[ SECRET POST #1989 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1989 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 048 secrets from Secret Submission Post #284.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[aiffe]

I mean that if I write a story, and then before I can publish it, someone else takes my story and publishes it in their name, and then I can't because everyone thinks they wrote it, not me, and it goes on to make the plagiarist a bunch of money while I starve on the streets, then yeah, I think the plagiarist did something harmful.

But the writers of Friends, Monty Python, et al, did not actually lose anything because Cassandra Claire got a laptop as a gift.

My morality is harm-based; I don't care if people didn't work hard enough according to some arbitrary standard to get what they got (whatever else you may say about her, CC had ridic wordcounts, and most of it was not plagiarized--I say the girl earned her laptop, and the person who bought it for her liked her and wanted her to have it, but whatevs) it's based on whether there's actual, demonstrable harm caused. I can't find any harm in CC borrowing lines from sitcoms in her fanfiction, or even much of a moral distinction between borrowing lines and borrowing characters, which is what all fanfic authors do.

I also don't take well to people trying to trump up harm to justify their own, different moral system's condemnation of things in harm-based morality, like people who have tried to tell me that it's morally wrong to not wear a seatbelt because the human body could become a projectile in an accident and hurt someone. (By the same logic, your car itself could fucking hurt someone in an accident, and you shouldn't drive it. Also, what about, say, carrying unsecured heavy objects in the back/passenger seat, which I've done many times and no one bats an eye at, because seatbelt usage really comes down to society's desire to protect its members from harm whether they wish to be protected or not.) Basically, my morals don't perfectly match up to what society thinks morals should look like, and I think a bunch of things are fine that society gets its undies in a wad over. Plagiarism is one of them. I'm not saying anyone else has to agree with me. I'm saying that's my opinion.

FTR, I have never intentionally plagiarized anything, unless we're counting fanfic itself as plagiarism (as some do). It's more a matter of...not seeing the point, really. My only external reward for writing is being praised for it, and that praise would ring kind of hollow if I knew they weren't even my words. I do wonder sometimes what goes through a plagiarist's head. But I don't think they're awful people or need to be shunned.

Also, there's a lot of really nice prose in CC's work that I don't believe was ripped off anything. Maybe I'm just not well-read enough to recognize it, I don't know. I think she's actually a good enough writer that she can hold her own just fine; I just thought she didn't have her heart in her original fiction the same way as she did with her fanfic. I could be wrong. I don't know her or anything.