Fan Fiction: Plagiarism or Inspiration?

writing View Comments
Aug 022010

If you’ve known me or read one of my blogs for any length of time, you know that I’m fascinated by fan fiction. There are many reasons for it, but one of the aspects that really fascinates me is the “Is fan fiction plagiarism?” debate.

At its core, the answer to this question is a very simple, “Yep.” The fan fiction creator has taken someone else’s characters, which they often then change into something radically different from the original character, and someone else’s world, which they either shun for a setting more like where they live or change radically to accommodate their altered versions of the original characters and woven a story around them. Some fan fiction writers will actually take an incident from the original stories and rewrite it to a different outcome and some will use it as a direct launch point for their own story. Others will create their own stories, often with an original character (Mary Sue or otherwise) or two woven in.

Wait a minute. The fan fiction writer will sometimes take the original world and altering it to fit what they know? Isn’t that inspiration, then? Wasn’t the fan fiction writer then just inspired by the original source?

And now you’ve seen where the argument begins, how it begins, and how circular it is. Just watching this argument can be fascinating enough, as people try to support why they’ve taken a side. It’s interesting to see how different people on each side regard the practice and wording of disclaimers, too.

Things only get really interesting, though, when you stop listening to the general debate and start listening to individuals within the fandom. You see, there are people within the fan fiction community who will plagiarize someone else’s fan fiction. It’s a bit meta, but there it is. Inevitably, the first person will find out, and caps-on arguments will ensue as to whether or not the second person really plagiarized or was inspired. (This is particularly entertaining when the second story has nothing more in common with the first story than a specific set of characters and a very vague plot similarity that looks like nothing more than both people responding to the same writing prompt.)

In every single case, the fan fiction writer who created the first piece screams, “Plagiarism!” while the second yells, “Inspiration!” And when someone watching the debate points out that both technically are plagiarizing the original source, both explode.  For some reason, feeling plagiarized herself doesn’t give the fan fiction writer any sort of sympathy for the creator she herself plagiarized to begin with.

So, fan fiction is plagiarism. But it can also serve as the inspiration for an aspiring writer to start experimenting as part of their development.

Posted by Rebecca at 8:34 am Tagged with: ,

Plagiarizing between tradition and digital media

teaching View Comments
Jul 022010

I’ve spent the week cleaning up my Flickr account, mostly employing better tags and re-setting rights.  I got to thinking about how I assign rights to my work. If it’s my own and not tied to some project, I’m likely going to use Creative Commons. If I’ve manipulated someone else’s work or put pieces from a bunch of other perople’s work together, I’m going to reserve all rights, simply because there are rights present that aren’t mine to give.

A few months back, a student contacted me and asked if he could use one of Dead Bunny’s videos in a web site he was building for a class project. I was only too happy to give him permission.

It occurred to me that day, as it did while I was working through my photos, that I know far too many young people who would have just taken the video and never given it a second thought, simply because it was online. I’ve actually had repeated conversations with my students because they’ll actually tell me it’s okay to take something online. To them, it doesn’t matter. It’s online, free for the taking.

I’ll often ask how being available online makes it different from a book, where we make a ruckus about what they can use, how much they can use, and how they have to acknowledge it. It’s still something someone created and published. The only response I ever get back is, “Because it’s online. The internet is free.”

Now, these are kids who’ve probably never heard, either in or out of context, the phrase, “Information wants to be free”, although it comes to mind every single time I have this conversation, but they’re certainly ready to embrace it because we aren’t doing enough to help them see that media is media.  We start by applying copyright symbols to web materials. Every citation guide in existence has quietly added online sources to their examples. But if we don’t talk about the copyright inherent in all media, then we’re going to continue having conversations with students about how protections extend to media, regardless of its form or location.

Posted by Rebecca at 9:09 am Tagged with:

Don’t copy my blog post!

writing View Comments
Aug 172006

I blog. I maintain several blogs actually. I started blogging a few years ago because I wanted to share links I found interesting and to share my knowledge and discoveries of various topics.

Today, I blog to help disseminate information. I’m a teacher, sharing knowledge is in my blood. If someone asks to add my blog to a blogroll, or asks to feed my content to another site designed to share information, then I’m willing to oblige. If someone links to a post on my blog or feeds it somewhere without my consent, as long as the site in question is out to share information, too, then I’m perfectly fine with it.

