Remember back in ... January? February? ... when there was a fuss about Cassie Edwards plagiarizing all over the place? well, it seems her publisher, Signet, has now severed the relationship. The copyrights are reverting to her.

Question - how valid is the copyright on plagiarized material?

Signet, has now severed the relationship. The copyrights are reverting to her.

I saw that this am too!

Question - how valid is the copyright on plagiarized material?

bwah!

ION - just finished Winter's Tale. Liked it very much. Thanks for the rec!

how valid is the copyright on plagiarized material?

Copyright doesn't fall apart if it's not enforced the way trademark does. If you quietly ignore copyright violations for years and years, and then suddenly decide to enforce them, you are totally within your rights. (Which is why Jon Stewart clips used to be all over YouTube, and disappeared in a twinkling when Comedy Central decided to host its own video site.)

If Edwards quoted more than is permissible from any given work still under copyright, she could be sued for violating somebody else's copyright.

It's a hassle and an expense, so I don't think Mr. Black Toed Ferret would ever bother, but if the grandkids of one of the Indian compendia authors from whom she plagiarized liberally were to go hog-wild, he/she could potentially go to town on Edwards and win considerable damages. Like, she has profited a whole hell of a lot from mis-use of someone else's copyright. If Hog Wild Grandkid were to get just 5% of her lifetime revenue from the 5 books in which she plagiarized that one specific work, that's probably a fair amount of dough.

(Not all her plagiarism was of copyrighted works, but some of it was.)

My point was how valid is Edwards' copyright (trying to make a joke ... maybe I should have resorted to an emoticon) (that's another joke).

I'm hoping various and sundry people will go after her - she's been lifting other people's work for 20+ years, and she's made bunches of money. I don't think the excuse of "well, she's 70-however-many years old" is going to play well, and I don't think her own "well, isn't that how you do research?" will either.

In related news, Romantic Times had its convention/conference last week, including a session on how to do research without plagiarizing the material. It was, seemingly, well attended and people paid attention, took notes, even.

What, Toddson, you don't want a lecture on copyright? I'm sure I have my powerpoints right here somewhere...

Seriously, wouldn't it be great if somebody made a pile of money off her, at this late date? Double extra points if the plaintiff is some flavor of Indian, and shows up in court wearing a Savile Row suit and a very short haircut.

"Hey lady! I got your frelling we-sha-sha right here!"

Actually, I think a lot of the info about copyright law was pretty thoroughly discussed back when this first came up.

And I would LOVE it if a whole bunch of people representing original copyright holders - including a frelling Pulitzer Prize winning novel - all filed civil suits and got lots and lots of money from her. Perhaps the court could order that she attend classes on copyright infringement and plagiarism.

I think the court should order her to walk across the state of Kansas while wearing rawhide underpants. And when she gets to the other side of Kansas, she should have to butcher a fresh buffalo and cook dinner.

The thing that weirdly irks me about Cassie Edwards is that I don't get the feeling she did any of it maliciously. Which is not to excuse her at all, but I get the sense that she's honestly not smart enough to know the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing, or how to cite and use research.

Maybe it just pisses me off because her novels are CRAP without the lifted bits. There are good romances and bad romances, just as in any other genre, and hers are just hideously bad to begin with.

Unfortunately, Signet was only one of the publishers Edwards was working with--so far, Dorchester and one other publisher, I want to say Kensington but am not sure, haven't repudiated her.

And may I just say I am NOT looking forward to the recommendations that come up next time I load Amazon, since I was just digging through her backlist to try to track down her third publisher?

Oh, hah. But I think there's a way you can tag recent searches to not affect your recommendations.