Update (October 17, 2019) due to an increasing number of emails I receive regarding this article/topic:
Please note that I can not give any individual advice on whether something constitutes plagiarism or not. These cases are highly individual, and courts usually decide them on a case-by-case basis. I neither have the insight into your story (and/or the original work), nor do I have the legal expertise to decide whether a court would deem something similar enough to rule it plagiarism. If you have serious concerns about your work plagiarising another (enough that you would consider writing me an email about whether you need to change it), I would say you are already aware of striking similarities that exceed basic concepts or mere inspiration. You now have two options: going ahead with publication anyway OR consulting an attorney specialized in intellectual property rights to see if you are moving on safe legal grounds at least.
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Today I want to write a post about plagiarism and art theft. Mostly because recently I have become victim of it quite a few times, but also because it’s a topic that not many people seem to have an understanding off.
So let me start out with a basic definition of plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Many people think that plagiarism only means copying another person’s sentence word by word. But legally it’s also plagiarism to take another person’s idea. Ideas, concepts or structure can also be plagiarized, provided they are an original composition.
The Legal Dictionary defines plagiarism as the following: The act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
(Source: Law Dictionary: What is PLAGIARISM? definition of PLAGIARISM (Black’s Law Dictionary))
Now why are there so many misconceptions about plagiarism then? It seems to be mostly because many people are under the impression that you can freely copy another person’s ideas as long as you don’t use their exact words. Which would explain myth #1.
Myth #1 – You can basically retell the exact story of Harry Potter as long as you don’t name your character Harry Potter.
Um, excuse me, what?
Big fat no.
I suppose that you could try doing that, but I’m pretty sure that J.K.Rowling would sue you into oblivion, and that this is exactly the reason why NOBODY HAS DONE THAT TO THIS DAY.
The reason for why this is utter bulls*it is quite obvious if you use your common sense: A story is composed of a lot more than just the names of the characters. There’s of course plot, narrative perspective, tense, conflict, character building, structure, setting and so on.
You can’t just take a story and change one or two minor aspects of it, and then pass it off as something you came up with. Per definition you didn’t, because you consciously copied Harry Potter. That is plagiarism.
Now it is true that basic concepts cannot be plagiarized. But basic concepts really means just that: basic. Example: J.K. Rowling wouldn’t be able to sue you if you wrote a story that took place in a school for wizards, or if you wrote about an orphan boy who discovers he has supernatural powers. Because those in itself are just basic concepts that aren’t protectable by law.
To take it further, let’s look at an example from modern fiction. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter both use the same basic concept: teenage boy discovers that one or both of his parents were supernatural beings and that he has inherited their powers.
Yet this concept is indeed so basic that you can write two entirely different stories with it. And nobody would claim that Rick Riordan copied J.K.Rowling. That’s a basic concept.
As soon as you take more aspects from Harry Potter, though, you run the severe danger of being accused of plagiarism. And rightly so, because let’s face it, unless you have actually never heard of or read Harry Potter, the idea would indeed not have sprung from your own mind.
Myth #2 – Fifty Shades of Grey plagiarized Twilight
This is actually the other side of the coin and shows an equally wrong understanding of plagiarism. You can criticize Fifty Shades whichever way you want (and my readers and friends know how much I love to do just that ;) ) but it is not plagiarism.
Even in its originally published form “Masters of the Universe”, it was a transformative alternate universe work, not plagiarism. There’s a fundamental difference between the two, as I will explain under Myth #4.
So why isn’t it plagiarism?
Because the ‘you-can’t-just-change-the-name’-argument in #1 is also true from the opposite standpoint. If you take the characters of an already existing universe/world/work-of-fiction and put them into a completely new world that you created entirely on your own, where the characters have a different history and different experiences, and you don’t even need to know the source material anymore, you are per definition not plagiarizing. If anything, you are using character names that are borrowed from another work of art–and in a lot of cases these character names might not even be copyrighted. (Please refer to my article on Fanfiction and Copyright for a more detailed explanation.) Rename those characters and you have no ties to the original anymore. That’s not plagiarism.
Do you have a right to sell that story? Opinions still vary on that front. Some say yes, you absolutely do, others say you don’t.
This is how I see it:
What makes a character unique? In fiction writing (just as in the real world), our characters become who they are through a combination of start-out characteristics combined with the way they were brought up and life experiences (which equals story). Now, if you completely remove a character from their existing canon-world, and give them a different past, different background, different experiences, can that character even still be considered the same even if they still carried the same name?
The answer can only be: no.
