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	BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: My first plagiarism! Monday, July 17, 2006 My first plagiarism! I could make this a very long post, but I'll try to keep it under control. It's an interesting situation though, and I want to do it justice. A couple of weeks ago I got an email from someone calling himself, "The Boss." He told me that someone on his site had apparently plagiarized some of my writing, and that he wanted me to look into it. He didn't include a link to the alleged word theft though, or a link to what might have been copied from my site. I wanted to investigate before I replied, so I went to the domain name from whence his email had come, and found... confusion. Here's the site, TIWF Wrestling, and go ahead and take a look and see if you've got any idea what it is. There's no about page, and the words at the top of the main page didn't really explain anything to me: The TIWF is an online efed created to give wrestling fans their chance to live the dream of being a professional wrestler. Haven't you ever wanted to cut a sweet promo in front of an audience? Feel like bashing someone in the skull with a chair or putting them throough a burning table? Well, here is your chance. TIWF is basically like a mix between ECW and WWE. The TIWF will have one weekly show, on Tuesdays, and one monthly pay per view held on the third Friday of every month. SIGN UP TODAY!!! Okay, so it's something to do with professional wrestling, but what are they talking about with putting on weekly and monthly shows? I thought maybe it was some kind of online video game thing, like they organized matches over Xboxes or maybe they had some kind of Sims wrestling game and people orchestrated their own fights and uploaded the videos. I was wrong, and once again, thank god for Wikipedia. From their "ewrestling" entry: E-Wrestling is an internet variation on creative roleplay, based on the world of professional wrestling. E-Federation Categories Most federations are categorized into one of three groups, based on which of the three content elements — the roleplay, the angle, or the written match itself — decides the outcomes of a federation's matches, championships, and shows. In all federation types, all three elements are presumed to exist, and even hybrid federations that claim to strike a balance tend to favor one element over the other. Regardless of the federation's type, all federations are composed of players (also called handlers) who portray their own character(s) within the federation, and may write roleplays for their performances as needed. Some federations desire characters based on mainstream wrestling personalities (or "real" wrestlers) in order to lend authenticity to the federation, while others may prohibit these in favor of original characters, in hopes of cultivating a distinct identity. Additionally, use of created wrestlers avoids potential litigation over copyright infringment. The distinction does not affect the actual gameplay of the federation aside from the fact that real wrestlers start with an established character while created wrestlers have no such ready-made background. So it's text-based roleplaying, in which players not only invent their own wrestling characters, but engage in actual matches, which presumably play out like those "everyone writes a paragraph" stories you probably did in school. One guy starts off the story, another one answers his opening and takes it in a new direction, the first gets to rebut, and so on, with the readers or site admins deciding who "wins" based on who tells their story better. If it wasn't about something as irredeemably-idiotic as pro wrestling, I might actually find the concept pretty cool. Seriously though, and I'm not saying this to start a flame war or because one of their "wrestlers" plagiarized me, but don't the concepts of text-based RPGing and pro-wrestling seem mutually contradictive? Like anyone who would be smart and witty enough to excel at the task would be repelled by the genre? Anyway, The Boss mailed me back promptly, and included a link to the offending entry. I was curious to see what the guy had stolen, since after all, it's not like I'm writing wrestling-based stories, or even blog entries. Not surprisingly, I'd underestimated the creativity and imagination of the plagiarizing competitor, and I was amazed to find that he'd taken several chunks from the early version of the first chapter of my just-completed novel. Yeah, the fantasy story that was originally based on Diablo II. How could that fit into a wrestling RPG thing? Check it out. I couldn't bring myself to read the whole thing, but he seems to be doing a Gravedigger sort of thing, where he's used my descriptions of the graveyard and cathedral as the atmospheric set for his wrestler, "Nailz." So Nailz has this cool scenery and setting, and once the cameraman approaches he does the usual pro wrestler rant about how tough and deadly he is, and how wimpy his opponent is and how easily he'll crush her bones to bake his bread. Or something along those lines; I certainly didn't read the whole monologue. If you don't remember my original story, it's here on this site, and was originally posted on diabloii.net way back on Halloween, 2002. It might be interesting to compare the versions of my story to the one he's copied, since I rewrote it somewhat between posting it on the D2 site and posting I here, and there are probably a few words different in the portions Nailz has copied. Not that it really matters which site he took it from. (Incidentally, it's been totally rewritten and improved upon in the final novel, which I hope goes without saying.) If it were a subtle theft I'd quote passages side by side, but there's no point with this one. The guy took multiple consecutive paragraphs and changed maybe one word in 25, so it's not like we need the FBI lab evaluate the findings. I guess I should be angry, but I'm pretty indifferent to the whole thing, really. If a real writer stole one of my stories and tried to get it published, I'd be outraged. Some guy taking a few paragraphs and clumsily appending his own dialogue on a e-wrestling site though, is just amusing. It's pretty much the definition of non-profit use, and while it's obviously unethical, that's more an issue for his ewrestling opponent and the commissioner of the e-fed