<p>High school girl, already an accomplished playright, writes play on the college admissions process, submits it to a competition for teenage playrights. Another high school girl, on the competition committee, takes script, puts her own name on it, submits it to another high school play competition, where it's accepted.
First girl hears of this but decides to be positive and let the second one cast and produce the play anyway, with acknowledgedment, then uses the experience for her own college essay.</p>
<p>This is way too close for comfort. S is also a playwright (state and national awards, with a few plays staged), and chose to submit one of his plays as supplemental material to some colleges. We had his play copyrighted for fear of a similar thing happening. I can see my S being gracious if this happened to him - but H and I, I'm not convinced we can be as gracious.</p>
<p>The original play that was plagiarized had nothing to do with college admissions. It was about a group of eccentric students at a large urban high school.</p>
<p>After that play was plagiarized and the original author was dealing with all the emotional repercussions, it was laughingly mentioned that at least it would make a great subject for college essays. Guess it did.</p>
<p>Mountains: a play becomes automatically copyrighted the moment it's completed, even if it's not registered with the copyright office. But in any case, if someone wants to appropriate another's material, they have to be caught at it. Happened on this occasion; not always guaranteed.</p>