If, by coincidence, you come up with a similar plot or structure, then that’s fine (which is what I referred to in my other post on the subject). There are, after all, very few original plots – which is what the Groundhog Day case revolved around.

If you simply take someone else’s work and tweak it a bit, then you’re in big trouble – that’s simple plagiarism.

If, however, you are working with someone in a critique group, and they share some ideas with you in confidence, then you are entirely free to use those ideas in your own work. But don’t expect to be invited back.

And ideas can’t be copyrighted?

So it’s down to ethics.

How’s a person to know what’s right and what is wrong?

Shit this is all so bloody murky. Didn’t you say somewhere you had got an idea for something you wrote from somewhere else?

Give me an island to myself so I can just do what I want without the fear that in this litigious society I’ll be a thief instead of an artist!