Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Um, hi. I just saw a goodreads entry for a fanfiction called The Draco Trilogy, and I'm wondering if it could be taken down?

In the first place, it's Harry Potter fanfiction, and therefore not even the so-called "author's" own work.

In the second place, it was actually deleted from fanfiction.net because it was found to have plagiarised heavily from Pamela Dean's book The Secret Country.

The 'books' are: Draco Dormiens,Draco Veritas, and Draco Sinister.

Another link about the whole thing if you're interested (be warned, it's very, very long).
http://www.journalfen.net/community/b...

If I'm not mistaken, you have to own all rights to the fiction, and if it's fan fiction you have to cite your source. If it's uncited, and plagiarised I doubt it should stay on GoodReads, but don't quote me on that. I'm not sure.

Don't go by me either but it looks like it should come down to me. If everything you've said is correct and from the looks of it it doesn't seem like it should stay.
The person who added them may now know that and someone should send her a message if these do have to come down to prevent her from adding more in the future.

Liz wrote: "In the first place, it's Harry Potter fanfiction, and therefore not even the so-called "author's" own work."

An author can own their fanfiction without owning the source it transforms -- it's a tricky legal situation and not one that's been clearly legally answered yet, but as a general rule fanfiction is considered transformative.

"In the second place, it was actually deleted from fanfiction.net because it was found to have plagiarised heavily from Pamela Dean's book The Secret Country."

There are actually books -- things which are indisputably books, I suppose I should say -- in the GR catalog which have been withdrawn by the publisher after discovery of plagiarism or other bad practices.

...So, I don't think that either of those arguments are a reason to delete these reviews. However, I still recommend taking them down. I know ebooks, vanity presses, and chapbooks often walk the "is it a published book" line, but fanfiction has an entirely different publishing system which doesn't and isn't meant to overlap with commercial publishing. I don't think that fanfiction belongs as a book on a book site. (I could be argued out of this, though.)

The fact that something is plagiarized, unethical, or otherwise objectionable does not make it less of a "book." If goodreads users are reading this book and posting reviews in good faith, I would say they should be allowed to express their opinions. This would be very different from someone using goodreads to /publish/ plagiarism (for example plagiarizing reviews and posting them as their own). This would have to be removed, as it violates the use-agreement.

By the arguments made in favor of removing this book, we would have to take down Satanic Bible, because about 1/3 of it is not the original work of the author ("The Book of Satan" is taken from Might Is Right and the last section of "The Book of Leviathan" is basically Casaubon's translation of the Enochian Keys with words like "infernal" and "Satan" thrown in at random). It remains a highly popular book which has sold millions of copies, whatever we may think of the ethics of its author or publisher.

Michael wrote: "The fact that something is plagiarized, unethical, or otherwise objectionable does not make it less of a book."

No one said that, and we aren't talking about a book here, we are talking about a published writing by a GoodReads user, either way, we made no notion that it was less than a book.

Michael wrote: "If goodreads users are reading this book and posting reviews in good faith, I would say they should be allowed to express their opinions."

We are not talking about censoring reviews either, the issue here is whether a fanfiction that is uncited, and plagiarised, should be kept on GoodReads.

Fan fiction is allowed on here, but they must cite the owner of the canonical source (i.e: "I own the plot to this story, but John Smith owns the characters). Apparently this particular FanFiction doesn't cite anything.

Michael wrote: "By the arguments made in favor of removing this book, we would have to take down Satanic Bible, because about 1/3 of it is not the original work of the author"

This writing isn't owned by the author partially the author owns nothing. When you steal someone's work (plagiarism), it does not mean you own it. This author posted uncited fanfiction, and does not own the copyrights to whatever is left of the story. The author owns zero percent.

Are you discussing things someone posted in the writings section on GR, or the books listed here?:

http://www.goodreads.com/search/searc...

Are these even actual books that should have been entered in the database? They don't have ISBNs, and they're not on Amazon. If someone just made up a record for their fan fiction, that could be a different case than an actual published book that was later discovered to be plagiarized.

