On Plagiarism

I have a day job, sometimes we use other sources to develop training programs or things of that nature and when we use them there is a reference somewhere in the documentation to indicate what we used and from where. I have a night job -- I teach English (and literature and some other things), I drill into my students the first night of class that plagiarism is an unforgivable sin. I use tools like Turnitin and Viper to make sure that their papers are on the up-and-up. In my world plagiarism is an ugly word and a dirty act.

So it was a shock to my system when I received an email today from an editor that published a short work of mine. The editor wanted to let me know -- they weren't placing any credence in the accusation -- that another writer had accused me of lifting their story from an online workshopping site I used to frequent along with a slew of other writers publishing short fiction today. The editor did what all good editors do and asked for verification/proof. 

That said, this is the first time I've ever encountered anything like this. You read about these things, you see names like J.K. Rowling get tossed around as someone who wrote a story about a kid wizard a dozen years ago wants a cut of the Potter empire. And every time I see an article about something like this it amazes me, and the idea that someone would crawl out from under a rock somewhere and level such a thing at someone strikes me as ridiculous. But in the midst of my own personal moment of ridiculousness I wanted to know more about my accuser (someone who recently sent me a Facebook friend request at that). I logged into the workshop site I no longer frequent and pulled up their profile, they've been an active user of the site for a little more than six months, a period of time post-dating the acceptance of said story from the publishing journal. But that doesn't really matter, my day job has trained me to document, I have emails dating to previous years regarding the story and feedback solicitations along with more than a few prior rejection letters.

But none of that is really the point, the accusation has no merit so I'll give it the credence it deserves which is very little. The point is that things like this make me question the value of everyone being so connected. If it weren't for Facebook or Twitter or the workshop site involved in this melodrama, would this person even know who I am or seek out to level such an accusation?

I think anyone who attempts to be a contributing member of society will agree that despite the simple joy/fun that social networking websites provide they are at the end of the day a way to kill time (or for many of us, to waste it), sometimes to the detriment of other projects or in this case potentially to someone's credibility.

So then, in a world of flame wars, memes, internet vegetable patches and people with too much time and access on their hands, is it all worth it? Or do writers like Sallinger, Updike, King and so many others who value(d) their privacy have the right idea -- should those crafting stories being doing simply that instead of reaching out to the larger world, for better or worse?