laurels. A friend can help her through this but a real friend will tell her, "you fucked up, BAD," and will remind her that she now needs to sleep in the bed she made for herself. This is not a place for ego-boosting. She SHOULD feel like a fraud because that's exactly what she's presented herself as.  Instead we've gotten a dividing line of those that think Kristi is exempt from being wrong and those of us that believe plagiarism is plagiarism and should be treated as such regardless of the offender.  It's not like this is just hearsay.  It's not like there isn't any evidence.  And the fashion blogs are the ones getting the hate mail for deigning to smear Kristi's "good" name.  Disgusting.

You don't have to agree with me. Just THINK. This has now gone beyond Kristi and we need to contemplate the greater repercussions of her, and our subsequent, actions. Our reputation as a whole is shit and this certainly isn't helping it. So just think about what it means to rally for someone so obviously guilty of plagiarism because she's not lesser or unknown or too new to matter. Let's not make ourselves hypocrites too.

*Acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, military, see link.
**Originally I was going to link to both of her "apology" posts but quite frankly, at the end of the day I don't want to afford her website hits.

Yeah, Plagiarism Sucks but it's Not an Excuse to Bully

I'm not defending the actions of The Plagiarist (here on out referred to as The Offender, it's just less clunky to type). What she did was despicable and inexcusable, not to mention a violation of the people plagiarized.

I've been in contact with The Offender over the last few days and she is well aware that her actions were inexcusable, despicable and disrespectful of the people she plagiarized. While she is hurt by all of the posts going up because of the incident, including mine, she accepts them almost as a form of punishment for what she did. I didn't apologize for what I wrote and none of us should. In fact I think we should all stand up and scream when something like this happens in order to drive the point home that plagiarism is wrong and these will be the consequences should you do it.

In The Offender's emails to me, she wasn't worried about herself so much as the wrong she imposed on those she plagiarized and the potential impact of her actions on other bloggers she's close to. She is shamed by what she did to them. She makes absolutely no excuses for her actions and has been graciously accepting of the onslaught of criticism and harsh words thrown at her even though her name has been left out of the fray. As gracious as one can be given the circumstances. She takes full responsibility for her actions and doesn't see her own ignorance as being an excuse for what she did. She fully complied with the requests of the offended bloggers and knows full well that with them especially, her reputation is quite probably irreparably damaged. For those of us that knows who she is, she knows full well that she'll have to work long and hard to regain our trust, should we be so willing to give her a second chance. She is fully repentant of her actions and accepts the consequences she brought upon herself.

She has demonstrated to me that she's educating herself on what plagiarism is and will work her hardest to turn her blog around into something truly original and all around her. And she knows the hurdles she'll have to overcome to do it.

I can only imagine what it's like to be plagiarized, in any fashion, and I only hope it never happens to me. Woe unto the soul that even considers the thought. I can't speak for the victims in this ordeal. How they choose to proceed is entirely up to them. In all honesty, if it were me, I'd never trust The Offender again. Cordiality is one thing but trust? With me you only have one shot.

But it's knowing just how repentant and shamed this girl is that really has me irked about what someone did to her. I half expected this kind of thing from an anonymous blogger or someone floating around our world but it was an author. You heard that right. An AUTHOR has me rather disgusted with his actions.

This morning I get an email from The Offender saying that she's accepting of the criticism that's coming her way but why does this person have to rub it in and be so nasty about it? He sent her a very nasty email, which she deleted before even emailing me, and then posted it on his blog to gloat. So I read it and it's shocking. This kind of display? From an author? So I scroll down to the comments and while there are few, I saw that Lenore posted asking if he really sent it and if he received a response. His response to Lenore was not yet but he plans on sending a follow-up.

Disgustingly shocked would be a good way to describe it. So I emailed Lenore because really, I wanted to justify my feelings about this. On one hand I don't want to support a plagiarist but on the other she's fully repentant of her actions. She's not acting like a shit, she's not refusing to take down reviews, she's not placing blame anywhere else but on herself. Luckily Lenore felt the same way with similar sentiments and I didn't feel so bad for feeling so torn. If she had been acting like a shit, I would just say "well, she brought that on herself" and walk away. She brought the overall attention onto herself but does she really deserve to be dug at so maliciously?

