When does it become plagiarism?

[PennLady]

Lol, I wouldn't go that far. I mentioned it to him because of it being the same idea in the same genre only a few days apart. I didn't want him to think I copied it, thats all.

Really, you shouldn't worry so much about it. I bet stories go up every day sharing details and elements, whether they're in the same genre or category or not.

 

[NaokoSmith]

PennLady and others are right - using the same idea is not plagiarism.

You can mention the other story, and I think the author would take it as a sincere compliment. Just say that story inspired yours, which is the truth. You can't copy the story because you can't find it. Yours is bound to be a different story.

Joanna Trollope, Alexander McCall Smith and others are currently re-writing the Jane Austen novels. They are not plagiarising, but using the stories as inspiration.

Plagiarism is when someone comes on here, copies the whole story and republishes it exactly as written on another site under their name - usually to make money somehow. That happens sometimes and we have to go and complain and get the story taken down. (It has never happened to me that I know of, I sometimes feel mildly insulted by that! LOL.)

I do sometimes get students who plagiarise. I once wrote in feedback on an essay that the student's style was inconsistent. Passages of her writing were ungrammatical and incoherent, then she had a long passage that was elegant and well-argued. Our marking is all carefully checked and I had a note back from the author of the chapter the students were studying - who happened to be the person checking - to say he was glad I thought the writing was elegant, as it was his writing! Even he was not cross about it but thought it was funny, although we did have to warn the student not to do it again.

Good luck with the writing!

 

[LWulf]

I can't find any evidence of this anywhere. Do you have a source?

All I kind find are lawsuits initiated by George Lucas.

No I don't. All I can tell you is I remember it from about the late 70's/early 80's. It was on the news or an entertainment news program at the time. The Chinese movie was from about the 1940's and was considered a 'classic.' That one character name in that movie was 'Han.'

I'll also say I shouldn't have said "successfully sued" because it never went to court. It was settled out of court and in my mind, anytime someone pays to keep someone else quiet, that's success, because when a court case goes to trial and you hear it was ruled in favor of so-and-so who got 30 cajuillian dollars, then that is a failure because the plaintiff never sees a dollar of that money. Lawyers get all their money but nothing more is paid out. Settlement fees ARE paid out as a rule of thumb. Welching on a settlement fee means you go back to court.

Settling out of court = $$$ = win!
Winning court case = $0.00 = lose.
That's how I see it.

Edit: At the time, Fanboy me was all manner of "this is bullshit!" and I was completely slackjawed when I heard he settled out of court/didn't even try to fight it.
Then Mark Hamill got into a bad car accident during Corvette Summer.
then Star wars 2 & 3 (ep 5 &6) came out, and the story seemed completely jumbled compared to the original storyline.
Seriously, In ep 4, Luke was pining just as much for Leia as Han, and Leia made a point to give Luke a deep sultry kiss to which Luke put his hands behind his head gloating in front of Han in a "that's right, I'm the man" kind of way, only to find out later that Leia is Luke's sister???
Major rewrite to avoid further settlement fees (or maybe that was an agreement in the settlement) you ask me.

 

[Aynmair]

We've had a couple of students, I won't mention from which country, plagiarize an assignment on the meaning of plagiarism. And these were grad students!

PennLady and others are right - using the same idea is not plagiarism.

You can mention the other story, and I think the author would take it as a sincere compliment. Just say that story inspired yours, which is the truth. You can't copy the story because you can't find it. Yours is bound to be a different story.

Joanna Trollope, Alexander McCall Smith and others are currently re-writing the Jane Austen novels. They are not plagiarising, but using the stories as inspiration.

Plagiarism is when someone comes on here, copies the whole story and republishes it exactly as written on another site under their name - usually to make money somehow. That happens sometimes and we have to go and complain and get the story taken down. (It has never happened to me that I know of, I sometimes feel mildly insulted by that! LOL.)

I do sometimes get students who plagiarise. I once wrote in feedback on an essay that the student's style was inconsistent. Passages of her writing were ungrammatical and incoherent, then she had a long passage that was elegant and well-argued. Our marking is all carefully checked and I had a note back from the author of the chapter the students were studying - who happened to be the person checking - to say he was glad I thought the writing was elegant, as it was his writing! Even he was not cross about it but thought it was funny, although we did have to warn the student not to do it again.

Good luck with the writing!

