Plagiarism, credit etc.

[wantsunicorns.livejournal.com]

I've asked if it's okay to post this and got the okay, so here goes:

I know we all get inspired by the things we read or watch or listen to, be it books, films or songs. How do you deal with that, if you get inspired by other people's fic?

As an author:

• Do you think it's alright if other people reuse an idea you had?
  (like a spell, a gadget, a magical ability, magical theory etc.)
• Do you think it's necessary to be credited in the author's notes, if they used your idea?
  (as in, the part where "..." got inspired by "so and so")
• Would you like to be asked, before someone uses something of yours?
  (like, send a pm, or email asking whether it's alright, e.g. detailing what want to use it for)

What are your thoughts on this?

I personally am a bit undecided. I would love it, if people asked me permission, simply because I think it would be lovely to know that someone else got inspired by something I created. I would however not hold people to this. What I think would be common curtesy though would be to credit the creator of a work in the author's notes with something like "the idea for "..." comes from "author's name"" or something similar, if one was so inclined one could also link to the fic the idea was inspired/taken from.

I'm fairly new to stuff like this, so I don't know what's considered the right approach to this, so I figured I might as well ask my go-to-people in such matters, i.e. ALL OF YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! ♥

PS: I'm sorry mods, I don't know how to tag this.

ETA: Thank you so much for everyone who has shared their opinion on this with me. I've definitely received some food for thought. ♥

Comments

[imera.livejournal.com]

I agree with most, which is a good thing because it means most of us think alike.

Deciding what to credit is a fairly difficult thing to do right.

If something you created is as simple as using the Latin word for it I think it will be stupid to go around and accusing everyone of stealing. It's only when you have spent a lot of thought and made the potion/spell/etc complicated that it's mostly yours.

I know it sounds stupid to say that it's ours when we use the works of jkr, but some things in her world are not original. Like wands, I have read fantasy before HP where a wizard uses wands; does that mean she stole the idea? And what about brooms? Or castles? She did however make a bunch of spells, potions and such to go along with the whole wizard world, so that is hers. If someone writes a fantasy book today where they have wizards that uses wands and spells that are Latin I would not go as far as to say they are stealing jkr.

If you read a story, let’s say a mpreg, vela, forced marriage, etc, and want to write one yourself because it inspired you to write about that theme you can drop a note to the original author and tell them you were inspired to write your own. In order to do this you need to make your own story. If you use the same ideas as they did you have to credit, because that is using their ideas. Ask if you can, and hope it’s an author that reads their emails or are still active.

It’s difficult to decide what is original, maybe the author you are being inspired by copied the idea from somewhere else, and he/she did not credit that person. But it’s important that we do the right thing and set an example to the new generation that will eventually join our world.