Edit: well, shoot, my search link didn't do anything.

Draco Dormiens
Draco Veritas
Draco Sinister

They don't have isbn's because they arent books, they are PDF's. Apparently fanfiction as proven by this fanlore link, in the corner, it enter's a classification.
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Well, then this is a question for other librarians who are not myself, but does this even qualify for being added to the GR database?

I am wondering that myself. Most of the fanfiction on GR I've seen were posted in the stories page, by regular members, not authors.

I read, write, and have even managed a community or two based on fanfiction. But I don't believe it should appear on Goodreads. It certainly shouldn't be presented as books.

Gosh, I'm sorry, I can barely concentrate on this.

What is plagiarized? Is the writing that of a published author or otherwise on the net or in print before this person "wrote" it.

If so, it should be deleted, I would think.

As far as I can tell, these are definitely not books and should not be in the Goodreads database as books.

However, if the person who wrote the writings actually wrote them, I'd think they'd be appropriate in the writing section/in their writings as Goodreads members.

I'll let another "lead" librarian weigh in too, but I don't see how these could be considered to be books.

Lisa wrote: "Gosh, I'm sorry, I can barely concentrate on this."

It is confusing. What's going is, that we are discussing two different issues, in the same topic.

1.) Liz brought up an issue about a fan fiction posted by a regular member, is uncited and plagiarized, and was wondering if it should be allowed.

2.) Brooke brought up an issue about a fan fiction that was listed as a book, instead of a piece of literature for the story section.

No, Melzz, no one mentioned fanfiction posted here on Goodreads; the links that Liz posted were to book reviews of the fanfiction, not the fanfiction itself -- and the records were entered into the GR catalog by regular users who reviewed them, not by the author.

While you mention it, though: what gets posted to a user's writing section isn't librarian business. If it's plagiarized, it's going to be up to GR support to handle that. Librarians can't do anything about it. If someone uploaded plagiarized work (fanfiction or not) as an eBook, librarians would be able to remove that work but I think we oughtn't; it ought to be brought again to GR support to let them handle it.

But those are just hypotheticals. The question here is whether fanfiction should be catalogued as a book that can be reviewed here on GR, and that is librarian business since we have the task of removing things which aren't books from the catalog. (The question of plagiarism is irrelevant and distracting, I think.)

Melzz wrote: "It is confusing. What's going is, that we are discussing two different issues, in the same topic. "

The links Liz included were fanfiction pieces being treated like books. Some of us object to fanfiction being included as books in the first place. If they should be removed, the fact the fanfiction may or may not have been plagiarized is a moot point. It should be deleted anyway.

Fanfiction is largely treated as a "don't ask, don't tell" subject. So putting it on a book site in the first place is violating rule one. Especially when said site is encouraging authors to participate. I know some authors have claimed that if you tell them about it, they must take legal measures to suppress it.

So, even though I like fanfiction, I don't think Goodreads is the appropriate place for it.

Abigail, I do believe that's what the issue is, I think the whole bit about the plagiarism is a side point that doesn't really concern the librarians. From the OP, I couldn't tell if someone was complaining about something posted in the GR writing section or not.

It looks like this Cassandra Claire has made her profile page an author's profile. It doesn't have anything on it except links to these non-book entries.

Are other people doing this, writing fanfiction and posting it (I assume) elsewhere and then making GR database entries? 'Cause that seems like it could be a headache.

BTW - I think in the past Otis has said that fanfiction doesn't run afoul of the GR copyright policy for the writing section, but I've never even looked at how people use that section, so I could be wrong about what's accepted there.

Cait wrote: "what gets posted to a user's writing section isn't librarian business. If it's plagiarized, it's going to be up to GR support to handle that."

Cait wrote: "the links that Liz posted were to book reviews of the fanfiction, not the fanfiction itself"

Oh okay, thanks for the clarification, I was mistaken.

Cait wrote:"No, Melzz, no one mentioned fanfiction posted here on Goodreads"

The topic title is what made me think so 'Plagiarised Fanfiction on Goodreads'.

