You’d think the statement of this post’s title would be enough. It isn’t.

On January 7, 2008, allegations of plagiarism were posted by the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books. It appears that a popular romance author is not truly the author of much of her work, but that she has — from the beginning of her publishing career — lifted texts from sources of ‘reference’ and dropped them into her novels with little or no modification.

Immediately there were indignant claims of ‘fair use‘. But to my understanding ‘fair use’ cannot be claimed when intended profit is involved [though I readily admit I could be mistaken]. Nor should it be claimed as ‘literary license’.

The evidence is damning, a growing pile of side-by-side comparisons that is becoming more damning by the day. It was bad enough that she did this while giving neither credit nor attribution to the true authors, most of them deceased writers whose works had fallen out of copyright — which, to me, reeks of grave-robbing.

But then it was discovered that numerous passages from several works of fiction, many of them still well within in copyright, have also been unethically cannibalized by this author. At that moment it spanned not only plagiarism but also copyright infringement.

There were reactive cries of racial discrimination [which in this case comes across as somewhat hypocritical and possibly laughable, depending on one's own humor threshold] and victimization, and repeated claims of ‘fair use’. Then came the accusations against those who brought this ugly practice to light, and that the bearers of these bad tidings had begun a ‘witch hunt’ [that has in turn, it appears, angered some wiccans at this unflattering comparison].

Accusing the exposers of ‘picking on’ and ‘being mean’ [does that strike anyone else as sounding incredibly immature?] will not alter that fact that this author’s works have failed to stand up to scrutiny.

Plagiarizing is not only lazy, it’s wrong.

Getting caught plagiarizing is not only sloppy, it’s stupid.

Legally speaking, will anything positive or fruitful come of all of this? I honestly don’t know. But I have great hopes the public in general, and readers and writers of both fiction and non-fiction, will gain a better understanding of what constitutes plagiaristic [and parasitic] writing practices, and the meaning of authorial integrity.

Many have suggested that this scandal should all be left to lie and die down, that those outraged by this plagiarism should just get over it, just forget it ever happened, and other such timid and irresponsible nonsense.

But those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. That, or “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” as Queen Gertrude mused in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

This travesty must not be swept under the rug. It must be made known.

There must be respect for intellectual property.