 

[slyc_willie]

No I don't. All I can tell you is I remember it from about the late 70's/early 80's. It was on the news or an entertainment news program at the time. The Chinese movie was from about the 1940's and was considered a 'classic.' That one character name in that movie was 'Han.'

I'll also say I shouldn't have said "successfully sued" because it never went to court. It was settled out of court and in my mind, anytime someone pays to keep someone else quiet, that's success, because when a court case goes to trial and you hear it was ruled in favor of so-and-so who got 30 cajuillian dollars, then that is a failure because the plaintiff never sees a dollar of that money. Lawyers get all their money but nothing more is paid out. Settlement fees ARE paid out as a rule of thumb. Welching on a settlement fee means you go back to court.

Settling out of court = $$$ = win!
Winning court case = $0.00 = lose.
That's how I see it.

A fanciful story, but there's no evidence concerning any litigation against Lucas, or Star Wars in this way. And supposed "paying off" doesn't imply guilt; often, it's done to reduce mounting expenses connected to a frivolous lawsuit and just to shut some dumbass opportunist up.

On the other hand, Lucas has initiated a lawsuit here and there against others claiming plagiarism or impropriety. He hasn't been too successful with that.

 

[Hypoxia]

Just because someone includes a detail in a similar story doesn't mean they copied you.

My first PC sound card was an AdLib. It came with composition software that worked rather like punching piano rolls. I wrote all sorts of fun and disturbing music with that combo. (Plays on SoundBlaster too.)

One KPFA Morning Concert premiered a draft work by John Adams (NIXON IN CHINA), then composer-in-residence at the SF Symphony. His piece (might have been for 1492) sounded EXACTLY like a piece I'd been working on. Fucker read my mind!

Yeah, sure. Look: Terra is infested with eight billion humanoids. No all have unique original thoughts. Even if not exposed to same influences, some still write-draw-sing something VERY similar to someone else's efforts. Parallelism, not plagiarism.

EDIT: This is my post #1666. That must have numerological significance, right? Maybe related to the Great London Fire that year?

 

[NaokoSmith]

We've had a couple of students, I won't mention from which country, plagiarize an assignment on the meaning of plagiarism. And these were grad students!

An assignment on plagiarism? Is that more of a study skills module?

I heard of one student Prince from a wealthy Middle Eastern family who had been done once for light plagiarism, for which he had a light smacking round the head. Then he handed in his postgraduate dissertation and the whole thing was a complete copy, bang to rights. He was called in for the ritual ticking off and stripping of his student railcard.

"What can you do?" he protested indignantly. "I've told the guy I pay to write this stuff for me not to copy it."

You just can't get the staff these days, huh!

 

[litmlove]

Inspiration <--[]--> Copying.

George Lucas was successfully sued for star wars being too close to a chinese kung fu picture.
Seriously? All kung fu movies are virtually identical.

Hell no! You have no idea. I could say the same about westerns but I would be trashing the western genre (also I like westerns too).

He copied Kurosawa, he was a major film director of the post-war japanese film industry. 'Seven Samurai' is my favourite film from him.

George Lucas unashameably 'borrowed' from a film by Kurosawa and made it in space. And I mean he copied all of the characters from the princess to R2D2/C3PO. Jed-Dai ~~> Jedi.

I looked on youtube and found this fantastic film explaining it : (remove spaces) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pU6B2zEFeg

BTW, admitting to a crime in a forum is the same as a confession in a police station, in court.

Maybe, but if you confess to something that isn't a crime then there isn't a problem. Yes, plagiarism isn't a crime. But if I heavily borrow from the source material and I admit it, that doesn't mean I have committed plagarism if I make a transformation to that source material to create a unique work (more complicated but you get the idea). This principle is at the heart of copyright law.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Inspiration <--[]--> Copying.


Hell no! You have no idea. I could say the same about westerns but I would be trashing the western genre (also I like westerns too).

He copied Kurosawa, he was a major film director of the post-war japanese film industry. 'Seven Samurai' is my favourite film from him.

George Lucas unashameably 'borrowed' from a film by Kurosawa and made it in space. And I mean he copied all of the characters from the princess to R2D2/C3PO. Jed-Dai ~~> Jedi.

I looked on youtube and found this fantastic film explaining it : (remove spaces) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pU6B2zEFeg

This makes much more sense. I knew Lucas was inspired by feudal Japan and Westerns, but I had no idea the actual amount of borrowing from Kurosawa that took place.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Really, you shouldn't worry so much about it. I bet stories go up every day sharing details and elements, whether they're in the same genre or category or not.

