Thread: Where can I report plagiarism?

I have been having problems with correcting my grammar in stories, and have been just catching up to reading reference books in my spare time which I didn't until I took writing seriosuly. Maybe that is why I haven't been published. My grammar is the main problem, and the reason why I get rejected so often. Now it so happens that a year ago I had submitted a story to a magazine online. It is a very well known science fiction magazine. I won't say what the name of the magazine is just incase I can start an investigation by someone who works in reporting plagarism. The response I got from the magazine at the time was, "it didn't keep our attention." Then I eventually find out an author, who I do not know if they are real or not has copied sentences from my stories and put it in his, lines that tipped to me that it was my story's lines. I don't know if the magazine put the person up to it since i only submitted it to them (which made me think I had to rewrite it). Also the story is a dsytopia, it is about the same thing as well. So now I am in a situation where I just don't trust the website anymore. It is a pro market that pays well. I won't be able to publish my story anywhere thanks to this. The short story had gone through numerous revisions. I feel like the world is backstabbing me. Not a great week. Where can I report such a case? At least I don't want them to get away with it. The lines in the story, are the biggest problem, and the fact they used the same dystopia I did.

The first line is to contact the magazine that's published the work. If the lines are copied verbatim and you can show that they are yours then the publisher needs to put the situation right. I've been involved in a situation like this, where the publisher accepted work in good faith and it was later shown to be plagiarised. Two anthologies had to be withdrawn from print and republished with the offending works removed and an apology given to the original author.

Wow, that sucks. I'm sorry to hear that.

If you find that someone on the internet has plagiarized your work the FIRST thing you need to do is collect your evidence; you need to create a file that has LINKS to the plagiarized work and also SCREEN SHOTS (as a lot of the time if there's something fishy going on on a website, the pages will be taken down after a very short while--having a screen shot that has the address showing in the image, with the material in question, is very helpful in the event that your plagiarist has begun to cover his/her tracks).

Keep all your links and images in the same file.

To back up your evidence, you also need the material you believe was plagiarized, and to present an account of how such a thing might have happened--i.e., in your case you need copies of your work that was sent and to whom, a copy of the rejection letter, etc.

The NEXT thing you need to do is contact the webmaster on the site that contains the plagiarized material and notify them that you have evidence that your work has been cribbed from, and let them know that they are to take the offending material down immediately. Give them a certain amount of time to do that; DO NOT make any threats about lawsuits or whatever, just say, "This stuff is mine, I can prove it. Take it down immediately by this time tomorrow and leave it down, or I will take action."

A sane webmaster will probably have at least a suspicion that your claims might be legitimate, and will remove your plagiarized work ASAP to avoid trouble.

A webmaster that may be honest but somewhat clueless about the activity on his/her site may reply to your message and ask what you are on about. That is the time to present your evidence, and offer them another opportunity to remove the offending material.

If you get ignored or refused, then what you do from that point is really up to you. If you decide to pursue your claims in a legal court, make sure you can prove to the satisfaction of all that your work WAS plagiarized, or you'll end up out of bunch of $$$ with nothin to show for it, and the other writer gets away with copying from you. (That's why threatening legal action from the get-go is always a poor idea! Know whether you have any sort of a case BEFORE you talk about suing someone!)

If the site continues to refuse to take down the material, as a last resort you might want to contact the actual writer who borrowed from you, and appeal to his or her higher nature, ex--

"I would like to know how you came by the idea of a rabid, opera-singing, zombie robot as presented in your story 'Larry Bites Lorenzo' published in last month's issue of Zombie Tech Tales, as it is so similar to my story 'Lenny Likes Paolo' which I had submitted to ZTT back in August as to be indistinguishable. My story was alas rejected by ZTT. I also note from visiting the ZTT forums that you (assuming that your screen name is 'floatingfeather222') and ZTT's Editor-in-Chief, poisonpen99, are to all appearances best friends.

"It's true that 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery', and believe me, I'm not in the least upset at the idea that another writer may have borrowed one of my ideas; I'm simply curious about the high degree of resemblance."

Somethin like that.

Good luck. I hope this was of some help to you.

~~~ yours in Chaos!

Well, I sent an email, and I am waiting to hear back. Thanks to the both of you for offering your advice concerning what to do. I did an attachment, of my story, and bolded some lines of the other story. There are some verbatim phrases, but mainly it's the inspiration of the story taken from it. I'm sure when they see both copies of the story, it should be obvious that they are very similar. I am not a tech wizard, I copied the rejection letter, and the letter for acceptance. I sent it to the original editor where they recieved the story, who I do not know if they have any connections to this.

We'll see what happens.

If this happened to me I'd just say, "Sh*t happens," and get over it.

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

If this happened to me I'd just say, "Sh*t happens," and get over it.

If only we could all be more like you, eh?

That really sucks, namesake. I'm sure others have a better idea of what action to take than I do.
But I'd be doing something. I'm not sure how copyright works where you are, but here if you created something and your name is attributed to it, it is copyrighted.
So it sounds like your copyright has been breached.

Copyright is now accepted pretty much worldwide as existing from the time anything is created. In the old days we had to register material for copyright, but not anymore. To make sure people understand that you do not want your material copied, put 'copyright 2010' and your name or you can now use the international symbol for copyright, ©, along with the year and your name.

I submit nothing that has potential sales value to any web site, and I often mark even what I do submit as copyrighted.

Originally Posted by namesake

Also the story is a dsytopia, it is about the same thing as well.

Sorry to hear what you're going through namesake.

But unfortunately, what stuck out to me was "dystopia". I love dystopian fiction. Whatever the outcome, I hope we'll be able to read it.

Good luck.

Wow. I can't believe that happened. Definitely you should contact the publisher. And you do have a right to be upset. Stealing is stealing.