to take action on. Speaking of, it's my fault that nothing's been done yet, since after The Boss' second mail, I took a week to get around to following up and actually comparing the writing (I couldn't bring myself to do it... come on, it's a pro wrestling RPG!) and replying to him. When they confronted him, the Nailz guy apparently said he'd sold part of his story to me, and while that's a pretty pathetic excuse, (Sold it to me 4 years ago and just got around to using it now? And I did what, bought 6 paragraphs and then wrote 5000 more to go around them?) when I didn't quickly contradict it what were they supposed to do? Anyway, I found the whole thing pretty interesting, as well as informative. I doubt I would have ever heard of e-feds without this episode, and while I can't imagine ever doing anything with this information, I like learning new things. It's also nice to have my first clear and official bit of fictional plagiarism. It's probably happened before, and it's certainly happened with my gaming site writing (Hell, people used to copy and sell my D2 strategy guides on ebay.) but this is the first confirmed, no-doubt, blatant theft of one of my works of fiction. And yeah, I could have asked for a bit more prestigious thief, but hey, you've got to get your cherry popped at some point, and how many of us lost it to someone we're proud to have spread our legs for? Labels: plagiarism, writing Posted by: Flux # 7:49 AM Comments: People sold D2 strategy guides on ebay? #: 1:41 PM posted by Anonymous People bought D2 strategy guides on ebay? #: 1:59 PM posted by Donnie (aka Shadowtwin) People actually participate in online role play wrestling? lol #: 3:44 PM posted by Anonymous It would be funny if you joined their group for 1 match agains the guy with your own wrestler just to teach him not to plagiarize. #: 3:47 PM posted by Anonymous Just think of how many times you have plagiarized (sic) others and you will appreciate why some poor under-educated wrestling fan borrowed a few of your words to bolster their self esteem. PS: I don't know anyone who actually paid money on ebay for a D2 strategy guide. If true, there must be truth that a sucker is born every minute! #: 6:08 PM posted by Anonymous I find the game guides they sell in shops amusing. They're all written 2-6 months before the game actually comes out, so a lot of the time they have references to things that have changed or are just flat-out wrong. Even excusing that, generally 75% of their content is simply stats and facts, rather than actual strategies. Then, what's left is generally very obvious and not very much help. Compare all of that to a decent fansite with lively active forums - you get FAR more strategy out of them, and once the game has been out a while, a lot of in-depth mathematical analysis of different strategies and what is best, not to mention breakthroughs that people find with how x and y work together in a great way. Throw in patches that completely change the game around, and I really seriously wonder how the strategy game publishers can make a profit on the book that they write, which is forever stuck in version 1.0 strats (or earlier). I guess lots of people are just too stupid to google for a fan site, or maybe it's the clueless grandparents who buy the game + the book because they think their grandchild need both in order to play it. #: 1:04 AM posted by Anonymous I bet you never would have guessed that this was going to turn into a discussion of D2 strategy guides, eh? You know what I am really curious about? How did The Boss from the Totally Idiotic Wrestling Federation know that this was your work? Is he an old D2 fan that recognized all or part of the story from when you posted it years ago, or was the writing just above the level he would expect from people who write wrestling fiction (I haven't read any of it, but just the premise makes me think that the bar wouldn't be set very high on that one. Look at what the real wrestlers in real leagues say and do for Christ's sake), prompting him to google search for strings of text? Too bad you couldn't have been plagiarized by someone like Terry Goodkind, that would have at least got a large audience of Fantasy fans curious. Then again, wrestling is fantasy, and it does have a huge audience. But even with good writing, whenever I think of wrestling all I can see are visions of this guy. #: 8:35 AM posted by Donnie (aka Shadowtwin) I only found out about the d2 strategy guides when people would email me and say they'd just bought a guide and the URLs pointed to diabloii.net and the email for the author was mine. The guys selling them just sold zips and didn't quote from it, they just said "d2 magic find guide!" or something like that. I think the sale prices were like $2, so I was always just amused by it. As for them knowing it was my work, I'm not sure. I didn't ask, but I'd assume one of their readers thought the writing in portions of that entry was out of Nailz' usual style, maybe? And they googled a few strings and found my site, and then notified the head guy. I thought it was odd they even mailed me about it, I mean I guess they've got to check and be open to the possibilities, but how seriously could they have taken the guy's, "I sold it to him." excuse? That's about on the level of a child saying the vase was broken when he walked into the living room, eh? #: 12:54 PM posted by Flux I clicked on that e-wrestling link. How thoroughly retarded. #: 12:16 AM posted by Anonymous The net is full of plagiarism and copyright violations, which actually bothers me quite a bit, more for what it says about our current culture than the usually harmless infringements by kiddies on forums and sites like youtube. If you post it on the net, expect it to be infringed upon sooner or later. The lack of education on what constitutes a copyright is pretty appalling tho. I remember a site where someone had taken screenshots from a game's official site, put a 'frame' around them, called them 'his' wallpapers and slapped a "copyright by 'me'" on each image. #: 4:27 AM posted by Anonymous So, not only did this guy plagiarize you, he also busted your vase? I wouldn't be taking that shit off of him if I was you. #: 6:10 PM posted by Donnie (aka Shadowtwin) Post a Comment << Home Archives May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2012

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