Cait wrote:"The question of plagiarism is irrelevant and distracting, I think."

Don't look at me, I didn't name the topic.

mlady_rebecca wrote:"The links Liz included were fanfiction pieces being treated like books"

You mean Brooke? Brooke posted the issue about the Draco Trilogy.

mlady_rebecca wrote: "So putting it on a book site in the first place is violating rule one."

GoodReads allows fan fiction, doesn't it? Look at the side bar here
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Ah, I see Cassandra Clare and Cassandra Claire are different people.

Yes, re the above mentioned works of fanficiton. If members believe they are plagiarized they should be flagged and reported to Goodreads.

In the meantime, as far as I can tell, these writings should at most go in the writing section of this member's profile. They don't seem to be books and this member does not seem to be a Goodreads author.

I hesitate to simply delete these "books" as I think this is best for Goodreads to handle. Those of you who know more about the situation than I do: I suggest that you send appropriate links and a message about the situation to the contact us link at the bottom of the page. Simply deleting the books won't take away author status from this member.

No, Melzz, the whole thread that Liz started is about the Draco Trilogy, but I couldn't tell from her first post if it was only the database entries or things posted in the writing section that she was concerned about.

The fanfiction, as far as I can tell now, isn't posted on GR, which is why Cait said that wasn't the issue. The issue is entries made in the GR database for books that aren't really books, therefore whether the stories are plagiarized or not, they should be removed from the database.

I agree they should be deleted from the database but given that they are they are the only works of this "Goodreads author" I'm thinking that possibly it's better if Goodreads staff handle the entire situation.

Lisa wrote: "I agree they should be deleted from the database but given that they are they are the only works of this "Goodreads author" I'm thinking that possibly it's better if Goodreads staff handle the entire situation."

Cassandra Claire isn't a GR author or a member of the site at all; she doesn't appear to be personally involved in any way with these reviews. (I think there may be some confusion with Cassandra Clare who, while not a GR author, is a published author with books in the GR catalog.)

The consensus seems to be that fanfiction shouldn't be reviewed as books here; if no one chimes up dissenting by tomorrow, I can take responsibility for deleting these records and dropping a message to the two people who posted detailed reviews (one of whom was the GR user who manually created these records in the first place).

mlady_rebecca wrote: "So putting it on a book site in the first place is violating rule one."

Melzz wrote: GoodReads allows fan fiction, doesn't it? Look at the side bar here

I was referring to the unwritten rules of fandom, not any particular GoodReads policy. It's like "Fight Club". The number one rule is don't talk about fight club. The number one rule with fanfiction is not to post it where the author of the official work is likely to trip over it.

Either way, they aren't published books, and shouldn't be put in the database as books. That's the main issue.

mlady_rebecca wrote: "Either way, they aren't published books, and shouldn't be put in the database as books. That's the main issue."

Not really. GR allows self-published books -- including those only available as ebooks. The fact that these are fanfic and may be plagiarized does add a wrinkle or two though.

Cait said: "Cassandra Claire isn't a GR author or a member of the site at all; she doesn't appear to be personally involved in any way with these reviews. (I think there may be some confusion with Cassandra Clare who, while not a GR author, is a published author with books in the GR catalog.)"

Thought I'd better clear this up. Cassandra Claire IS Cassandra Clare. She was a fanfiction author as 'Claire' and then she got some other work published as 'Clare'. I don't, however, think she'd appreciate these works being posted to her profile, because there was a huge stink kicked up about them back in 2000 or so, and that's definitely what you'd call negative publicity. There's also the fact that they're written under 'Claire' rather than 'Clare'.

Although that's a little beside the point.

mlady_rebecca wrote: "Either way, they aren't published books, and shouldn't be put in the database as books. That's the main issue."

rivka wrote: "Not really. GR allows self-published books -- including those only available as ebooks. The fact that these are fanfic and may be plagiarized does add a wrinkle or two though."

It's highly likely that they weren't even technically published by the author herself. I don't think she'd be mad enough to even try! It's more likely the work of a fan. I know that somebody saved these works from fanfiction.net before they were deleted, and that's probably the reason they're floating around in cyberspace now. Does the term 'self-publishing' apply in this case?