William Kostakis is the writer of that email, which can be read in its entirety on his blog. I understand that he's close friends with Adele of Persnickity Snark. If it were one of my friends that were wronged, I'd be really pissed off too. But at the end of the day I know it's not my fight and I'm not going to take it upon myself to kick The Offender's ass on behalf of my friend. You know, rant and rave all you want on your blog. As I said, I think this is something we all should do when plagiarism strikes in order to deter it. But I think there is a line to be crossed here.

He's an author. I wouldn't think it very good publicity to go on your blog and gloat how you essentially bullied a high school kid and kicked her while she was already down. And you're proud of it. And showboat it. And even make mention of doing it again. By his own admission he enjoys taking the low road and wants to have fun at The Offender's expense. While he is only 20 (by no means an adult in my eyes, sorry, I don't even consider myself an adult and I'm 26) he's old enough to know better. I hope it makes him feel better to dig into an already broken girl. I hope he feels like a big man for it. The thing is, if he's so close to Adele, then the likelihood of him knowing just how repentant The Offender was was pretty high, meaning he did this despite that. Real nice.

Rest assured, Mr. Kostakis, I will not be picking up your book any time soon. And don't worry, Mr. Kostakis. If you happen to have second thoughts about what you've posted, I've made sure to save it, just in case.

In a time where kids are committing suicide after being bullied, and young adult authors are binding together and rallying against bullying, I find it wholly, and grossly, ironic that a young adult author is acting the bully.

Some of you may disagree with me on this. Some may think that she deserves whatever she has coming regardless of the extent of it. Do you think that? Or now knowing what you know about how she's acting in the wake of all of this, do you think an attack like this is rendered? Does she still deserve it?

Look at both sides of the coin. Put yourself in the shoes of the victims. Imagine that it was you that was plagiarized. How would it make you feel? If your offender was acting like The Offender, how would you feel? Now take yourself out of the victims' shoes and put them back into those of the observer. How do you feel about plagiarism? Knowing what you now know about The Offender, how extensive do you think her "punishment" should be? Is a rant on your own blog about uncreative shits enough? Is the long-term harm she's done to herself fair enough? Or do you think private attacks are rendered?

If she were a writer, her career would be destroyed. All it takes is just one time to be called a plagiarist and you're screwed. But she's not a writer; she's a reviewer. It doesn't make what she did any better, but I'd like to think we'd have room for a touch of forgiveness, or at the very least less than malicious intent, towards her, especially considering her actions.

I want this to be an open discussion as this covers two important topics - plagiarism and bullying. Anonymous comments are welcome but lets keep the mudslinging to a minimum. And please keep names out of it. Any comment I catch naming The Offender will be deleted.

On Plagiarism and Wankery

Jeez, the YA book blogging world isn't itself without some kind of drama, huh? In this issue we have a little bit on blogging plagiarism and blogging superiority. First, on plagiarism . . .

Hey, you uncreative shit. Just don't do it, okay? If you can't think up an original thought and feel the need to take from someone else verbatim and post it as your own, perhaps you shouldn't have a blog. As if people wouldn't find out. As if we're not a well-connected network of people that looks out of each other. Such is the problem with people like this; they underestimate. Big mistake.

And I'm not one to believe ignorance in this matter is okay due to age. I mean, what could possibly be the thought process of copying and pasting someone's post and re-posting it on your own blog as your own and see it as okay? If you're a teenager, you don't have an excuse because the notion of plagiarism of banged into your head in school. You can fail classes for plagiarizing. In college, you run the risk of being kicked out of school. So really, where's the excuse for this? There isn't one.

Plagiarism on a bigger scale, when money starts getting involved, can have very serious legal repercussions. On our scale, copying and pasting reviews from free sites written by amateur reviewers won't put you in front of a judge, but you will be called out and ostracized from the community, absolutely destroying any chances of publishers and publicists contacting you for reviews should you do it and be a shit about it. As one, our voice as the power to change book covers. As if we can't crucify an asshole blogger.

Personally, should I find out anyone ever plagiarizes my blog, I'm not going to take you to court. Really, I don't think it should go that far as we're just not in a position to lose like a professional reviewer or author would, plus it's amazingly costly and you could rightly get fined or wasting the court's time. Not something that I want to deal with, but that's just me. But you can guarantee I will make your life a living hell. Not only am I a blogger but I am a writer and I take plagiarism very seriously. So fuck with me. I dare you.

