Did writer steal or not? You choose!

[Doctor Q]

Perhaps she can write a novel about her experiences of plagarism?

And she could copy the content from this book.

 

[Bunnyman4]

"bad artist copy good artist steal" -Pablo Picasso

Did you know Thomas Edison, stole from George melies’ oh yes, he unwilling stole from Mr George melies’ copied all his films, within few years poor George melies was broke, I say the she copied, she’s got no imagination!

Thomas Edison

George melies

I have also been working slowly on a Sci-Fi story for the past 9 years, the size and scope of it is huge, so darn huge I’ve developed writers block, yeah it surly sucks!

But at least I have imagination, maybe she should have sort me out, but I don’t work with thieving people who steal other peoples works, without the copyright owners permission.

 

[madoka]

But at least I have imagination, maybe she should have sort me out, but I don’t work with thieving people who steal other peoples works, without the copyright owners permission.

Don't blow her off just yet. She's got some cool ideas like:

Duke Skyrunner locking the G-foils into attack position on his P-Winged Fighter's craft before making the final run the enormous Death Station.

 

[Bunnyman4]

Don't blow her off just yet. She's got some cool ideas like:

Duke Skyrunner locking the G-foils into attack position on his P-Winged Fighter's craft before making the final run the enormous Death Station.

If she had some cool ideas, then I wouldn’t have been invented!

I doubt someone like Thomas Edison’ would come clean after ripping off someone else’s film material.

 

[madoka]

Holy crap! There's more. . .

Someone mentioned her work being more like a collage. Well here's some excerpts from other books she's been "unintentionally internalizing:"

(all from the Harvard Crimson)

Her copying from the Princess Diaries:

Page 12 of Meg Cabot’s 2000 novel “The Princess Diaries” reads: “There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. [...] Because I don’t look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights. Mia Thermopolis never wore makeup or Gucci shoes or Chanel skirts or Christian Dior bras, which by the way don’t even come in 32A, which is my size. I don’t even know who I am anymore. It certainly isn’t Mia Thermopolis. She’s turning me into someone else.”

And page 59 of Viswanathan’s novel reads: “Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn’t look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn’t own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat. She didn’t wear makeup or Manolo Blahniks or Chanel sunglasses or Habitual jeans or Le Perla bras. She never owned enough cashmere to make her concerned for the future of the Kazakhstani mountain goat population. I was turning into someone else.”

Her copying from Salman Rushdie’s “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”

In Rushdie’s “Haroun,” a 1990 children’s novel, the title character Haroun enters a bus depot and passes by several admonitions written on the walls surrounding the depot’s courtyard. Likewise, in Viswanathan’s novel, the protagonist helps another student place posters on a wall that discourage drug and alcohol use.

On page 35 of Rushdie’s novel, one of the warnings reads: “If from speed you get your thrill / take precaution—make your will.”

On page 118 of Viswanathan’s novel, one of the posters reads: “If from drink you get your thrill, take precaution—write your will.”

On page 31 of Rushdie’s novel, another warning reads: “All the dangerous overtakers / end up safe as undertaker’s.”

On page 119 of Viswanathan’s novel, another poster reads: “All the dangerous drug abusers end up safe as total losers.”’

Her copying from Kinsella’s “Can You Keep a Secret?”

Page 350 of Kinsella’s novel reads: “‘And we’ll tell everyone you got your Donna Karan coat from a discount warehouse shop.’
“Jemima gasps. ‘I didn’t!’ she says, color suffusing her cheeks.
“‘You did! I saw the carrier bag,’ I chime in. ‘And we’ll make it public that your pearls are cultured, not real...’
“Jemima claps a hand over her mouth.
“‘...and you never really cook the food at your dinner parties...’
“‘...and that photo of you meeting Prince William is faked...’
“‘...and we’ll tell every single man you ever date from now on that all you’re after is a rock on your finger!’ Lissy finishes. I shoot a grateful glance at her.
“‘OK!’ says Jemima, practically in tears. ‘OK! I promise I’ll forget all about it. I promise! Just please don’t mention the discount warehouse shop. Please. Can I go now?’”