Sometimes it can be downright eerie. Last fall I was in the middle of writing the final chapter of a story. I was barreling straight through with the first draft of all three chapters before I started any editing or posting. One day I'm taking a break and skimming through the new stories section and I find a story written by another poster on this board with striking similarities to mine. The same description could have covered both stories. I wrote to him and told him to be prepared for a shocker in a few weeks, since it would look to an outside observer as though I had copied him. He took it in stride, and we both laughed it off when it was all over. The stories are actually quite different, but on the surface they share an uncanny number of similarities. The really strange part is that we were writing them simultaneously.

 

[walkerlong]

Hell no! You have no idea. I could say the same about westerns but I would be trashing the western genre (also I like westerns too).

He copied Kurosawa, he was a major film director of the post-war japanese film industry. 'Seven Samurai' is my favorite film from him.

George Lucas unashamedly 'borrowed' from a film by Kurosawa and made it in space. And I mean he copied all of the characters from the princess to R2D2/C3PO. Jed-Dai ~~> Jedi.

And Kurosawa borrowed from Dashiell Hammett. Nothing is new under the sun.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Lots of MuLan is borrowed from Kurosawa, if you ask me

 

[Hypoxia]

Creativity requires 'borrowing' ie theft. We don't build new anythings from the ground up -- we take existing concepts and twist them, shape them, rebuild them. Much music is based on a few common patterns -- harmonic /melodic / rhythmic structures -- elaborated endlessly. We hear near-infinite variations of 3-chord 12-bar blues, 4-chord turnarounds, 5-chord circle-of-fifths tunes. The exact same structures, sometimes with the same phrasings, but in different voices.

 

[NaokoSmith]

OMG! Do you think someone might be having sex the same way as me somewhere too? I am going to sue their knickers off! Well ... I will do something involving getting their knickers off, anyway

 

[litmlove]

I wouldn't worry (or do worry depending on your point of view). If there is no money at stake, then why would anyone bother? You could receive some polite letters asking you to remove the offending works - but you can just as easily ignore them (or to be precise the site admin can ignore them by sheer neglect).

IANALOA[I am not a layer or American] but I believe the DMCA could not be invoked. I believe the DMCA is focused on complete recordings(eg: video,music&etc.), not idea stealing.

OMG! Do you think someone might be having sex the same way as me somewhere too? I am going to sue their knickers off! Well ... I will do something involving getting their knickers off, anyway

Indeed.

If only I could patent the "vulnerable-young-woman rescued by masculine&caring man" genre. Sigh.

 

[Stella_Omega]

My first PC sound card was an AdLib. It came with composition software that worked rather like punching piano rolls. I wrote all sorts of fun and disturbing music with that combo. (Plays on SoundBlaster too.)

One KPFA Morning Concert premiered a draft work by John Adams (NIXON IN CHINA), then composer-in-residence at the SF Symphony. His piece (might have been for 1492) sounded EXACTLY like a piece I'd been working on. Fucker read my mind!

Yeah, sure. Look: Terra is infested with eight billion humanoids. No all have unique original thoughts. Even if not exposed to same influences, some still write-draw-sing something VERY similar to someone else's efforts. Parallelism, not plagiarism.

That.

EDIT: This is my post #1666. That must have numerological significance, right? Maybe related to the Great London Fire that year?

Nice coincidence-- sort of-- That was what my bathroom scale read this morning-- I've lost 24 pounds, more or less, over the past year!

 

[NaokoSmith]

If only I could patent the "vulnerable-young-woman rescued by masculine&caring man" genre. Sigh.

But ... but that's a true story isn't it?

 

[Hypoxia]

EDIT: This is my post #1666. That must have numerological significance, right? Maybe related to the Great London Fire that year?

That. Nice coincidence-- sort of-- That was what my bathroom scale read this morning-- I've lost 24 pounds, more or less, over the past year!

Your bathroom scale read 1666?!? Sacre bleu!

Meanwhile, I'm big and tall, but smaller now. I've dropped 1/4 of my body weight in 10 months. Whew. Another 1/4 to go from here for my goal. I'll get there and stay there. How? The Jim Taylor diet. Jim was a fat schlub. He deduced he was a fat schlub because he ate too much. His diet? Don't eat too much. Pretty simple, eh? Read about him (and much more) in Richard Preston's THE WILD TREES, a totally thrilling, totally nonfiction book.