Copyright law with the written word dictates that the second the words are written down, they are copyrighted to the author. This blog post? Copyrighted. And while you can't copyright ideas (that has been ruled over and over again, it's about the execution of the idea, not the idea itself that can be copyrighted), starting a meme titled "What the Mailman Brought Me" is going to make you look like an asshole for taking an already long-standing idea, changing the title and calling it yours. Just because you change a few minor things doesn't mean you can call it your own. That's not how originality works.

We live in a derivative word and we are subconsciously influenced by so many things and it's impossible to keep track of it all. But be aware of what you're writing. As other bloggers have said, don't read reviews of books you're reading until after you've already posted your review, for instance. Keeping your exposure down on something is very beneficial and it'll keep you from ending up with egg on your face. Accidental egg on your face isn't so bad. It can be cleaned off. But throwing egg in your own face? That'll stain.

As for wankery and blogger superiority, I read on a blog (for the life of me I can't remember the name) a rebuttal for a post on yet another blog (whose name escapes me) that basically trashed American book bloggers for their unintelligent content and elevated UK bloggers for being of such a higher level.

Um, fuck you.

This self-aggrandizing blogger chastised US book bloggers for reviewing books she'd never heard of, not seeking out UK books to review, for the amount of memes we may or may not use and for how loud and obnoxious we are in how we advertise our blogs; apparently, according to this blogger, UK book bloggers are all about content, not comments or followers or any of that.

Again, fuck you.

I'm American and I have lived in the UK for an extended period of time and this kind of hypocrisy really chapped my ass, even now. We are accused of being narrow-minded, unintelligent and sheltered from the rest of the world. Funny, because everyone I heard making such accusations were just as sheltered, ignorant and uninformed about how Americans really are. When I was over there (mind this was in 2006, height of Bush World so American sentiments were in the shitter) I was looked at as representing everything that was wrong with America, as if I had something to do with it, while at the same time being chastised for not knowing more about the greater world around me. Isn't that a bit contradictory?

For this particular UK book blogger, she mentioned she'd never heard of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn until very recently. So can I call her an uneducated moron for not knowing about one of our classics? Or would that just make me a brutish oaf and there the American goes again, expecting everyone to know everything about them while they know nothing about everyone else? Why does she get to sit there and accuse us of of being so closed off while she's exhibiting the same exact signs of being sheltered?

I follow a lot of book bloggers. Some of my favorites are from the UK and I've never noticed any stark differences in how anything is portrayed on their blogs. I don't even know a blog is outside of the US until they start having contests and I realize they're in Australia or England or Pakistan. I also didn't realize we're writing theses on books here either. Should everyone have a college degree before deigning to write a book blog? A lot of these blogs are maintained by teenagers and it's insulting to insinuate that they, nor anyone else, has unintelligent content because they do a few memes or their reviews don't live up to particular unwritten standards.

Any lobotomized chimp can tell you that the center of the publishing world, the WORLD, is New York City. Not London. Not Bologna. Not Stuttgart. New York City. USA. America. I'm sure that brings major chagrin to that particular UK blogger but it's true. Also, what does sell in England might not sell in America. Different tastes. US publishers also aren't willing to ship internationally when promoting ARCs. At least most of them don't. I haven't seen any that do. It doesn't make them assholes; it just makes them cost effective. Plus why would they try to promote a book across the pond when it's not even being released there? And vise versa? I've never been contacted by and UK publishers to review ARCs. Why would they? The market's completely different. Why am I going to help promote a book that the majority of my readers can't even get? Duh?

It's this nonsensical masturbatory logic that gets to me. Don't accuse us of basically being showboating idiots when you haven't even thought your argument through. Don't be so quick to judge us and pat yourself on the back as if it makes you look good. You look like a sack of shit. While I may be the boorish American that's slinging insults and swears around, I'm not as dumb as you may think I am, and neither is anyone else. My IQ's 12-fucking-6, bitch. So don't think you can insult me, or my counterparts, and get away with it. We don't judge each other over here based on country of origin. No one's any better than anyone else and we all support each other. We don't shit on each other because we think someone's somehow lesser.

I'll say it one more time: FUCK YOU.