Even if their looks are similar or the same, their experiences, their entire past and often even wishes, dreams and ambitions were changed. So if you renamed that character, you would have in fact an original new character with their own story. Now if you can do that, you do in fact own the rights to do with that story as you please. At least according to this article—and the fact that E.L. James still hasn’t been sued by Stephenie Meyer. ;)
In Fifty Shades, the case is a lot more complex of course. Let’s compare some basic concepts of the two novels/stories from the perspective of literary science:
| Twilight | Fifty Shades of Grey | |
| POV | 1st person | 1st person |
| Tense | Past tense | Present tense |
| Genre | Supernatural/vampire/romance | Erotic romance/drama |
| Setting | Seattle/Portland | Seattle/Portland |
| Plot | 100-year old vampire falls in love with high-school student, but the nature of their existence forbids them to be together (humans are vampire’s prey). In the end, high-school student gives up her life/soul to become a vampire. | 22-year-old college graduate meets successful billionaire Grey who introduces her into the world of BDSM. After lots of back and forth they have to negotiate a compromise to make their relationship work and try to work out some fundamental incompatibilities in character |
| Basic Conflict | Romeo/Juliet; forbidden love; impossible love | relationship drama; relationship compatibility; social acceptance of BDSM; Cinderella theme (poor girl/millionaire) |
I could probably go even deeper into the analysis, but I think from these basics you already get just how different these two stories really are. The common characteristics are that they take place in roughly the same region in the US (Portland and Seattle in the state Washington). And that the characters occasionally seem to have similar family-backgrounds. But those are some of the basic concepts that cannot be copyrighted—otherwise nobody would ever be allowed to write a story set in Seattle again, or a story about a man who was adopted as a child.
As different as Twilight and 50 Shades are, I would argue that at the most one ‘inspired’ the other—which is absolutely legitimate and has always been. Otherwise every artist who was inspired by something (meaning: literally every single one) would now owe royalties to someone else.
I recently watched a making-of of “Interstellar” in which Christopher Nolan said that what inspired him for this movie and the sci-fi genre was the movie “Contact” and other early sci-fi movies. So in essence without those movies, Christopher Nolan would have never made Interstellar. Does he owe those people royalties now? You see how ridiculous this kind of argument gets? ;)
Now as for fanfiction (or derivatives and transformatives as I like to call them): There are quite different legal opinions out there about whether or not fanfiction authors retain any rights over their material. Some state that fanfiction authors don’t have any rights at all. Others, such as the article I quoted above on “Legal Myths in the World of Fanfiction” say that they do own authorship rights to the words and plot ideas provided that the characters would still work if taken entirely out of the context of their source material.
Want to know if you own a character you created for a fan fiction story? Here’s the test. Can you remove the character and the plot from the original “world” and put it in a world of your own? If you can, congratulations! You own it so long as you do what E.L. James did and strip away anything you didn’t create. But if your characters rely on another author’s ideas in order for them to exist or function, you don’t own them.
As long as “your” characters and stories are set in a framework that belongs to someone else, you don’t own it.
If you ask those exact questions for Master of the Universe (Fifty Shades of Grey), you’ll see that Fifty Shades is entirely independent from the universe Stephenie Meyer created. Or, to make it even simpler, ask yourself: did you have to read Twilight in order to understand 50 Shades of Grey?
If the answer is no, then the story and characters are removed enough to work on their own and completely removed from the source material.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is actually fanfiction that blurs the line. A good example are stories which re-tell an episode of a popular television show from a particular character’s POV, because all the action and even character re-actions are duplicated from the original show. The authors merely add character thoughts we didn’t get to hear on the show—which might add a new aspect to the story.
However, I have never ever seen a writer trying to publish such a story as an original work for money, or even claiming that the whole thing was their idea. Usually, the writers credit the original creators, and the target audience are fans who are aware of the addressed source material. Fanfiction would not work another way.
So in a way, that type of fanfiction is not even relevant to the discourse because by crediting the original makers it is per definition the opposite of plagiarism.
Myth #3 – It’s ‘Inspiration’, it’s not plagiarism!
Whenever I hear this, I have a very hard time trying not to laugh. Yes, I have actually heard this one—and not for cases like the above Interstellar or Twilight/50 Shades scenario, in which it is actually just inspiration. So let me make clear here.
Inspiration and plagiarism are absolutely not the same. Nor should they ever be confused with one another.
Inspiration is building an entirely new world or story after having seen one basic concept in another piece of art.
Inspiration is: you’re watching “Interstellar” and get so fascinated by the black hole Gargantua in it that you decide, you want to write a story that has a black hole. You’re being inspired.
Plagiarism is: your ‘new’ story is basically a retelling of “Interstellar” since it uses enough of the same aspects, the same conflict and a similar plot. You are not being inspired anymore, you’re plagiarizing.
You can of course argue: Yes, but there’s only so many ways you can write a black hole story.
That is partly true because of certain underlying universal laws of physics that you can’t just ignore if you want to be taken seriously as a sci-fi author. However, I would argue that even using those laws of physics, there are still hundreds if not thousands of ways to write a story that hasn’t been told yet.
So if the only way to tell your story is to come up with a starship that goes through a wormhole to re-colonize a planet orbiting a black hole (which is exactly the Interstellar plot), I’d say,
You’re doing it wrong.
Remember what I said about basic concepts before? What it comes back down to is exactly that. You can and should let yourself get inspired by basic concepts. And nobody would ever accuse you of plagiarism if you wrote a completely new and original black hole story and later stated that you were inspired by “Interstellar” to write it.
That is, in fact, how most works of art came into existence.
Let me give you another example, and let’s stay in the world of sci-fi for that. Wormholes. If you’re a sci-fi fan you can name at least a couple of television shows that used wormholes. The concept is very basic. Babylon 5 has them. Star Trek (especially Deep Space Nine) has them. And most significantly of all, Stargate. All of these shows are built around the concept of a wormhole which marks one of the central points of conflict in the story.
