Inside Voices

As a fan-fic reader and former writer, I have been sort of following the Cassie Clare issue...and it makes me sick. I have to deal with issues of plagiarism all the time (and the very indignant responses by students accused of it who see nothing wrong with "borrowing" some materials). They claim adding a word or two of their own - or a sentence between copied phrases, legitimately makes it their own. They REALLY believe this. I had one student tell me that he has a constitutional right to free speech and that means he can use whatever words he wants - so what if someone else said it first. This idea is not at all uncommon.

I guess what annoys a lot of people about Cassie Clare is that someone is going to give her money based on her "witty" and "smart" writing - when she stole most of if froma combination of others. She is a plagiarist - and she doesn't even apologize for it because she thinks it's okay.