Plagiarism is one of the ugliest concepts in the writer's lexicon. Simply put, plagiarism is theft--the direct theft of another writer's work. I'm not just talking about borrowing a concept that the writer used, but actually taking that writer's words and publishing them (or using them in a report, or putting them out before the public in any way) as your own. Making minimal changes in those words is also considered plagiarism. For example, if the original writer wrote, "More than 25 percent of all adults above the age of 25 have cheated on their taxes," you can't simply rewrite it to say, "25% of adults above 25 have cheated on their taxes." That's still plagiarism.

Plagiarism and the Internet

Plagiarism is, unfortunately, common on the Internet. Some people practice it innocently enough, not understanding that they're stealing (though this doesn't excuse them), or that they're required to quote or even buy material they lift from elsewhere. But most people know full well that what they're doing is stealing. I've heard horror stories about fanfic taken directly from one site and posted elsewhere with someone else's name on it.

I had a minor brush with the issue a few years ago. I run a website for the Rocky Mountain Skeptics, and my name is on the bottom of every page, along with a copyright notice. Every so often I search on my name in different search engines to see who's linking to me. Imagine my surprise when I checked Alta Vista and a single page with my name turned up under an unusual URL. I traveled to that page and found an exact duplicate of one of the pages from the RMS site, with one minor change: Whoever had pinched the page had added a bit of code to start a series of Romanian porn ads popping up on my screen! In retrospect this was pretty funny, as the moron hadn't even bothered to remove my name from his/her theft, but at the time I was highly annoyed. Never mind that the page stolen was a minor one that no one cared about or would even think to search for; the point was that this was MY page that some stranger, for reasons that remain a mystery to this day, was playing with without my permission. Luckily, the moron had posted this page on one of the free hosting sites with a very clear plagiarism policy, and as soon as I complained to the host they took it down.

The moral of this story, besides the obvious one, Don't Plagiarize, is that you should occasionally search for yourself or for a phrase in your online work to see if it's been stolen. The latter is probably the best idea, since most plagiarizers won't be as stupid as the one that hit me and will know to take the original writer's name off. Search on an unusual phrase that someone else isn't likely to have duplicated.

Effects of Plagiarism on Known Plagiarizers

Writers

Charges of plagiarism can seriously damage a writer's career. You may recall the controversy surrounding the late history writer Stephen Ambrose. He was charged with stealing material from a book written some years earlier. He claimed to have been guilty, not of plagiarism, but of incorrectly attributing quotes taken from that book (mostly by not putting quotes around them or setting them off in any way). Regardless, his reputation was tarnished, and the incident was mentioned in his obituaries.

Another writer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, wrote an extremely popular book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, that turned out to have had large chunks plagiarized from other sources. She lost her position as regular guest on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and has withdrawn all unsold copies of her book in order to address the issue. Her publisher had also settled with the author of one of the sources for an undisclosed sum. Will readers ever trust her again?

A fanfic writer known to plagiarize others' works will be shunned by everyone who knows about that person's tendencies. Neither Rooftop Sessions nor Rational Magic will ever publish the work of a known plagiarizer. Why should we treat with thieves?

Musicians

As Beatle fans, we're all aware of George Harrison's brush with plagiarism, when "My Sweet Lord" was said to have been plagiarized from the earlier "He's So Fine." Sit down someday and listen to the two songs. There isn't that much musical similarity between them, but they're structured similarly and have identical progressions of notes for the chorus. George was ruled to have "unconsciously" plagiarized the earlier song. He had to pay a considerable chunk of money to make good.

Another Beatle who ran afoul of plagiarism charges was John, in "Come Together." The first line of the song is "Here come old Flattop/He come groovin' up slowly." This line was pinched from a Chuck Berry song, "You Can't Catch Me." The original line was "Up come a flattop/He was movin' up with me" As this was a relatively minor act of plagiarism, John's payment (to avoid a lawsuit) was to record an album with some old Chuck Berry songs on it--1975's Rock and Roll. Both of these examples illustrate the fact that you don't have to make a perfect copy of someone else's work to be guilty of plagiarism.