And even though it is a very basic concept with limited applications, each show managed to make it something completely original. That is what I’m talking about; that’s what makes the difference between a basic concept and a combination of factors and concepts that build a universe.
Inspiration is not and cannot be used as an excuse to plagiarize. And if you are worrying that your story might be too similar to the one you were ‘inspired by’ I almost want to bet that you are plagiarizing. Like it or not.
Myth #4 – Nowadays, everything is plagiarized, because everything has been written in some form before.
I can’t even begin to fathom where this idea came from, but I did notice that it is primarily being used by authors who have no shame plagiarizing others.
Now, let me start out by saying that I studied cultural sciences and lit studies, so I consider myself a cultural/literary scientist. And yes, we cultural scientists do in fact agree that nowadays everything is derivative of something. Notice the word, though? Not plagiarism, DERIVATIVE.
That is, per definition, how culture works. We all grow up in a certain culture, we hear certain myths and stories as we grow up, and all of that influences us. We, and our ideas, cannot exist outside the culture we are tied into.
Think of it this way: Percy Jackson couldn’t exist without the stories and myths Homer wrote down in his Ilias. Twilight couldn’t exist without the pre-existing vampire myth made popular through authors like Bram Stoker (who in turn built his story on existing folk tales from Romania).
Culture is a huge interconnected organism. So every story that is being told nowadays has to be derivative of something. In fact, a story that didn’t rely on pre-existing symbols, concepts and myths probably wouldn’t work for us because we wouldn’t understand it.
Need an example? Try reading a piece a fiction from a completely different cultural background. Japan, Saudi Arabian, Korea or the like. You will see that you’ll only gain an in-depth understanding of the work if you have a profound understanding of the culture and traditions the author grew up with. If you don’t, a lot of aspects, references and doalogues will strike you as weird or maybe even non-sensical. Literature (and any other works of culture) can only be understood in the broader context of culture. And every work of art isn’t just built on culture, it also reflects and recreates it.
So, derivative means relying on an existing set of rules, symbols or conditions, and building your work of art on that. But derivative does not equal plagiarism. Plagiarizing means copying the ideas or words of another author and pretending they are your own.
Whether it’s legal or not to publish your derivative work depends on the current legal situation. The general rule of thumb is that works are in the public domain 70 years after the death of the author, and from that point on can be freely used to build on. (Quite simply put.)
And there’s your explanation for all the “Mr. Darcy” published fiction out there. If Jane Austen were still alive (or were dead for fewer than 70 years), all those books couldn’t be published for money but would have to be published under “fair use” terms just like every other fanfiction. Essentially there’s no literary distinction between modern fanfiction and that type of fiction; there’s only an economic distinction.
If Homer were still alive, the Percy Jackson books would be fanfiction. Everything in culture and literature nowadays is derivative of something. So the distinction of whether something is “fanfiction” or not is a rather modern, legal one, not a genre-bound one.
You could even go so far and say that it’s a legal trend and has only been problematic in recent times where ‘copyright’ doesn’t primarily mean authorship but ‘making money with a work’—which was never a concern up until the second half of the 19th century when pop-culture spawned the so-called dime novel and thereby gave birth to our modern idea of the author as a profession you can actually live of.
The problem with fanfiction nowadays is the following: according to many sources, some fanfiction authors retain the authorship rights for their ideas (such as authors of transformative or AU stories – see above under Myth #2). What they often don’t own is plain and simply the right to SELL THEIR STORY as long as they don’t remove or alter everything that connects the story to its original copyrighted source material.
So in essence, the entire legal discourse around fanfiction has a uniquely capitalist stamp on it. It’s about money and profit. Not about authorship rights or even plagiarism. No fanfiction author ever claims to have invented the source material their story is based on. Most of them even put a disclaimer on their work in which they credit the original authors and creators.
We just established in the beginning quote, that plagiarism means appropriating the ideas of another person as your own—which fanfiction authors per definition don’t do. No fanfiction author I’ve ever met has claimed to have invented the term Muggles, the starship Enterprise or the Stargate. So according to all legal definitions, fanfiction cannot be plagiarism per se.
Now let me get even deeper into the difference between derivative and plagiarism.
Imagine you write a story about Mr. Darcy being transported into modern England. Or Romeo and Juliet as ghosts who have to find each other in the underworld of Hades. Both are derivatives, because you essentially build on an existing work using your own ideas and concepts. And because the authors of the original materials have been dead for a long time, you can go ahead and sell it as you wish.
If you were to retell the story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet exactly, though, and publish it under your own name, then you would be plagiarizing.
Even with works in the public domain, you can still not publish them as your own. You could re-publish “Romeo and Juliet” as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (provided you only used Shakespeare’s original text and don’t use any notes or commentary added by other authors later), but you couldn’t publish it as Romeo and Juliet written by Kimberley Jackson.
And there you see that even the public domain protects authorship. Authorship is one right you can never give up as an author in most Western countries.
