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reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2007-11-29 02:52 pm
Strange Things Happened...
In the last few days I have found some comments from Anonymous in my LJ. They are pretty nasty comments. So to the first I didn't reply but I leave it (it was in a very old post, so I was thinking no bad can arrive from it). But today I have found another two comments, always from anonymous: one again in the same post and was a pretty strong accuse to a book I read and the comment is against the author; in this particular case I don't know personally the writer, but I don't like they use my LJ to throw nastiness. The second comment is "pure" spam. So I have deleted all the three comments and signalated them as "spam". I write this post only to assure you that I have never before deleted a comment, even if from anonymous. But in this case I think I'm in my right to do so.
Elisa
no subject
Sometimes they do a search/replace to change the names to some other characters, to convert the story to some other fandom, in hopes that they're even less likely to be caught at it in the second fandom. Unfortunately for them, many fanfic readers are multi-fandom and do read a wide variety of stories, and someone will often recognize a story they read before in a different fandom under a different writer's name.
I don't find it at all unbelievable that, with the trend for people to file the serial numbers off their better fanfic and publish it as original fiction (which I have no problem with, obviously), one of the plagiarists I mentioned above might have moved away from stealing just for praise and applause and toward stealing for money, by grabbing someone else's fanfic, converting it into original fiction, and submitting it to a publisher. That is absolutely a believable possibility.
The viagra thing is clearly just comment spam -- I get that crap fairly regularly on my main LJ, and deleting it is all the attention it deserves. The plagiarism comments, though, might well be legitimate.
It sounds like the first comment is by a reader who read the original version of the story, and recognized the published, commercial version as a rip-off of that original version. The third and fourth comments claim to be by the author of the original version which was stolen. If that person is the true author of a book you reviewed, it's understandable that she/he is very angry at the plagiarist-thief getting attention for the story, including positive reviews. (To say nothing of whatever money they've gotten from the publication.) About the fourth comment, my guess is that, because you deleted the earlier comments, they're assuming you're in some sort of collusion with the thieving writer. If they found the review via a Google search and aren't familiar with your journal, they probably don't know you're using English as a foreign language and might not pick up on subtleties, so they're making false assumptions about your response (the deletions).
As the reviewer, you don't really deserve to be the target of her/his anger, since you obviously didn't know the story was stolen. But as a writer I can understand the anger, and the desire to get the word out that "Hey, this is my story!"
If this is a true accusation, though (and I don't see any reason within the comments to assume it's not), then this is an important issue. If the fanfic plagiarists are taking their theft up to the next level, and actually selling what they steal rather than just displaying it as their own, then that's something that needs attention. (And whether it's true or false, those three comments were definitely not spam.)
Angie
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Angie
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Elisa
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Angie