If people lie about you to make their accusations against you seem more plausible, then just maybe they are not so convinced of their original accusations or maybe their accusations hold no water. I have shown how Jane Smith lied about my IP number being the same as the IP address of an internet antiques dealer called William Shears – to discredit his voice that was raised against her accusation. I have shown how Vanessa Gebbie lied about her not being able to write for a year as a result of her fallout with me. But there is one person in all of this who has remained in the shadows and been quiet. I ascribed this quiet to some noble higher feelings in her – but I may be wrong, or so someone has informed me.
I was directed to a blogpost this 'noble' other person had written where she confessed that seeing writers she knew, who had started at the same level as her, going on to published success brought ‘a wave of bitterness’ rising up inside of her, an intense jealousy. Then I read a whole other blogpost by this 'quiet' person lambasting an editor for having the temerity to alter something she had written without her consent and prior to publication. And so I wondered why she had not used up one of her many blogposts to lambast me since it is her work that I am accused of having plagiarised. It seems odd that she has not been more obviously outspoken against me.
There is someone who remains anonymous who has taken my actual work and posted it up in the public domain in order that others can see the ‘thief’ I am supposed to be (and by the way this is copyright theft). The site they have set up has had more than 700 visits and there has not been the avalanche of condemnation in the comments on the site that even I expected (given the response without evidence that there was on Jane Smith’s Anti-plagiarism post that had earlier been directed against me). Nor was there even a trickle of condemnation. One (anonymous comment) said that perhaps I had taken too much from this other writer - that was it! Whereas, one William Shears voiced on the site disbelief at the absurdity of the charge against me and said he thought the two stories (mine and the one that I had ‘plundered’) were very different. Who it is that set up this anonymous site (in my name and with my work and without my permission) has been one of the puzzles in all of this.
Then there is the fact that someone has been writing to places where my work has been posted, and to competitions I have done well in, and places where my work has been accepted, to declare me evil and bad. This person has some influence it seems, is a name in the world of the short story, with the result that in certain competitions my submitted pieces are not even read (though my entry fees have been cashed!) and some places have simply withdrawn my work. Until now I have not known who this mystery person was. I do now. Perhaps you can guess!
With some of my competition winnings this year I approached an Edinburgh solicitor expert in matters of intellectual property - so it said in the firm's blurb. I submitted my story and ‘hers’ and, being careful in my wording not to prejudice the response I wanted from the solicitor, I asked if there was a case to answer. I did not reveal the identity of either writer and had removed the titles. I did this because I genuinely wanted to know; Jane Smith had said that she had shown the pieces to lawyer friends of hers and they had said an infringement had been made, but I wasn't sure I could trust what she had said anymore. The solicitor I contacted (not cheap by the way) has taken some time to get back to me. Now that he has I can share with you what he said. Although it was clear that the second writer (that was me) had read and been heavily influenced by the first (that’s her) in his opinion there was no legal case to answer, that the second did not infringe legal copyright, and more than this did not go beyond what a court would see as permissible in the realm of influence. There was lot more that he said but he concluded that no court would likely entertain the case and that this did not represent an example of plagiarism. He advised me not to take it any further (assuming wrongly that I was the writer of the first piece) and to accept that this kind of ‘borrowing’ was not out of the usual. I realise that this is only one opinion and that the matter may be still seen as at the least debateable, as matters of this kind are... if they were clear cut then there would almost be no need for lawyers!
But, at last, and it's as official as I can make it: Douglas Bruton is not a plagiarist.
With my next big competition win (and it will have to be substantial, I realise) I will look into the matter of what I can do to deal with those people who have publicly and privately (through backdoor e-mails) wrongly accused me. This is close to my last word on the matter, I think...