Many people argue that Twilight, for example, uses the general Romeo/Juliet concept (which brings us again back to basic concepts). That concept in itself can be reproduced as it has become firmly established in our cultures: two people fall in love, but there’s something fundamental (the causes of which are external and cannot be changed by the lovers) standing between them that prevents them from being together.
Popular themes here are for example: lovers from two different worlds, lovers from enemy families, etc. Basically we’re dealing with a preexisting external condition that the lovers can’t change or overcome. Such as Bella being human, and Edward being a vampire. Such as Romeo and Juliet being from two different families engaged in a feud. Such as the little mermaid being a mermaid, and the prince being human.
The resulting conflict in those stories is normally that the characters try to resolve that situation by altering those unchangeable outer conditions preventing them from being together—which leads to the demise of one or both of them (Romeo and Juliet both kill themselves; the little mermaid kills herself) or, if you’re dealing with a modern Disney-fied version made for teens, has the characters actually succeeding in changing their circumstances (The little mermaid wins the prince’s heart in Disney’s Ariel; Bella becomes a vampire and bridges the gap between her and Edward’s world in Twilight).
As you can already see from the above named examples
- The Little Mermaid
- Twilight
- Romeo and Juliet
all of these stories use the same underlying concept or principle. And yet they are as different as day and night. Nobody would ever say that Stephenie Meyer ‘plagiarized’ Romeo and Juliet.
So that is what cultural and literary scientists mean when they say nowadays everything is derivative of something.
I have no clue how on Earth this got so twisted that some people use it to validate stealing another author’s ideas, but apparently it did.
Probably one of those cases of “half-knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance”, because unless you understand cultural theory, it may indeed sound like it’s a carte blanche to copy other authors as you please.
So where does this leave us?
Plagiarism requires a conscious effort. That means, in order to plagiarize you have to know the source material you’re plagiarizing from. If you don’t, it’s indeed coincidence. Two people can have similar ideas.
So why not just use this self-test:
Do you spend a lot of conscious effort on NOT making a story sound too similar to an existing one that you are aware of, or removing similarities to an existing work that you are aware of?
Congratulations, you are most likely plagiarizing.
Why? Because 1. Apparently you are aware of the source material you’re copying ideas from. 2. You are also aware that your work is strikingly similar to an already existing one. And 3. You’re putting conscious effort into trying to make it sound less similar.
Those three conditions make your doing a conscious effort, and you a plagiarist per definition. (Remember the original definition of plagiarism as passing somebody else’s ideas off as your own.)
I can honestly say that in my entire writing life, I have never had to worry about removing similarities to an existing work of fiction from one of my stories, simply because I never felt compelled to re-tell an already existing story. What would be the purpose of that?
Does that mean that there are no other stories similar to mine out there? No, absolutely not. I’m sure if I started searching, I would find quite a few stories like mine. The key fact here is: I don’t know them, and that means the ideas I have are actually my own ideas presented in my unique way.
As soon as you KNOW the source material before writing, you are plagiarizing, because the idea is per se not your own idea, but one that you took from an already existing work. You can’t read about an idea and then claim that by reading about it, you happened to have the same idea. That’s not how ideas work—that’s how plagiarism works.
Plagiarism is conscious effort. It’s per definition: passing off another person’s ideas or words or composition (meaning a combination of ideas or aspects) as your own.
So unless you actually have an idea without having read about it beforehand, you either have to credit that work/person, or you are plagiarizing.
Does this mean I can accidentally plagiarize someone else’s work?
No. As I said two lines above: plagiarism is conscious effort. That means it’s only plagiarizing if you are aware of the source material before or during your writing process.
So if you have just read Harry Potter, and now decide you wanna write a story about an orphaned son of two wizards who attends a boarding school, then you are plagiarizing. Whether a legal claim can be made in the end depends on whether the author can prove you plagiarized and well you hide your plagiarism.
Plagiarism very much depends on intention and a conscious act.
Plagiarism is the intention to write a story just like or very similar to an already existing one.
If that intention is not there because you don’t know of the story that’s similar to the one you’re intending to write, you aren’t plagiarizing.
So if you have never heard of Harry Potter before in your life, and you write a story about an orphaned son of two wizards attending a boarding school, you have no problem. (Even though the chance that your story would be just like HP would be rather remote then.)
The chance that two people will have the same idea is quite likely nowadays. But the chance that two people will then use that idea to produce a nearly identical story, using a similar structure, plot, characters and conflicts, etc. becomes more and more remote the more aspects you add to the mix.
Simple rule: If you don’t know of a work, you can’t plagiarize it.
But if you do know of a work, you are plagiarizing, because it’s impossible that you have come up with the idea on your own—after all you had the idea after reading that other person’s work. So you didn’t have an original idea, but you adapted another person’s idea as your own.
Which is absolutely legitimate, especially in academic writing, as long as you credit the original author. And if you’re writing fiction doing that? You can still publish it as fanfiction under the terms of fair use by crediting the original author. But you will have to get used to the idea that you did not write an original story.
At best you produced a work of fanfiction. At worst you claimed another author’s idea—which they undoubtedly put lots of work and sweat into—as your own. And by that you have revoked the right to call yourself an author.
Call me old-fashioned, but I firmly believe that artists of any kind (this includes writers) should follow a simple code of honor:
Do not steal another writer’s ideas or stories.
