Makes me sad when things like this happens.

Cia's advice seems great for all the accomplished GA authors. I have to admit I'd rather be ignorant of any plagiarism. But I guess that's because I'm sure no one would want to steal my stories. They're neither complete nor good enough.  

14 minutes ago, Timothy M. said:

They're neither complete

True enough.

14 minutes ago, Timothy M. said:

nor good enough

Completely untrue, Tim.

There's a school of thought that anything out there on the web is automatically fair game. Huh ...  It's not.

Its a moral crime not to consider the blood, sweat, and tears an artist puts into their work. More importantly, the massive amount of physical and emotional time.

Having been a victim of it before, it's a horrible feeling having your work taken. I appreciate your diligence. 

Great advice.  As someone who has had their work plagiarized before, I often check Google like this post recommends.  

Even though I'm an author on here, I don't have that many stories on GA, and those that I do are riddled with grammatical errors and other mistakes that an inexperienced author is prone to make, so I would be completely baffled if I found out someone had plagiarized my stories. I forget that this is the internet, so it definitely is possible, even for an inexperienced author like myself.

I agree that blood, sweat and tears go into creative work, whether writing, music, or visual art. Each composition contains someone's heart and soul - it has meaning, it has purpose, it is deeply personal to that individual. To have someone else claim it to be their own is not only stealing but also a complete disrespect of the artist who created it. I am grateful that there is copyright protection on GA. Thanks for staying on top of this!

Unfortunately, I've seen it happen to people I call friends on here. It sucks knowing their hard work was stolen and passed off as someone else's.  My stuff is too short to be stolen. I am not as professional as most. I write because I like to tell the sort of stories I want to read. Just wish that people would learn a little respect for the property of others. Thank you to the Administration for working so hard.

Plagiarism burns me up.  Twice I have found one particular author's story or stories on websites not authorized to carry those stories.  In one case, the story had been edited to make minor changes to the names-- example: Bobby was changed to Bob; Andrew changed to Andy, David changed to Dave, Bill changed to William, and so on.  On another website his stories had just been stolen.  I reported this to the original and actual author, and he managed to get the stories taken down-- eventually.

Another case was NOT plagiarism.  One author had written another to get permission to use some similar situations in the story being written, and the permission was given.  Both authors graciously acknowledged the other's efforts, and the result was good for both authors.  Another case was not on the Internet, but one author acknowledged that he was inspired by a long-dead author's story, and then used the original premise in a totally different way, with credit given, and differing situation and characters.

Thanks to the Admins here for being so careful.

I'm not sure what I am more mad about. The fact that someone Plagiarized another artists work, or the fact that they felt like they can play with us.

God damn it, I was plagiarized again! The same story, too! Apparently "Is Love a Miracle?" is just something people like to steal...

1 minute ago, drpaladin said:

 

It's very much a backhanded compliment.

I don't consider it a compliment at all, to be honest. As I was just explaining to a coworker, it's sort of like saying "you look good enough to rape".