Romance novelist accused of lifting work - Yahoo! News

In the online version of Romanceland, this story began early Monday on the romance reader blog known as Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books when one of the bloggers gave a Cassie Edwards novel to a friend who wanted to get her feet wet in the genre. The friend noticed some peculiar passages that were lyrically dissimilar to the author's voice in the majority of the book. So dissimilar that the reader Googled the dissonant passages and faster than you could say "Britney Spears needs help", Savage-Gate began.

Bloggers added their comments. Author loops were a-titter. Silent authors were likened to giving tacit approval/support to the plagiarist. Another large romance reader site, Dear Author (which has a couple of law-savvy folks running it) posted an involved definition of what constitutes plagiarism (which can be different from copyright infringement)

In an email to Dear Author, Penguin denied that Ms. Edwards did anything wrong or plagiarized other works, saying that it was reasonable under "Fair Use" conventions.

Interestingly enough, AP contacted John Barrie, a plagiarism expert. He looked at the passages and agreed that the material was lifted. It looked like it to my uneducated eyes, and if the expert says so, well I gotta go with the dude who makes his living fighting plagiarism.

My opinion? Word-for-word copying of someone else's work, whether it's in copyright or not, fiction or reference, and passing it off as your own word is WRONG. Either rewrite the reference material so that it's your own style, or give credit to the original author. Better yet, cover your assets and don't use it at all.