HinataPerolada you forget that WN is a chinese company registered in China. Whilst the fact that there is a Singapore office is encouraging, the fact it is located in China pretty much ensures that its free from persecution on copyright infringement from all other countries.
Mostly because the country doesnt really recognise foreign intellectual property claims.
Without action being taken by wn against the false author tough, there is a very good chance that we will see a large wave of simular plagiarism scams occuring in the future.
Even worse, some of them are easier than others, for example, if you visit non english novel websites, particularly non chinese ones and translate them with google translate, then write them in your own words like a word spun translation, perhaps switching up some named of people and places in it, then you will definitely be able to get away with it.
Not only would you have the chinese wall between your plagarism and the aggrieved, but you will have changed it enough to make actual copyright infringement claims unable to stick. They largely rely on the names and places being the same, and if you wrote the same story in your own words... Or use a free word spinner.... Well youre pretty much fucked as the original author then.
It wouldn't surprise me if original Russian, German, Japanese, French and Spanish stories of simular sites to wn but less monitized will see a massive increase in such intellectual property theft.
They have extremely large communities in novels and fanfiction.
Besides, if a plagiarism scanning tool doesnt catch on to what you do... Youre pretty much home free in court.
Wanna rip off Harry Potter? Just change the world its in, alter the names, races add in some Game of Thrones elements and occurances from a variety of other stories and wham. Your fanfic is an original standalone by adding enough crossovers and turning Harry Potter into Valery Stark.
Its rediculous how easy it is, the hardest part is the actual conversations, but if youre a decent writer where conversations are considered... Its really rediculously easy to spin several best sellers into one epic story.
So much so that everyone reading it will puke blood as the sense where its from but thanks to multiple things cant make a case.
Its like that with art too. Copy the lines of your favorite pieces, flip the image and recolor it in your ownstyle and everyone calls you original and creative.
Design schools even teach it saying that good Design is learning to steal without being caught... Or variations on that. As every concept you imagine exists already and only by combining those in new and unusual ways can you create something 'original'
Think the Ipad is original? Nah the idea came straight out of scifi movies and series, take star trek, everyone has the concept of an Ipad there, companies just plagarised it by using that concept but their own tech to make it work.
There are various degrees of plagarism and this case we see right here was the easiest one, without even translating and only renaming the title of the stories involved...
If you can get away with even that varient on wn as popposed to my later examples.... Imagine how much shit is really happening then...
Look at Amazon self publishing for example. What you can get away with on wn wont fly there, but the multi crossover, word spinning renaming genre change varient I mentioned?... Its original enough.
I wouldnt be surprised if there was a varient series shaped form of The Mech Touch on there already, just by making it spaceship oriented, spinning the names and rewriting the story in ones own words, maybe trimming down a bit here and there and adding some stuff inspired from other scifi sources.
After all, isnt that what most Isekai, system and romance genres amount to as well? The moment it feels cliché is because you've really read the same story before. What you're reading is just another rehash of the same story all the others keep. Plagarising...
There is also a reason why I worry for the few stories on here that truly do feel fairly original, unpredictable and non cliché, some of whom the author replied to this topic...
They have a great story that mesh concepts together in a fairly unique blend and truly forge a original path in this continueous publishing format that wn favours... Ones that can easily be rehashed and spun the ways I mentioned earlier into best selling series....
Its frustrating as hell because it really sucks to have your stuff stolen and see someone twist things just enough to make more of it than you ever did and ever would have.
Anyway enough said... The world is damned unfair.