I want your opinion on what's basically plagiarism

[2WayParadox]

Dear all,

In the thread 'Do you care about psychology', I went into detail about a story I've read in the past. No need to go back, all you need to know is that it was deeply meaningful to me and I'm starting to realize that that story might be responsible for the direction my erotica writing has taken (combining explicit sex with sensitive, psychological issues).

Now it's been a long time since I've read it, but I remember loving it and noticing things that could be better as well.

The fact is, this story is on an obscure site and any given chunk of the story has only 6-12k readers (which might not be so bad, but let's leave that as an aside). Right now I've done an attempt to try and contact the original author, but my expectations for receiving a response are very low. What I'm contacting him for is the following:

I want to edit his work and then make it look nice and publish it online. If I can't contact him, I want to do it anyway. Hold your horses for a bit now.

If I do this, then the first sentence will be me stating that the work is not mine, that I want to see it reach a wider audience and that if the original author finds it he should contact me immediately. Any proceeds would go to an abuse-related charity. I see the comments on the story and it just has to be published so it can reach more people.

Now I have two issues with my own proposal:

1. It's plagiarism of the most blatant sort. I'm not sure if this will be accepted, even if the cause is positive.
2. I feel like a huge dick saying that I'll edit someone else's work, just like that. I say that because I'm pretty convinced he never looked for any editing, he did everything himself and he probably mainly did it because all he wanted was to get the story out of him.
3. Then there's the question of whether his choice of an obscure site was deliberate. It feels disrespectful to publish if he wished for it to remain small.

What are your opinions? Set aside the rules for a second, I want to hear what your gut says.


2WayParadox

 

[cupiscent]

I appreciate that you have good intentions, 2Way - you want to see this story that you enjoy be enjoyed by more people. But taking, changing, and circulating someone else's creative work without their knowledge, let along permission, strikes me as tremendously disrespectful. Plus there's an additional factor with publishing erotica where having your name connected to that work can actually cause difficulties - for instance, in a work environment - and might be part of why it's been kept obscure. So if you do keep the author's name or penname attached to the story - which you absolutely should - then you might cause significant difficulties.

I do appreciate your good intentions, but I think this is a tremendously bad idea. Why not instead direct readers who might enjoy the story towards it, and extend the readership that way?

 

[2WayParadox]

For one, the site it's on is pretty bad and it's divided into 37 parts, both of these factors are a treshold for reading the story.

 

[cupiscent]

I am given to believe that the original fanfic version of Fifty Shades of Grey had hundreds of parts, and it doesn't seem to have stopped its popularity at all.

 

[Nimue]

I think that all of your reasons against doing this are pretty strong and outweigh the possible benefits. You have to have the permission of the author for something like this. Disregarding the likelihood of actual consequences or even anyone caring that you've done it, it doesn't sit well morally. Particularly if there is monetary gain involved, as you have indicated.

Either do as cupiscent suggests, or have faith that the people who would enjoy the story will find it--you found it, didn't you? But maybe the best thing you can do is what you're already doing--taking inspiration from a story that you loved and writing along similar themes. That kind of imitation--thoughtful, creative, non-derivative--really is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

[Penpilot]

If you can't get in touch with the author, then I don't think you should touch the story. The story doesn't belong to you. Unless the author has given permission in the form of a creative commons licence, you don't have any right to distribute it or manipulate it with the intent of distributing it.

Let's say you own a piece of land up in the mountains. You haven't gone up there for decades, then one day you go up and see that someone has built a hotel on the land, but they put up a big sign that says, "We don't own this land, but if you're the owner and don't like what we've done, tell us and we'll donate our profits to a charity of our choice and tear down the hotel."

In essence this is what you're doing. Also Google did something similar with Google Books when they decided to digitize books--some which were orphaned---that were still under copyright. There was a class action lawsuit.

 

[2WayParadox]

thank you guys for the insights