Yeah, they should, but that doesn't mean people can't learn from their mistakes, or should always be branded as a result.

(ETA: I was replying to Theodosia.)

See, I want to know who's stealing stuff. I don't want to end up reading a story or watching a vid and liking it and not realizing that someone stole that work.

Oh, and I'm not even going to touch the claim that thousands of people would be attracted to Firefly by watching vids. I mean, really: vids are for invested fans, and don't do much to attract newbies to a show. You generally have to know the characters and the show to get what a vid is telling you. Otherwise it's just pretty pictures set to music.

The guy's a nut, and a stupid one at that.

Well, what if you're a plagiarist who gets caught, apologizes, takes down the work, and goes on to write original material in the same fandom? To take a hypothetical example that in no way is happening right now in SV?

And, also, what if someone uses that same information not to avoid someone's work, but to mailbomb the plagiarist, and shut down the mailserver for the entire ISP?

This is actually more what I'm worried about, stuff like that.

Actually, I know a plagiarism case in professional horror fiction that pretty much derailed a legitimate career. "Dawn Dunn" was actually two sisters; one mostly did detailed plots and the other handled the expanded prose. First sister started stealing plots (somewhat changed) from Dean Koontz' earlier and more obscure novels,which second sister, who hadn't read them, dutifully wrote out.

As they got more contracts and started writing faster, first sister began lifting whole sections, omitting changing details. About four books down the road, a Koontz fan reported back to Koontz, Koontz got his lawyer and publisher on the case and all hell broke loose. Second sister really hadn't known, but whatever she's written on her own and submitted on her own since then has been blackballed by most legitimate publishers on general principle.

I had a co-worker at a magazine who plagiarized an article. Really obviously. In that case, he got fired, and went off to j-school instead.

Ruth Shalit is another example of someone who made a career post-plagiarism, and last I heard Stephen Glass was going to LAW school, of all things. So, it's not even always a career-ender in the real world.

Also, in real-world instances, no one is gonna come hack your web page or mailbomb your ISP or something like that.

Second sister really hadn't known, but whatever she's written on her own and submitted on her own since then has been blackballed by most legitimate publishers on general principle.

OK, that's gotta suck, especially if she honestly didn't know. But I can see why the publishers would stay away from her.

Someone who submits articles to a newspaper in Tennessee has apparently been plagiarizing them from newsweeklies all around the country, including the East Bay Express, which is how I heard about it. When questioned, his editor admitted that he'd never actually met the guy and that he did all his filing by computer.

Apparently nobody thought it was odd when they ran a detailed story about a would-be rap star framed by a corrupt cop, set in Memphis -- the original story had been about Oakland, where such things are not only common but expected. Huh.

Plagiarism scares me. Thanks for the explanations.

When I was reading the rants, I assumed it was like the Cassandra Claire case, where someone took sections of a published work and claimed this as new. This sounds more like it's about copying without permission and general asswipery.