On the other hand, there are examples of songs that sound like other songs, but the original songwriter didn't sue for whatever reason. If you're familiar with the musical Singin' in the Rain, you might know that the song "Make 'Em Laugh" is an almost note-for-note rewrite of the song "Be a Clown," and people associated with Singin' in the Rain remain grateful that Cole Porter, the composer of "Be a Clown," didn't sue. But in today's ultra-litigious atmosphere, you can always assume that plagiarism will result in a lawsuit.

Plots and Ideas

Plagiarism of plots and ideas is harder to prove than plagiarism of words or music. As there are no truly original plots left, it's usually impossible to claim that so-and-so stole your idea outright. (Otherwise, the Tolkien estate would be in constant litigation, given all the Tolkienesque fantasies being published every year!) The trick to originality these days is how you treat the idea you've chosen to use.

For example, say you're writing a story using the Beatles as depicted in Help!, which is a common portrayal. (Let's also assume that you're not using any of the fictional characters from the movie, which would be an issue of copyright infringement and thus beyond the scope of this article.) It would be legitimate to have them using the four-doored house as a base. But people would start to raise their eyebrows if Islamic cultists invaded the house, or Ringo found himself facing a lion, or they traveled to the Colorado Rockies to go skiing... in other words, light rewrites of key plot elements in the movie are NOT kosher. Similarly, if you plugged in recognizable elements from other stories (e.g., if a yellow submarine pulled up outside the house and took the Fabs on a ride to save Pepperland), you would begin to veer dangerously close to plagiarism. You could get away with such behavior if you were doing a parody or satire, but not in a straight story.

You're better off, both legally and creatively, to come up with completely new adventures in the Help! mythos. Maybe the Beatles are asked to solve a murder mystery. Maybe they're trying to rest up to record an album but are besieged by fans. Maybe their vending machines come to life and try to take over their house. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Actually, you're even better off if you come up with Beatles stories that don't intersect, except in VERY limited ways, with existing fictional treatments of the Fabs. The Beatles are public figures and have given up a certain amount of privacy in exchange for fame and money; they're fair game for fanfic. Fictional works about the Beatles, on the other hand, are copyrighted property, and you're risking a cease-and-desist letter (or worse) if you borrow from them.

Legitimately Using Others' Words

I want to make clear the difference between using someone's work and stealing someone's work. It's perfectly acceptable--indeed, necessary--to use the original writer's words thusly: "So-and-so said in her book XYZ that 'More than 25 percent...' etc." If you're writing for publication or for school, especially nonfiction, you would also provide a formal bibliography, but at the fanfic level you don't need to go to such lengths (unless for whatever reason you had quoted a lot of material and wanted to be thorough). You should, however, always attribute quotes from songs and so forth--footnotes are fine. (You don't need to attribute titles, just lyrics.) For example, if you quote from In His Own Write, you should always:

1. Make it clear that John Lennon wrote those words;

2. Say that the words come from In His Own Write. Example: "As John wrote in In His Own Write, 'Blah blah blah.' ") If you want to be formal, provide a citation instead. Example: "Blah blah blah." (Lennon, In His Own Write, p. 32). You don't have to put that information in the text; you can footnote the page, which is less intrusive, especially if you're writing fiction.

3. Set off those words in some way that distinguishes them from your own material. "Quotes work for short pieces." For longer chunks of material,

such chunks should be set off thusly--no quotes, indented, and clearly separated from the main bulk of the document. This is established practice in publishing. For fanfic, you're probably not going to run into this issue, but it's something to keep in mind if you decide to write nonfiction, and it's definitely a good thing to know if you have to write papers for school. School is the place where plagiarism is probably most prevalent; if you're caught, you can kiss your grade goodbye, and you can even be expelled from many schools.

A minor exception can be made for dialogue that consists of song lines or words that your character has spoken in the real world. You don't need to attribute each line (which would be hideously cumbersome). For example, if you're writing a story about the Let It Be recording sessions, you might want to use a few lines of genuine dialogue, such as when George says "I'll play whatever you want me to play." But if you're writing fiction, don't take all your dialogue from reality; you want to exert your own creativity, not quote the Beatles word-for-word! A real line here and there will add a realistic dimension to your work without compromising your fictive powers. As for using song lyrics or titles as dialogue, I suggest you not do this, as it's been done numerous times and is quite boring.

