The Write of Way [Work in Progress, Member Driven]

The Great WattPad Plagarism Drama

This wasn't going to be this week's post, however I thought it high time someone brought some common sense into the latest WattPad drama.

All around Wattpad is floating The Great Plagarism Drama. Apparently a few times what amounts to pure stalking, bullying and general nastiness, some users have plagarized a few pieces and stuck them on other sites or handed them into high school teachers or other such incidents that, in a week, nobody will really give a crap about...

Yet the ruckus! The uproar! The OMGing!

I am going to plagarize myself with the answer I gave on a forum:

"Plagiarism: ALL professional publishers and most universities now have software that scours the internet including WattPad for plagiarism. That's why it takes at least a day to upload to any professional site and at least a week to get your English uni comp marked.

Is plagiarism annoying? Yes. Will it destroy your future? No. But it might well destroy the future of the person who used your work without permission. It's about the *last* thing you have to worry about. If they hand it in at a high school, who really cares?

90% of the writing on WattPad isn't near the caliber to make it through university or publishing."

Now you bunch that are running around with a hand full of petitions I will paraphrase @tjgarret who has enough experience in self-publishing to be far more aware of the facts than you are.

He has rightly pointed out that if you get your way it will take *days* on Wattpad to publish a single story as the plagarism software must scour THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THE INTERNET--enough bytes to fill a small country--just to check for it.

Now the cost in software and time--how much do YOU want to pay to upload here? A story that is, in all liklihood never going to make you a dime?

Do YOU want to wait days while your readership declines rapidly? Is that what you want?

Why is it that the professionals and semi-pros are NOT the ones screaming about this?

Because we know what the results are going to be.

You see it? Report it.

There are tens of thousands of WattPad users and some stupidity is bound to happen.

If you don't understand how copyright works then do your homework.

Here's an eye-opener. Shit happens. Life is not always fair.

If you think you're the next Charles Dickens then don't upload here. Pay for a private critiquing site if you choose then send it into a publisher.

Period.