(I am neither a lawyer nor a judge therefore none of the advice in this article is legally binding. I composed this article to the best of my knowledge using above cited legal sources and research materials.)
Is it plagiarism to write a story with an identical theme as another story, although EVERYTHING in my story (Characters, Plot, Genre, Setting) are original?
I am doing a lot of reserach like landscapes,dresses and such for my story because it’s hard for me to describe them. Then, I write in my own words with the help of my research. Is it plagiarism?
Hello Kimberley,
Can I ask for your permission to translate this article into Chinese and repost it on Chinese blog site lofter (similar to tumblr)? I will cite the source and (of course) include your name in my translated work. Thank you very much!
Of course, please feel free to translate the article citing the source and myself as the original author. If you drop a comment with the link here, I will also link back to your translation from this page. :)
Have a great day and please stay safe and healthy.
I didn’t see you reply yesterday (along with my own comment). Thank you very much Kimberley and I hope you stay safe and healthy as well!
Can you plagiarize something you co-wrote? For instance, my friend and I are writing a story including a character named Azenor Viotto who has magical power over baked goods (she’s pretty awesome :D). If I were to write a story that had a baker named Elinor Viatta, would that be plagiarism? Also, I have a character who always wears his scarf. My sister pointed out that Callum from The Dragon Prince also has a scarf that he never takes off. I didn’t think at all about Callum when I invented Tellav’s scarf. And to return to my first question, Tellav and a different character of mine (Ash) seem to have identical personalities. If I published both books, would that be a problem? Thank you for writing such a great article!
Hi I have a question as my university said to write and research about a company so I researched and wrote about its top products and the definitions of products were complex so I wrote the definition as its is with few replacing it with few synonyms but I did intext citation and I took information about those products from their official website is it plagiarism ????
Hi Kimberley,
Thank you very much for your authorization, the translation (Chinese version) has been completed, here is the link:
https://apath.lofter.com/post/dee6d_1ccf9ead2
Wish you all the best! Stay safe and take care :)
Best regards,
A.
And I have to apologize that because of the site restrictions I cannot insert any hyperlink. But I have post all the key words of this article with your name on it. Hope this works!
Not trying to sound rude or critical. Truly just trying to understand your thought process. But reading your article, I’m inclined to disagree with certain bits.
You say that consciously copying words and ideas makes me a plagiarist.
You say that consciously trying to NOT copy words and ideas makes me a plagiarist.
Is that not a bit contradictory? I understand that there are some circumstances where both are true, because as you say, if you are aware of similarities, then you very likely have a plagiarized piece of work.
But if a person is truly trying to create an original story inspired by another story, then wouldn’t it make sense to consciously avoid using similar elements? And wouldn’t continuously changing the story to avoid those elements at some point make it a truly original work?
I will admit that I am struggling with determining whether one of my stories is only inspired by or actually plagiarizing the popular farm sim game “Stardew Valley,” so my comment is somewhat personal to me. But how do I know when to draw the line? How do I know if I can “fix” it or if I just need to scrap it right here and now?
If you read this, I think Kimberley is very ‘close’ on the subject of plagiarism, but she lost me in the bottom half.
For the example she used of Harry Potter as an example, and claimed that if someone wants to make a story similar to it that they can’t because it’s plagiarism. Not entirely true. At the end of the day it’s basically a concept of a boy wizard being at a school, and if somebody wants to do something similar to that and remix it they can. Legally, they’d be in the clear, because the characters would be different, and the story would be different, even if the concept is similar. An example is an upcoming show called ‘High Guardian Spice’ clearly being inspired by another show called ‘Little Witch Academia’
Both star girls going to a school for witches and wizards and have to develop their powers.
The point is that this isn’t writing an essay, or a paper. This is writing a story. That’s why the definition of plagiarism is so annoying, because by it’s definition ‘ideas’ can be owned, but under copyright, ideas and concepts cannot be owned (if you look at the government definition.) It sounds kind of confusing doesn’t it. It’s like being told your in the clear legally, but morally someone can claim you ‘stole’ an idea. That’s why plagiarism clearly needs to be redefined somewhat, because whenever I see it used it’s always in conjunction with writing an essay or a research paper. Never when it comes to story writing. That’s why there are so many stories that can be similar to other stories, or products similar to other products.
Hello, thank you for the article. I have three questions I would love to hear your answer to.
1. There existed book series on orphan children, raised by non-magical / magical people, discovering their magical powers, going to schools of magic – way before J.K.Rawling wrote Harry Potter. I’m thinking Diana Wynne Jones and her “Chrestomanci”, or John Bellairs and his “The House With The Clock in its Walls”. Of course, I have no idea, if J.K.Rowling had read them as a child, or not. But IF we were to assume that she had – how far can we push the concept of derivative work, before it closes up on plagiarism? (this is just an example, I love all three series and personally don’t mind, it’s an academic question).