ETA - Thanks to an anonymous comment (that has been removed due to other information posted), the link for the offending superiority blogger is here. And just an FYI, if you happen to know which blogger caused this plagiarism debacle, please don't post the name or any identifying markers. Your comment will be deleted if you do. It's just not necessary to point fingers.

You're Just Jealous

JK Rowling's got her boxing gloves on again. Well, I guess they're still on.

She's still fighting the estate of Adrian Jacobs over plagiarism charges for his book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard. And I feel really, really bad for her.

This was a nothing book. It sold a few dozen copies when it came out. Harry Potter came out afterwards and they saw it had some similar features. Everyone knows ideas are unique to each individual and it's totally impossible for two people to have similar ideas so OF COURSE JK Rowling stole this dude's ideas. O_o

You know, I'm usually disinclined to using the "you're jealous" argument because 99.9% of the time it's used by really stupid people that can't think up anything smart to argue with. But in this case, it is pure jealousy. Jacobs had a good idea for a book about a boy wizard. The waves of publishing weren't right for him and the book flopped. Rowling comes along and has a similar idea but the tides were in her favor and the pieces fell nicely into place.

Of course there's going to be jealousy. Anyone's going to be jealous of something like that but to try and claim plagiarism in an attempt to reap some benefits from a book that drove yours even further into the ground? It's just pathetic.

Admit defeat, you feeble estate. You're not going to win this one. If it was a nominal book with decent circulation, you might have had a chance. But considering it was as good as self-published, you're going down. Get some therapy and get over it. You got ninja'd on the boy wizard idea. It isn't the first time its happened and it won't be the last. Such is the animal of publishing.

Quacks in the Woodwork

Ok, let's get this straight - ideas can not be copyrighted. Got that? CAN NOT BE COPYRIGHTED. If they could, we'd have a very scant reading selection. Not to mention movie and music selection. But they can't. So don't try to sue a bestselling author because you claim he or she plagiarized your work because there's a similar scene in there which only makes you look like a massive tool. Got it?

Because the tool boxes suing JK Rowling obviously don't (here and here). The estate of Adrian Jacobs is suing JK Rowling for plagiarism and claiming that she stole the notion of wizards riding on trains from this man's book that was published ten years prior to Sorcerer's Stone coming out, among other things. You see the ridiculousness of this? It's wasted effort. They really need to stop trying.

My book I'm editing now has a castle that can be moved in it. I thought it was such an original idea! Yay me! Until one of my betas asked me if I got the inspiration from Howl's Moving Castle. I went huh? and then proceeded to Google. Dammit! Granted the premise and everything about the moving castle itself is entirely different, the concept is still there. I'd never heard of Howl's before that. Doesn't make it a plagiarism case. It can't be if I was completely unaware of something similar until months after I'd written the first draft of my own work. But even should my book get published, there's still no harm. Because the idea for a moving castle can't be copyrighted.

Just like the idea for a 19th century Gossip Girl can't be copyrighted or a boy wizard can't be copyrighted or dragon-slaying can't be copyrighted. There's a reason why we tend to see similar books on the shelves, like all of the academy books (with or without fangs). Because the idea doesn't belong to one individual, just the execution does.

It takes a lot of effort to get the lawyers together to take on an author like JK Rowling, not to mention a huge sack of balls. Not because she'll go batshitty on you but because you really have to have a big head to think that she copied off of your work. Really big head.

To be fair, I said the same thing about Rowling when the issue with the HP Lexicon came about. One of her defenses was that the idea for an HP encyclopedia was her idea first. Push all of the copyright infringement issues that the Lexicon had off to the side, that statement is irrelevant. Who had the idea first doesn't matter. Why? "Because you can't copyright ideas." Very good! It's all about winning the race, not what you did to get to the end. So if that alone was her stance, she would have been screwed. Thankfully she's actually the copyright holder of all things HP so she had a pretty comfy pillow to fall back on there.

If you're going to go after any author, let alone one as huge as Rowling, for plagiarism, for the love of god be sure you can substantiate your claim so you don't look like an ass. Jealousy is not a good motivator, even if her idea did better than yours. Publishing has a lot to do with timing and luck and not everyone can win that game. If you can't substantiate your claim, just take the hit and write another book. Maybe you'll get lucky next time.