Legally, the issue's resolved. Ethically, there's still blood to be had. Socially, justice must be served.

If it were me, I'd get the name of the professor and their school and give Professor Jerkface what-for. Maybe even the school itself. I mean, if a professor like that didn't have the knowledge or experience in our profession to know that this was a no-no, then what other nonsense are they putting into their kids' heads?

Either they need to buck up and learn/teach what's really out there or the school needs to find someone who knows what they're talking about. People are paying this school money that they don't have to send themselves or their kids to this professor's class and the professor's just teaching out of their ***. That ain't right. If these kids really want to learn about our craft and industry, then this is a pretty important thing to know early on. If their profs can't be bothered to teach them, then we should do it ourselves and make sure the prof watches it.

Don't **** with writers. We mess **** up.

So how often do you all have your scripts stolen and produced without your permission?  Is this common, or is it something that just happens every once-in-a-while?

As a professor myself (not of film) I am very aware that students will take the easy route and try to pass off other people's work as their own.  As a result, I try my best to avoid giving class assignments that can easily be plagiarized.

I think it was James who said something along the lines of "you've gotta take the good with the bad with SS". I could agree more. At the end of the day, this sort of thing can happen to anyone. That's one of the negatives of posting to a public forum.

The positives are pretty much endless. You get to network, meet heaps of other writers and producers, learn how to improve your craft and above all, we do get noticed. Short films in particular get a lot of exposure on this site. Providing it's cheap enough to film, it's probably going to get filmed. Who knows? These guys who are just "starting out" could one day hit it big. In the long run, that's the sort of connection that you're going to need.

Additionally, these kids weren't trying to rip me off. They apologized about ten times and changed the credits to suite what I wanted. I ended up writing an email to the school, stating how professional they had acted.

Dan