The Limits of What You Can Call Your Own

Just because you attribute all your quotes doesn't mean that you can pass off a document as your own if your document consists of mostly quotes. Think of this as being the same as a website that consists only of links to other sites, even if the links have short descriptions appended. It's nice that the site creator put in the effort, but the work is really no more than an annotated index--it's hardly a creative endeavor, and no one would ever consider it such. If you quote heavily, you're expected to provide a correspondingly larger chunk of your own work, be it a fictional wrapper around those quotes, hefty analysis, etc.

Along those same lines, you cannot publish another person's work in your own book, on your own website, etc., even if you fully attribute it, without permission from that person.* If you feel that it's OK to do this because you're not making any money from it, you're still in the wrong. There are lots of reasons why doing this is harmful to the creator of the work, not the least of which is that by "diluting" the work you make it harder for the creator to make money with it. If everyone has seen that person's work for free, why would they want to pay for it elsewhere? And think: How would you feel if you worked very hard on something you wanted to sell, and suddenly it appeared in a dozen different places, and no publisher would touch it any more?

* There is such a thing as fair use, where you can use a few lines from a song, a paragraph from a short story or book, etc., without having to get permission. For example, Sandra Ulbrich did not have to contact John Lennon's estate to quote from his song "Move Over Ms. L" in her fanfic of the same name.  You're still required to make it clear that what you're using is a quote, though, as mentioned above.

Avoiding Plagiarism in Your Own Work

If you think you're writing Beatlefic (not parody or satire but straight stories) that could be plagiarizing another author’s work, and you sincerely don't want to do this, here's a checklist of questions to ask yourself about your story:

1. Did I take the framework of my story from another source? (1)

2. Are my secondary characters identical to, heavily similar to, or slightly based on characters from another source? (3 if identical, 2 if heavily similar, 1 if slightly based on)

3. Am I rewriting a story that I read somewhere else? (2)

4. Did I take a notable amount of material directly from another story or an interview? (3) (If yes, skip to #6)

5. Did I take a couple of lines or phrases from another story or an interview? (1)

6. When people read this story, will they think of another story that's very similar? (1)

7. Did I quote from songs or other stories without letting my readers know who wrote those songs or stories in the first place? (3)

8. Do my Beatles do things very similar to things that which the Beatles did in others’ stories? (2)

9. Do things happen to my Beatles that are very similar to things that happened to the Beatles in others’ stories? (2)

10. Was I heavily influenced by an existing story but didn't acknowledge this influence? (1)

For every question to which your answer is "Yes," add the number in parentheses. If your score is 0, you're cool. If your score is 1, you don't have much of a problem unless you're being really blatant about it. If your score is 2, you're veering dangerously close to plagiarism and should consider a rewrite to fix the problems. A score of 3 and up is definitely plagiarism, and you MUST fix the problems. A score higher than 6 means that you might as well scrap the story, since there probably isn't enough original material in it to qualify it as your own.

What To Do If YOU Are Plagiarized

If you find that one of your stories, or even a paragraph, has been appropriated by some sleazoid, you need to take immediate action. If the item is being hosted by a free host such as GeoCities or Tripod, immediately email the webmaster or someone in charge and demand that the offending item be removed. Other hosts (e.g., Mindspring, AOL) have plagiarism policies and should also be approachable--or, if nothing else, if the thief has a recognizable email address, you can complain to the email server host.

If this isn't feasible or doesn't result in anything useful, send an email to the thief yourself, demanding that the thief perform such steps as to restore your material to you (e.g., take her/his name off the story, attribute large quotes to you, etc.). If this doesn't work, send another email threatening legal action. If nothing comes of this, have someone else follow up pretending to be a lawyer (or, if you have a lawyer in the family, have that person write the email). And continue to follow up, threaten, etc. If you can afford it, and you figure out where the sleazoid lives, sue the bastard! If not, just keep at it; don't be intimidated by silence. You've been ripped off, and you have every right to harass the thief until you get satisfaction.

The Phenomenal Women of the Web website has a good plagiarism page with links to all sorts of helpful legal sites.

Conclusion

As a writer, you should shun plagiarism in all its forms. Legal issues aside, why would you want to be known as someone too inept to come up with your own material? Are you so desperate for praise or recognition that you'll resort to thievery to get it? If you're trying to honor a story that's had an influence on you, do you think that creating a Xerox copy of that work is the best way to tell the author how much you loved the original?

Tell D. Aviva Rothschild  what you thought of her article!