2. You have mentioned in the opening to Myth #1 part, that nobody has ever plagiarised / retold Harry Potter, basically just changing his name. But what about the Russian writer Dmitri Yemets, who wrote the series “Tanya Grotter”, calling it “a cultural reply” to Harry Potter? Tanya has a scar on her nose, she doesn’t know she has magical powers, she lives with her not magical relatives, sleeps somewhere crazy – balcony if I remember, her parents were killed in a duel with an evil sorcerer Chuma-Del-Tort………. – basically, the case is clear. And he got sued for plagiarism, his series was never translated into English as a result of it, but as far as I know – he was allowed to keep it in print in Russia, kept writing it after the first – sued – part, made a lot of mocking jokes aimed at Harry or K.J.Rowling in them, and sold millions of copies. (Put aside a tiny thrill of I-know-better, which I hope you will forgive me, what will be the deal here? Because the deal of some sort has been made, no doubt about it, allowing him to keep his Tanya Grotter in print…. Do different countries have different laws around plagiarism?? )
And my last question:
3. I’m literally asking for a friend here, since we’ve ended up in a heated discussion on this subject :) I’m currently reading Jonathan Carroll’s “The Marriage of Sticks”. He’s mentioned a Mamadreqja, grandmother of witches there. I am a huge fan of his prose an endless references he’s making, so I tried to source Mamadreqja. The Internet search gave me one (not a joke) single link, to Albanian folk stories. (by Post Wheeler, Litt. D) From my understanding the case is similar to the Grimm Brothers, and stories belong to open source cultural heritage / public domain. As such, Mamadreqja can be mentioned and used as it pleases him, just like Baba Jaga or Dracula can, but my friend argues that Carroll should have mentioned the source, precisely because of the obscurity of this folklore. I’m working on the nerve to ask him myself through his page :D But I’d love to hear what you think about the above!
Best regards. Please excuse mistakes, English is not my first language.
I have a unique situation. I wrote a novel and the main character is a poet. I invited a poet friend of mine to write a few stanzas for the book. She wrote the poetry pieces and I wrote everything else. Our friendship and coauthorship dissolved, so I removed her parts, wrote new, unique pieces, rebranded the book with a new cover and name, and republished. She’s now crying plagiarism because she thinks she deserves “credit” for the book. I have email records showing everything we each wrote, and that 99% of the book, including concept and character names, are all mine. The 1% she contributed has been deleted and replaced. Any advice on if you think she has any real claim to the book is appreciated.
First off, this article is amazing! I will definitely be following this blog from now on. I had a question that I didn’t see clearly addressed in regards to plagiarism so here goes. For about two and a half years a friend and I would talk out stories, plots and lots of dialogue, nothing was really ever written and if it was it was mostly done by me as I am the one that is serious about writing. In this time we probably came up with hundreds of little scenarios and plots with a solid cast of about 12 to 16 characters that we would drop into all these different romantic plots in a variety of genres. We have had a falling out and she now wants credit if I write any of these stories the exact same way we talked them out (which I am fine with) but she also is demanding that anything she contributed to in spoken word or might have inspired later on be credited to her as well. We had a list of ideas, some with more detailed plot points and some that were as simple as ‘one is a mermaid princess and one is a farm boy’, there were tons of them. She has accused me of plagiarism when nothing I have posted (one chapter of something I wrote with no help from her) is really anything but the start to an idea we talked about a lot. She’s come very close to publically accusing me when nothing was ever published or even written out. Is the use of those ideas and characters with enough change and my own interpretation, stealing? I don’t think she can lay claim to things that only exist in a scanty few notes and our minds but I want to do the right thing. I plan on writing my own stories but I can’t say I won’t draw inspiration from the hundreds of ideas we talked about.
I have a question about the character names part. Suppose for example that someone wrote a romance novel, and its two main characters are called Edward and Bella, same names as the Twilight characters. Almost everything else is different: they have different surnames, personalities, backgrounds, appearance and the novel’s overall plot isn’t remotely similar to Twilight’s aside from the couple’s name coincidence.
Could this novel’s author get in trouble for plagiarism? I was wondering that because Edward and Bella is a name combination very strongly associated with Twilight, and if that alone could be problematic.
I have been working on a story, and I am about to finish it. This is the first novel I have written, and I would like to get it published, even if it is just on Amazon.
The plot is absolutely mine, the main characters too, but I used Tolkien’s work as my background. The story takes place in Tolkien’s universe, but in a land far away from Middle Earth, and centuries after the stories he wrote. So, I “accept” Tolkien’s mythology regarding the origin of the world and evil, but the context is different.
I don’t use exactly the “races”, nonetheless I emphasize that everybody is a mestizo, even though everyone is more elvish, or humanlike, or hobbitlike, and I point that out.
I also used the names of gods from different traditions, like muiscas in South America, greek roman gods, and Tolkien gods, as if they were interchangeable. To do this I used the names of Tolkien’s gods, and even Lewis’ in the Cosmic Trilogy, but also used the muisca (a few times) and roman names (most of the times), because I, somehow, came to the conclusion that they are the same “entities”, and I wanted to show that.
I also use some concepts from jewish-christian tradition, like the archangels, whose names in the story are elvish adaptations from the aramaic, that I did myself.
The point is, I know that I can use the names of the muisca and greek-roman gods and the jewish-christian concepts, but this morning I started wondering if I can actually use Tolkien and Lewis’ gods’ names and/or races. I could just avoid using them, but I would not like to, because I think they are actually deep and beautiful.
