
Cristiane Serruya Is a Copyright Infringer, a Plagiarist, and an Idiot - ilamont
http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/2019/02/18/cristiane-serruya-is-a-copyright-infringer-a-plagiarist-and-an-idiot/
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danso
Serruya has been replying on Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/CrisSerruya/status/1097903134108774403](https://twitter.com/CrisSerruya/status/1097903134108774403)

Seems to place the blame on a ghostwriter hired from Fiverr:

> _I 'm deeply sorry. I'm taking down works I did with Fiverr ghostwriter that
> contains plagiarism. B assured I'll fix this w/ damaged authors. I'll not
> eschew my responsibility + I'll prove my innocence since my entire career is
> in peril @courtneymilan @romancewriters @TessaDare_

~~~
sct202
I hope she expands on her use of Fiverr writers. I wonder what her workflow is
with them if it's like she provides an overall theme and plot, or if the whole
thing is just written by a ghostwriter. I can't imagine putting something so
core to my work into the hands of an underpaid gig-economy worker.

~~~
kowdermeister
Or that she hired ghost writers is just a desperate attempt to shift
responsibility. She probably won't publish much under her real name, but I
guess she will continue under aliases.

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hprotagonist
On further investigation, the author has a, shall we say, distinguished legal
career.

Of all the people to plagiarize from, picking the one that was a professor of
IP law at a law school and has clerked for two members of the supreme court
seems catastrophically stupid.

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pgrote
The site appears to be down. Here is an archive.org copy:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190219080209/http://www.courtn...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190219080209/http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/2019/02/18/cristiane-
serruya-is-a-copyright-infringer-a-plagiarist-and-an-idiot/)

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ChrisGranger
I don't understand why someone would believe they'd get away with such blatant
plagiarism.

I've heard of programs that look for plagiarism in academic papers, but is
there such a beast for works of fiction? If not, perhaps there should be...

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hoistbypetard
Reading the examples on that blog post, it almost seems like someone has
trained an ML to turn out dreck and is hiring it out on fiverr as a ghost
writer.

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ilamont
Serruya is also a lawyer, according to her Twitter bio.

Separately, I find it amazing that Amazon doesn't perform some sort of
plagiarism check on all ebooks uploaded to the Kindle platform. Yes, I know
such systems can be fooled and there are a lot of false positives (or
legitimate fair use/PD scenarios) but something like this would have at least
been caught at a much earlier stage.

~~~
devilshaircut
This also surprises me. If for no other reason than I would imagine that
authors who are not guilty of plagiarism are interested to some degree in
verifying that their original works do not contain anything that could look
like plagiarism.

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ryandrake
Wow, allegedly plagiarizing more than one author:
[http://www.pajiba.com/miscellaneous/romance-author-
cristiane...](http://www.pajiba.com/miscellaneous/romance-author-cristiane-
serruya-revealed-to-be-serial-plagiarist.php)

------
jl6
Why does a writer outsource writing?

~~~
frostburg
Romance novel authors aren't D'Arrigo taking 25 years to write Horcynus Orca.
Their reading public isn't highly discerning about the quality of the prose
(while often having exacting requirements regarding the specifics of the
content), so it probably makes economic sense to publish drivel as fast as
possible.

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ilteris
I find it hard to believe there is any novelty in romance category to begin
with. I bet she is not the first one and won't be the last. Better to leave
this category into hands of ML.

