Plagiarism

[TwinklingCupcake]

Ugh, easily one of the worst things in the fanfiction community. And I don't mean something like "Hey, I'm writing about X and he's writing about X!" or even the occasional movie quote (although that gets irritating too), I mean like

Straight-up, an entire chapter or even entire fic, stolen word-for-word from you. Sometimes there's a new scene or slightly different dialogue in some other scenes, but it's obviously stolen from you. Like you could run both chapters in one of those "did this student plagiarize their term paper?" websites and come out with 90 percent red text.

I've had my work plagiarized a lot before; once I got relatively lucky and the person claimed it was an "accident," and "just a silly coincidence," that it just happened their chapter was nearly-identical to something I'd written weeks prior, but they still removed the chapter.
But most of the other times the culprit has feigned ignorance, or - and this is the most laughable - tried to get all introspective and said "But what is plagiarism, truly?" Then they tried to say that they hadn't plagiarized my story (which they had, just switching out some character names and throwing in slang), but rather they had been inspired by me.

Has plagiarism ever happened to you? How did you deal with it? Is it always the best to report someone for copying your work, or is it sometimes best to sigh and ignore them, hoping they'll stop?
Alternatively, did you once plagiarize? What did you do about it later?

 

[Octomo]

I did plagiarize a children book before when I was younger. Unfortunately, my family didn't warned me about plagiarism till I read an article about it when I got older. I felt bad and I promise that I will never do it again. Read about how writers, especially journalists, copy other people articles can cost them their job, reputation, and jail time. I was young and didn't know better, but adults knew what they were doing and it unfortunate people still doing it.
I don't think anyone ever copied my work before. I'm pretty shy in most sites.

 

[TwinklingCupcake]

That actually reminds me of my brother plagiarizing a poem from Calvin and Hobbes for his English class in sixth grade. Mom and Dad didn't notice and were talking about how clever and funny it was, but when they showed me I took him aside and said I knew what he did and that he could get into serious trouble if his teacher ever found out.
I told him I wouldn't tell her because I'm no snitch, but he and I did have a chat about why he shouldn't do it. He learned quick.

And yeah, I don't know what it is about me that makes people want to steal from me. I'm not even that good. =/ All I can do is report it, I guess - truthfully, I think the "silly coincidence" person was lucky no one went to the moderators and got their fic removed altogether, because they were hosted on the exact same site!