I would appreciate a lot your opinion and advice.
Thanks a lot.
It does sound to me like you are writing a transformative work (a.k.a. fanfiction in layman’s terms) since you are clearly writing in a universe that another author created. But your work is clearly transformative and not derivative. Please refer to my post on “Fanfiction and Copyright” for information about that distinction, and what it means if your work is transformative.
Since Tolkien created a whole lot himself (including races and gods), they are all his creation. And you are admittedly writing in his universe.
I would advise you to do some research on whether any of the names you are using are trademarked. If not, it would need to be determined if they are distinct enough to be copyright protected. (I would, for example, assume that the race name “Hobbit” is definitely copyright protected and that hence, without permission, you would not be able to publish stories about Hobbits.) If you created something that stands completely independently from Tolkien’s work (meaning: readers do not need to read Tolkien to understand and enjoy your work), you should not be in legal trouble. But the legal situation regarding intellectual property is constantly changing. So if it were really just about a few names, I would advise coming up with your original names for gods and races in the end and replacing them–to be on the safe side.
An exception from that would be names that Tolkien himself borrowed from mythology and folklore: such as “dwarf”.
In any case, since you are apparently writing in Tolkien’s universe, I would probably consult a copyright expert (or attorney) regarding your specific case. Those will look at all the works concerned (including yours) in detail and can then make accurate assessments.
Note: I am neither a lawyer nor an expert on copyright, and when it comes to copyright issues, each case is unique and depends on the specific circumstance of the particular case. If you face legal troubles or want to take or defend yourself against legal action, please consult a professional who will be familiar with your unique case.
heymehere!
I read cowboys. they all have a sheriff, a small western town with a saloon, general store, a good guy and a bad guy. usually the good guy gets the girl.
so I guess about 10,000 writers of westerns are all doing plagiarism of some form or another. I had thought of writing a western myself. I guess that’s out unless you got a way I don’t become a plagiarizer.
If this was a serious question and not just a cynical jab at my article, I would like to refer you to my article on “Fanfiction and Copyright” in which I addressed a few things that are too general to be copyrighted. Genre cliches is one of those. As a matter of fact, most genres wouldn’t work without established structure and cliches. Crime novels wouldn’t work without a detective catching a bad guy. Romance wouldn’t be romance without two people falling in love.
What you are describing is GENRE and has nothing to do with plagiarism.
I have a question. I have been writing a novel… sort of my life’s world, for nearly 12 years now. I recently let a friend hear a small piece of some of the back history I am creating concerning the fountains of this world I’ve created. She loved it but then told me I’m sorry but Tolkien wrote something similar in the Silmarillion. I love Lord of the Rings and Hobbit but I’ve never read the Silmarillion. Would that still be plagerism? My story is nothing like the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. I love Tolkien. He is to me, the greatest writer of all time other then CS Lewis and Jane Astuen, but I feel like I have a very distinct style about my world. A few people have read pieces of it and said that this could be the next big Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings caliber trilogy.
You just answered your own question: “[…] but I’ve never read the Silmarillion.” :-)
Given the limited information about your work, it sounds to me like this is not plagiarism at all. Most of all, because you were not even aware of the work you allegedly plagiarized. Several people can have the same, or very similar general ideas.
And I would assume that, if you really did not know the Simarillion, you created something which may, at first glance, be similar, but is still distinct and unique enough, because it was your own idea.
Note: I am neither a lawyer nor an expert on copyright, and when it comes to copyright issues, each case is unique and depends on the specific circumstance of the particular case. If you face legal troubles or want to take or defend yourself against legal action, please consult a professional who will be familiar with your unique case.
Trying to stop people inspecting your page by capturing right clicks is BAD practice. It doesn’t stop people who are determined (how hard is it to press back, open inspector, then press forwards) and it annoys people who are honest and are trying to reload, bookmark, translate etc. Please stop doing this. Its really bad internet practice.
P.S. Please stop forcing the input of your form to capitals. I’m sure you’d hate being forced to shout and my email address isn’t all caps.
You are absolutely right, it is bad internet practice.
Nevertheless, I decided to do it because I had a massive problem with content theft, and this method reduced those issues by 90%. So I am sorry that this annoys you.
I on the other hand am annoyed when I have to waste all my time fighting art and story theft, or filing takedown notices. Mostly, because then I have no time for anything else anymore. I know it doesn’t stop the hardcore people. But it stops enough to be worth the hassle and the occasional annoyed visitor.
Hence, it will remain the way it is. Still, thank you very much for your input. :)
I’m really surprised by the 90% reduction. I wonder if the reduction is more from letting would be content stealers know that you’re actively monitoring this rather than a lack of technical skill? I’d be really interested in knowing if a large warning comment in the source code would get you the same reduction? I’m thinking along the lines of the posters in shops that say that thieves will be prosecuted.
I doubt that, simply due to the kind of content theft I was facing. My main problem was that people would copy my stories and art, and upload it to social media or other sites as their own, without any credit, credit cut out, or even their own names as authors/artists added. That is a bit different from the content scraping that most other bloggers face, where it’s usually about traffic and page views.
