the Dagman wrote:
^Once again for those too slow to grasp what I am saying here. Larry WAS on the payroll, which is how he got my friend onto the set. The source of wherever the info said he wasn't is in error. And I NEVER said that JMS committed any "acts of theft or plagiarism".
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Saying that other people wrote
Babylon 5's teleplays based upon story notes from JMS but that those staffers were denied a "Teleplay by" credit is the same thing as accusing JMS of plagiarism.
In real life, the situation you describe would warrant JMS getting a "Story by" credit and the staff writer in question getting a "Teleplay by" credit.
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That is all on you guys. What I said is that JMS did write the broad strokes, which were all the major story beats, which is why he got the writers' credit. But he had a whole staff of writers who worked on the scripts to flesh out the ideas he didn't. Which is a very common practice in television and film. There are often writers who go uncredited.
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Actually, it's far more common for the executive producer/head writer to do an uncredited re-write on a staffer's or freelancer's script and voluntarily forgo a "Written by" or "Teleplay by" credit, so as to allow the full residual to go to the staffer or freelancer. Many executive producers do this since they get a large residual just from being the executive producer anyways.