Page 282 of Viswanathan’s novel reads: “‘And I’ll tell everyone that in eighth grade you used to wear a “My Little Pony” sweatshirt to school every day,’ I continued.
“Priscilla gasped. ‘I didn’t!’ she said, her face purpling again.
“‘You did! I even have pictures,’ I said. ‘And I’ll make it public that you named your dog Pythagoras...’
“Priscilla opened her mouth and gave a few soundless gulps.
“‘And that you couldn’t get a date to the freshman fall dance, so you had to take your cousin...’
“‘Okay, fine!’ she said in complete consternation. ‘Fine! I promise I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll talk to the club manager. Just please don’t mention the sweatshirt. Please.’”

 

[Boggle]

What's really wild about this story is the amount of money (a half-million dollars) this young woman was advanced for writing a book, having never written one before. Then it turns out parts were plagiarized? Imagine my shock and surprise.

That comment is even more powerful considering your handle. The problem is now b/c of yesterday I can't get the image of Ignatius in the pants factory w/ the flag and the...well you've obviously read the book.

As for the girl's story...My BS detector works better w/ A&V than just reading an article. But the odds are definately against her. Plagiarism is easy to commit and difficult to hide.

 

[floriflee]

This just gets better and better. I'm beginning to wonder if she has one original thought in her head....

 

[IJ Reilly]

That comment is even more powerful considering your handle. The problem is now b/c of yesterday I can't get the image of Ignatius in the pants factory w/ the flag and the...well you've obviously read the book.

Now that you mention it, you've got me thinking about John Kennedy Toole and his inability to sell A Confederacy of Dunces to any publisher during his lifetime. For those unfamiliar, the author killed himself and his mother managed to get the book published posthumously. It won a Pulitzer Prize. Such a sad story to be associated with such a funny, original book. No half-million dollar advance for John Kennedy Toole. And the moral of the story, boys and girls, is...

 

[Bunnyman4]

Mr White
What have we hear Mr. Blonde’

Mr Blonde
Arr, a writer Mr. White?

Mr White
A writer, so what did she do?

Mr Blonde
She ripped off other people’s works, claming she did it!

Mr White
I hate that Mr. Blonde.

Mr Pink
Yeah me to Mr. Blonde!

Mr White
I have to hand it to Mr. Blonde’ you’re some piece of work, now let get this scum out of the trunk!

Mr Blonde
Yeah, I like to torture Writers with no imagination!?

 

[Transic]

*

 

[thedude110]

This just gets better and better. I'm beginning to wonder if she has one original thought in her head....

We can't lose sight of the fact that it's the head of a 17 year old who was "playing author."

I have the utmost sympathy for her, and wonder about her mental health.

 

[dornoforpyros]

Hmm this is a hard one, she's a young hard working writer who I think fell into the common traps that most people starting out in any creative career fall into, unfortunately she got rewarded for it instead of corrected.

 

[Bunnyman4]

You know, I never received a school leaving education when I left school, at all, but I do the know the difference between copyright laws, a few years ago I was doing a music sound engineer course, and one of the issues that came out in one of the lectures was copyright ownership, now you telling me, this dumb cow doesn’t know what copyright means.

 

[CorvusCamenarum]

A spokeswoman for Alloy Entertainment, a book packager that helped Viswanathan shape her narrative and shared the book's copyright, said the company would have no comment. Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, a literary agent who represented both Viswanathan and Alloy, also said she would not comment.

This sheds a little more light on things. She still should have known better.

 

[0098386]

What a donut.

I've done things like this on a much much lesser level, never as published work though, and only to identify flaws in my own lecturers. Back in college, in digital music we had a lecturer who was a massive fan of old-skool mod soundtracks (not mod/rocker but .mod, the old music format on the Amiga). So I downloaded Comic Bakery (the most popular mod) and showed him "a track I was working on", he didn't see it at all. I was even smiling waiting for him to recognise it and get all nostalgic. He just said "good work!" and totally fell for it. I didn't hand that in though. I made a very bad Madchester style dance track

 

[asphalt-proof]

:
A spokeswoman for Alloy Entertainment, a book packager that helped Viswanathan shape her narrative and shared the book's copyright, said the company would have no comment. Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, a literary agent who represented both Viswanathan and Alloy, also said she would not comment.


This sheds a little more light on things. She still should have known better.

My question is "how did they help her 'shape' her narrative?" And the fact that they share the copywrite of her book makes it appear that they did more than just 'shape." I am not familiar with this process but is it possible that that, because this is genre fiction, this Alloy Entertainment has some stock material they make available to authors? Stock like specific situations, plot twists, conversations etc. If so then this puts an interesting twist in the story.

 

[princealfie]

she finally got zapped... a literary footnote now... will she become the next road mac?