Most of these thieves were not tech-savvy at all. By making it impossible to merely copy/paste or save images, I could weave them out.
Before I decided on these drastic measures, I posted several posts informing people of copyright laws, sent newsletter warnings, flooded social media with warning not to steal my content and so on. Which should have been enough to warn people that I am watching them as well. It didn’t change a thing.
See, the problem you face when your main audience are fans is, that many are sincerely convinced that once something is on the internet, the creator loses all rights, and therefore they are free to republish and reupload as they please. Some will even defend that stance to your face when you contact them asking them to take YOUR stuff down from their page.
That is not true of course. So technically the artist could go to a lawyer and sue. The thing is: economically that is nonsense, since these works are published for free. So courts would not see an economic loss. Also, you would have to pay thousands of dollars in legal and attorney fees–for something that you do not make a dime on.
I grew tired of these thefts, and I grew tired of feeling completely helpless against it.
I spend months, sometimes years, creating stories and art, and put every minute of my free time into it–only to see it taken and republished by strangers who then have no shame telling me to go f*ck myself when I call them out.
So this was what I finally decided to do, because I realized that, for the type of content theft that kept happening to me, it might just be the right approach. And for the most part, it was.
Thanks for the explanation. It’s actually a fascinating use case. I always assumed that the biggest issue was bots and scrapers. I didn’t consider the naive fan. This problem is going to stay with me for a bit. Most anti theft stuff is aimed at said bots/ scrapers. I’m not sure anyone has considered something that only targets non-tech savvy, naive theft. If I come up with something I’ll let you know.
I disagree. There are great stories and movies out there, so I write books that resemble them but I change everything and add stuff, twist it and make it my own with the same general plot or idea. I also write stories combining other’s stories like the movie frozen with the movie maleficent. They had become original. yeah, it is plagiarism at first but I change it enough and make it original enough. There are too many great ideas from others, I can’t come up with on my own! And also other stories or movies can be good but I can rewrite it and make it great and better!
Interesting examples. The only problem I see is: “There are too many great ideas from others, I can’t come up with on my own!”
That is highly problematic and basically the textbook case of plagiarism, and if you do indeed do what you claim, I would advise you never publicly announce this, since this will provide any possible future suing party with evidence for a lawsuit.
I have a classical university education, and knowingly and consciously taking someone else’s idea, saying “There are too many great ideas from others, I can’t come up with on my own!” will get you thrown out of most good universities.
Plagiarism means taking someone else’s idea and claiming it’s your own. No matter how much you change it to reduce the likelihood that people will recognize somebody else’s story, it is still not your own idea. And if you mix, for example Frozen with Maleficient, you are even taking two ideas that aren’t yours and slapping them together. Which to me seems double risky.
Since I do not know your work, it is hard for me to say if the end product might be considered plagiarism or transformative. The way you describe it here does very much sound like it might fall into the plagiarism category, mostly because there is intent, copying, and conscious effort to conceal the plagiarism.
Don’t forget: plagiarism does not just mean copying content, but can also mean just copying the ideas of a story. So when you say “I write books that resemble them but I change everything and add stuff, twist it and make it my own with the same general plot or idea”, that does sound like it falls well under that legal definition.
although i do agree on some points in terms of coöy and paste being plagiarism to be inspired b other ideas and mixing them together is not plagiarism even if modern society makes ou believe so cause otherwise every teaching in the terms of artform would be the same deal cause you are essentially working with ideas and formats that has been done sincethestone age and now even have many forms of portraying it. One of the reasons even a Da Vinci stole from the best and then toned it down to his own piece of art yet nothing started in originality. I have watched over 4000 movies and tv shows included with studying the world of art for over 10 years and i can put my life on the line to garantee the plagiarism only counts if you copy and paste without any form of change or enhancement. give you good example all stories from mythology and fairy tales are rip offs aswell of other people yet at that point in time the word didnt exist so it was called being influenced. I think for the most part its a gimmick given to disapprove that every idea stems from another that was already present. i mean wheredo people get ideas, they dont just come from coincidence but from what we see, hear, feel, touch and kive through our senses and influences around us. only a fool would believe this nonsense ? but everyone is allowed an opinion
Segments of a chapter in my novel are haunting me. They may be scenes from something I read 25 or 30 years ago, but I can’t remember any title. Except for my uncertainty with what amounts to this one page in my book (60,000-words), I know the writing, although fictionalized, is genuine as it reflects my life. But the chapter in question draws on metaphorical scenes. Could I be in danger of plagiarizing?
Joe, that is very hard to say, without knowing your chapters AND the work you perceive your scenes to be stolen from. If you do not remember which book it was, I would try to find that out, because the only thing you can (and should) do is compare how much was actually copied (if any at all).
Since it is a mere one page, I think the likelihood that you plagiarized is very slim. Plagiarism (if not word-by-word copyright) also always depends on the amount and the type. Was it such an original idea that it would immediately be recognizable?
Also, I don’t see intent in what you write. Usually plagiarism is a conscious copying of ideas or content. You are not even sure if your 1 page does resemble something you read some decades ago. Unless you are worried you may have very closely copied the style and wording of another book on that one page, I would probably not worry about it.