My opinion still stands that they should be removed due to ethics rather than strict laws. After all, the plagiarism is quite rampant, and fanfiction should not be published anyway. (Not that my word is law!)

Well, It looks as though they're gone.

Rivka, Yes, to self-published, but in addition to the other problems mentioned, there was no identifying information at all about these works. No descriptive information at all.

Thankyou.

rivka wrote: "mlady_rebecca wrote: "Either way, they aren't published books, and shouldn't be put in the database as books. That's the main issue."

Not really. GR allows self-published books -- including those only available as ebooks. The fact that these are fanfic and may be plagiarized does add a wrinkle or two though."

The issue (in my opinion) is that the "author" writing the fanfiction didn't have permission to use the characters in a derivative work. Therefore, they aren't strictly legal. Not only is the "book" unpublished, it couldn't be published.

It's one thing to write something for your friends to enjoy, but basically keep to yourself. It's quite another to call it a book and put it on a book site.

And, yes, I have bound fanzines on my bookshelf. But I would never consider them books and attempt to enter them into the system.

I've seen beautifully written pieces of fanfic that could be published if they "changed the names to protect the innocent", but I still consider them amateur writing.

Fair enough. However, AFAIK, that is not where GR has drawn the line.

The line is proper citation and disclaimers. As far as I can tell.

The Draco Trilogy doesn't have those anyway.

I know, I'm agreeing with you.

I know. I'm just clarifying for others :)

:)

:) smiley just for the heck of it.

I'm addicted to them ---> :)

I don't know enough complicated ones.

Did the librarian who removed those non-book records send a message to the users who'd reviewed them?

Now my head hurts :).

Awww. lol

I'm weighing in kind of late here - since it appears the Draco books have already been deleted.

To my knowledge, this is the first instance of a fan fiction item being added to the book catalog - so we don't have a set policy one way or another. There is a fair amount of fan fiction uploaded to the writing section, which is why we added the "fan fiction" disclaimer (as posted by Melzz above). If we receive an official take-down request, we will honor that request and delete the fan fiction.

The closest parallel I can think of was the debate about Stephenie Meyer's partial draft, Midnight Sun. People argued that this was not a book, but it remains in the database, and it now has 12,000 ratings. Certainly, this is a text that a lot of people deem "worthy" of receiving book reviews.

Unlike adding the actual text of a fan fiction work to the writing section, simply adding a title to the book catalog, to enable book reviews for that title, would not violate copyright (although I might be wrong on that), so it seems any plagiarism debate is moot (whether fan fiction has the right to exist in the first place is a whole separate issue, one that we don't have to solve for our purposes).

Since we allow self-published work, and conceivably fan fiction writers can and do distribute their work via ebooks etc., it seems that this would fall under the umbrella of things we allow. However, I often fall on the side of being more permissive with the book catalog, and I understand that many librarians often want stricter definitions (to keep chaos at bay). :)

I'll run this by Otis, but I guess I'm wondering, what does it hurt?

Jessica wrote: "I guess I'm wondering, what does it hurt?"

From my experience in fandom, if a given author doesn't know about fanfiction about their works, they largely ignore it. If it is brought to their attention, they may legally need to pursue getting it removed from any and all sites that host it.

In other words, one person bringing the author's attention to one story, may lead to lots of other stories being removed from various servers. Therefore most people in fandom consciously make the effort not to draw the author's attention to the existence of fanfiction.

I don't follow Harry Potter, so if all Harry Potter fanfiction suddenly disappeared, I wouldn't care. But I hate to see the same thing happen to fandoms I do care about. It's a slippery slope.

I'm not saying that fanfiction shouldn't exist. It just shouldn't exist in a forum where authors are being encouraged to participate. It's like doing something illegal in a cop bar. You're asking to get punished.

Why is this even open for discussion? IMO:

(1) If something is plagiarized (ESPECIALLY from a published book), it needs to be deleted. Immediately.

