3/10/2013 c1 19Alaeryel
I will agree with you for the majority of what you said Katie and I agree wholeheartedly with it BUT here is where I differ alittle bit with some minor issues. I started writing a story back in 2006 a fanfic based on the Trilogy of 'Lord of the Rings' and Tolkiens work. It was long before I thought to do web searches for stories based on either the movies or the written work of Tolkien himself. I wrote my story and about 2 years later I found some different sites pertaining to my interest. I read one story and found a name or two in mine were the same as the other author except mine spelled differently, I kept changing my names several times over as I found similar names in other stories because I didn't want to be accused of plagiarism-I had not even considered posting my story at that time yet-it still needed tweaking and I was scared overall. As I read more and more stories I did notice some similarities in my story-I refused to change anything in my stories because at the time written I did not know and it was strictly my own ideas and noone could have plagiarized mine because it had never been posted. There are definitely some I agree that plagiarize and I believe that is completely wrong and uncalled for BUT I also know that with the large amount of writers world wide and like me sometimes it is unintentional and a direct possibility that tho worlds away people may have a certain amount of same idea for a story especially for the more common ones as 'Supernatural' stories. I have asked some writers as I am on my third book of the series if I could borrow a character's name or even a character and some have given me permission tho it isn't common for me to do that. I just wanted to let you know that sometimes it can happen erringly but I know many are a direct violation of another's story-technically I could be classified as one of them but I don't classify myself because I wrote my first two series long before I read any stories period. Again I DEFINITELY agree with everything you said and I feel the same as you-I just wanted to point out there are some cases as mine that weren't done on purpose.

11/6/2012 c1 xMeru
This article is so true! Thanks for writing

4/1/2012 c1 1streetracer-2012
Very informative, it's sad that many people plagiaries definitely added to my favorites.

luv and all the mushy things,

yuki

10/22/2011 c1 Jodiexxx
Well-written - thank you very much for writing this! :)

-ML.

1/21/2011 c1 8Jax Creation
This, I must say, is a great piece of writing and should be read by all members of the FP community.

Copyright infringement and plagiarism are becoming major issues. While FictionPress does address it in the Terms of Service agreement and briefly in the Content Guideline one must admit that those are sections that many people tend to ignore or skip altogether leading to their misconceptions and misunderstanding of proper conduct pertaining to original works, particularly on the internet.

I really appreciate that you've written this what with the growing number of stories being removed and authors leaving the site due to plagiarism. It is really depressing when a story is removed from the site because someone has stolen another's work.

Thank you for raising awareness.

~Jax C.

10/10/2010 c1 9Galen Aima
Very informative essay-I had no idea of my rights in the event of plagarism, actually.

Now, all we need is a guide for how to sue these guys...XD

1/3/2010 c1 QuillChaser
Thank you for putting this up here. It's very inspiring, and honestly I learned a lot about Copyright Laws through your essay. So thank you very much. I really hope it stops. It makes me so...mad. People trying to copy your work and state that it's his when it's not...Yeah, right.