This is why I publish under the non-commercial, attribution, share-alike Creative Commons license. Hoarding information benefits no one, and it’s not why I blog.

There are many bloggers who feel the same way I do. I have the honor of contributing to blogs with them. I enjoy sharing the blogosphere with them because we blog with the same mindset.

However, there are bloggers that I have seriously considered throwing off my blogrolls and removing from my aggregator because they don’t blog to share knowledge. In fact, I’m not sure what their motivation is, and I have finally decided that i don’t want to know because it would only cause me to lose respect for them.

These are the bloggers who blow a gasket when someone links to them without their prior consent. These are the bloggers who respond to a trackback with a rude comment. These are the bloggers who try to coerce other bloggers to make it difficult for their information to be copied.

To a certain extent, I can understand wanting to protect intellectual property, which is why attribution is part of the CC license on my blogs. I understand that there are some very unscrupulous people out there who try to use others’ content for personal gain without ever crediting their source. (I’ve actually had to contact such a site myself to get my content removed from their site.) But are there seriously so many jerks out there that those who have dubbed themselves blogging elite feel they need to hoard their knowledge? To be condescending to those who link or credit in good faith?

I think an interesting game is playing out through the blogosphere right now as those of us who share openly and those of us who blog for other reasons try to come to some sort of compromise.

Posted by Rebecca at 1:31 pm Tagged with: ,

Thwarting plagiarism

writing View Comments
Jun 282006

I spent the past school year grading for a local high school, and one of their major concerns was teaching the students not to plagiarize from their sources. When I was in school, we were told to cite every single quote and paraphrase. Somehow, that bit of wisdom has not been passed on to younger generations.

In an age where file sharing and internet research abound, somehow we’re failing students by not introducing them to the concept of plagiarism. Those who figure it out when they’re hit with a copyright infringement complaint then get themselves into further trouble by misapplying what they’ve learned.

It doesn’t help when we have opposite forces at work in this country: those who want to see their work derived from, and those who are afraid their meal ticket will vanish or want to make money off the derivative works (let’s face it, that’s what this debate largely comes down to). Thank goodness for organizations like Creative Commons, right?

Somehow, I’ve fallen off-track. The point is that students need to be taught how to credit properly when they borrow someone else’s words to make their point. They need to understand that this is both respectful to the original source, and it gives them a way to find what they used should they need to. In a sense, it’s not entirely unlike creating a link back to an original article in a web post.

Posted by Rebecca at 11:00 pm Tagged with:

Canadian artists may have the right idea

creativity View Comments
May 132006

I’ve been reading lately about the group of Canadian artists who are trying to keep their work more available to the fans. At least…I think that’s what they’re attempting. (I read five or so different articles on it before I had to figure out how to be five people simultaneously, so I’m not entirely sure I’ve got it.)

At any rate, these artists feel that hunting down “pirates” and chastising them does them no good. They feel that their work should actually be available to fans instead. So, they removed themselves from an organization not entirely dissimilar from our RIAA, and have created their own coalition promoting these ideals.

I certainly hope they succeed. There were some big names involved in this, all artists I very much enjoy. (I have always had this closet thing for Canadian musicians.) Perhaps the idea will catch on here if it works out.

Posted by Rebecca at 12:58 pm Tagged with:

The impact of obtaining course materials more easily

education View Comments
May 262005

I have less than fond memories of the first two years of college. That’s not entirely accurate. I loved college. I have less than fond memories of Norlin Library.

Every single class I took at the University of Colorado had half the course materials on reserve in the library, which usually meant battling anywhere from 30-300 other students to get to the materials to copy them in order to have them for class discussions and homework assignments. Even better was the fact that the library staff never enforced the rules of the reserve, and more often than not, material was never returned so students couldn’t use it. With a busy schedule, any college student was challenged to get their materials in a timely manner.

Some schools got smart and created a system where teachers could have course books printed with much of the material and offer them for purchase in the bookstore. Some professors have decided to take a different route and make their course material available online.

Of course, there is the debate of the impact of either practice on the copyright of the material included and the saleablity of the source of the material. “Fair use in education” seems to be one of those sticky topics. As long as outside material is used in class, this is going to continue to be an issue.

Posted by Rebecca at 11:46 am Tagged with:
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