(2) If people want to write fanfiction, they need to post it on a fanfiction website like fanfiction.net. Goodreads should be a website for original, published books and original writing, not fanfiction. Fanfiction is great--I read and write it--but it does NOT belong on THIS website. It belongs on a fanfiction website.

I agree with Rebecca, above. I don't know how many authors really care if people write fanfiction based on their books, but there could be legal implications if authors use ideas from someone's fanfiction writing. It's just better for everyone involved if we keep the fanfiction away from where the authors are.

Plus, why bog down the goodreads servers with all that extra stuff? On fanfiction.net, there are 410,139 fanfiction stories on Harry Potter, 96,362 fanfiction stories on Twilight, and 42,407 fanfiction stories on Lord of the Rings. And that's only the top three....

I didn't read this whole thread, so I apologize if I missed something.

Basically, we encourage fan fiction in the stories & writing section - but it should remain there unless it is a long form piece of writing (ie like a book) and the author is intending to publish/self-publish it. If that is the case having an entry as a book would be ok. Note that the legality of fan fiction is borderline, but generally accepted as ok if the author cites source of the characters and is not profiting from the work. We have guidelines for this on the page where you add your writing.

I read that claim was made that the fan fiction in question is partially plagiarized. If it's true it should be removed - but it would be hard for me to verify at this point. Generally we legally rely on the copyright holders of works to contact us before taking anything down - unless it's obvious.

Jessica & Otis -- thank you for the clarification! I knew that users' fanfiction was allowed in the writing section, but I didn't know we were also allowed to catalog other people's fanfiction that we read with the books that we read. (Although I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making with "intending to publish" -- isn't fanfiction usually considered published when it's distributed to readers?)

Otis wrote: "I read that claim was made that the fan fiction in question is partially plagiarized. If it's true it should be removed"

Otis, do you mean removed from the book catalog? Should we remove other published books that are withdrawn for plagiarism from the catalog, even if some copies are still in circulation? I would argue against this, since people are likely to be reading and reviewing it (perhaps even more than usual, if it's controversial)....

I'd think entries for books (real books, not fan fiction, which I personally think is worlds away from self-publishing, as far as what this site should catalogue) that are guilty of plagiarism should stay in the database. Especially if they still exist on Amazon and are going to keep popping up here anyways. It's not like books cease to exist when a plagiarism claim is proven in court - people who already bought it will still own it. They'll likely still read it and rate or review it.

If the concerns (such as Sara's first point in #46) are about plagiarized writing in the writing section, of course they should be deleted; GR's TOS doesn't even permit them in the first place.

Note that Otis pointed out that even in that case, we would generally wait for the copyright holders to request that it be taken down before removing it.

(What would happen if they never so requested is left as an exercise for the reader. ;) )

To broaden the topic slightly, why would fan fiction be acceptable in the catalog for rating and reviewing, when short stories are not? The vast majority of fan fiction is in short story form; why should we allow people to add those to the catalog, rate, and review them, when we generally do not allow published short stories?

As has already been discussed, the short story model for GR is going to eventually have to change anyway, particularly since short stories are now starting to be published as unique little ebooks, but there's a bit of an inconsistency if we say it's ok to allow people to rate and review fanfiction while simultaneously getting rid of listings for J.D. Salinger or Ernest Hemingway or Douglas Adams.

I'm personally rather anti-fanfiction and would be happy to not see it on here, but I'd like to see a broader issue of consistency.

The issue of GoodReads *hosting* the stories themselves is an entirely different issue, and I think the stated policy on that is rather straightforward. I'm really just thinking about the broader issue of listing these items in the primary book catalog.

I am strongly pro-fanfiction but don't think it belongs in the GR catalog.

Is the Draco trilogy book-length or short-story length? I assumed it was book-length. And in my head, it was book-length fanfiction being added to the catalog, not short-story length.

Although, This is not the Michael, you raise an excellent point, that it is likely that we will soon have to consider listing short fiction (individually by story, as opposed to in published anthologies, which already happens), because these stories are being published as ebooks. So many wrinkles!