[NikOK]

Judging by just how big of a name Mark Dawson is, I imagine that this will be looked into by people both more familiar with his work and more familiar with the legality here, so I wasn't really sure if I had anything to add to this 🤣 I guess it does serve as a good reminder though to really be careful with what you writing/phrasing because here's an example of one reader looking up one phrase and it's going to probably lead to a lot of people tearing apart his work.

I don't know, I'm not a firm believer of "if there's smoke there's fire" but I think that it's a good lesson here in, whether or not you think anyone would ever see it, it's never worth it to steal a line, because what was gained here was a line confusing enough on it's own that it had to be looked up, and what was lost was probably very significant. With the sheer amount that he's written, if people look through that very critically, they are bound to find many issues intentional or not.

It's probably for somebody much smarter than me to figure out if he did it or not But it's a really good example of, don't give a crowd a pitchfork.

 

[NikOK]

“You think you've been in deep shit before, and then you realise you have absolutely no conception of how deep shit can really be.”
― Lee Child, The Hard Way

Ha, I get that you are just quoting for effect on a plagiarism thread, but this is a ridiculous quote 🤣 Definitely sounds like something from those old made for tv "Tales from the Hood" movies.

 

[NikOK]

Unlike actual copyright infringements, plagiarism doesn't carry a legal penalty.

This may be different country to country, but where I am plagiarism absolutely carries legal penalties. I'm no expert, but from what I understand it's a very complicated thing to prove legally but carries serious consequences for someone who has sold many copies of something that is plagiarized.

Everybody definitely takes inspiration from other works, like you said, and even things like fanfic can have their place, it's just, taking lines from some obscure source and passing them off as your own because you think no one will ever find out, that's much worse than someone who writes a vampire romance or a magical school. Passing off even a stolen line as your own is saying, "I'm not good enough to write the book I think you want to read, but I hope you'll never know it."

Ha, not that I think that books ripping off popular series are amazing 🤣 I just think that it's a very different scenario from someone trying to pass off another author's work as their own.

 

[NikOK]

That's fair, and really it's maybe why these things are so hard to deal with in courts, so much is up for interpretation. Though I do disagree when you say there are no new ideas. Especially in lit, where an authors voice and experiences, and just their life, it all goes into their work, and I'd say that most books I read are more unlike anything else than they aren't. I think there are absolutely new ideas, lots of them, but will they sell the same as "it's like Harry Potter mixed with John Wick"...probably not. Maybe it's more like there are no new ideas that are easy to market 🤣

But yep, the music industry is insane 😆 I mean, there absolutely is new and very cool music being produced, but how often does anybody hear it? Who knows.

 

[NikOK]

It's obvious you're speaking from a position of ignorance.

If you want to have a conversation, this is probably not the best way to start it 🤣 This forum has a ton of very smart people with lots of experience in a huge variety of subjects, and I feel like it's not really fair to say a straight up, I'm right and you're wrong.

It's great to have different opinions on the subject, and input always helps the discussion, but when you're not open to that discussion, well, that's what twitter is for 😆