Lit story catalog....on another site

DreamCloud said:

Interesting. I searched out one of my books and found nothing on that site. Found it selling on Amazon though. Changed the title but the rest of the words are all mine.

Click to expand...

That's worse. Your stuff is all excellent! you should publish it yourself.
-MM

MindsMirror said:

Lit auto-removed our copyright from our first story, and we'd thought they weren't wanted/needed. So, we hadn't been using them, since Lit marks them as copyrighted anyway.

Now we're going through and adding full copyright to top and bottom for resubmission. Are there other things besides our obvious easter eggs that can / should be done?

-MM

Click to expand...

Yes. You can put an obvious phrase in each story that will show up on a Google search. Some of my stories feature 'sheep'.

If I search for "copyright oggbashan" I find my stories in too many places. A lot are only links back to Literotica but there are too many that are stolen and reposted. However when I started posting my stories to Yahoo Adult Groups over 16 years ago I knew that they might/would be downloaded and reposted. At the time I didn't expect my stories to be reposted thousands of times. Is it fame, notoriety, or just that my stories have been around for so long?

I found my Three Graces of Maidstone translated into Czech.

oggbashan said:

Yes. You can put an obvious phrase in each story that will show up on a Google search. Some of my stories feature 'sheep'.

Click to expand...

That ain't for copyright protection, mate. You're not fooling anyone!

Distressing. They had the old versions of my first five chapters, asked them to take them all down. Thanks for the heads-up.

MindsMirror said:

Although technically correct (we didn't claim the cash) https://www.literotica.com/stories/contest.php/summer-lovin-2016, we think our point was missed. If Lit used to defend sites plundering stories, and now it doesn't. What changed? What would make Lit pay attention? Is their supply of new writers so large that they can ignore writers leaving?

Click to expand...

I can't speak for L&M, but I would guess that it's more about the supply of story thieves and the difficulty of doing anything about them.

Ever played whack-a-mole?

Some crook registers a website with a shady ISP in Russia or wherever, steals stories from Literotica, uses them to get a few page hits and maybe sucker a few people in to infect their computers with malware. The ISP isn't interested in enforcing copyright - their business model is based on hosting web services for crooks - so you're going to have to work at it to get results. Report every stolen story one by one, send a DMCA notice, whatever.

So you eventually got their site taken down, or at least most of the stories. Hooray!

Tomorrow they're setting up the operation all over again on a different ISP. If they've saved copies of your stories, they don't even have to go to the trouble of downloading them again.

I'd love it if Lit management were prepared to go after these sites on our behalf, but I suspect it's a lot of work for not much gain.

MindsMirror said:

Lit auto-removed our copyright from our first story, and we'd thought they weren't wanted/needed. So, we hadn't been using them, since Lit marks them as copyrighted anyway.

Now we're going through and adding full copyright to top and bottom for resubmission. Are there other things besides our obvious easter eggs that can / should be done?

-MM

Click to expand...

Unless you have paid to register your story through the US Copyright Office, I don't know that including a copyright notice on your stories is going to make much difference to anything.

Me, I sometimes include a notice somewhere in the bottom of the story to the effect of "if you're reading this somewhere other than Literotica it's been stolen". One nice fellow saw that notice and let me know when somebody was selling a story of mine on Amazon, which let me get them taken down before they could get any revenue for it.

But mostly, if you post here you need to resign yourself to the fact that people might steal your stories. Good news is, most of those sites are not exactly high in readership.

electricblue66 said:

That ain't for copyright protection, mate. You're not fooling anyone!

Click to expand...

I just like confusing the readers with gratuitous sheep. Baa!

As for my copyright notice? It IS valid but not in the USA. It asserts my copyright under the Berne Convention. The US has implemented that but with considerable restrictions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

We have discussed copyright many times in the Authors' Hangout. My notice is valid in the UK and many other countries but not on Literotica which is US based and therefore US copyright rules apply.

It doesn't really matter. Even if I had registered (and paid) to register my copyright in the US I would have no real possibility of enforcing my rights even if I spent hundreds of thousands of US dollars on expensive lawyers. What financial loss have I suffered from having a free story stolen? I could claim loss of reputation but again what financial loss have I suffered?

I have found at least five of my stories at other sites. On one all they had up was the copyright notice. On the others, just the first page.

1. www. eroticstoriesofsex. com

Has the first page. This guy is an old stealer of stories. He has had to move his site a number of times because of DMCA requests to his Host Provider.

2. www. sex-stories-xxx . com

It only has the first paragraph. But will lead you to this site...

3. www. xxxstories. info

Which has first pages of stroies.

oggbashan said:

I just like confusing the readers with gratuitous sheep. Baa!

...

It doesn't really matter. Even if I had registered (and paid) to register my copyright in the US I would have no real possibility of enforcing my rights even if I spent hundreds of thousands of US dollars on expensive lawyers. What financial loss have I suffered from having a free story stolen? I could claim loss of reputation but again what financial loss have I suffered?

Click to expand...

Hmmm...financial loss. How much is your time worth? I always put a number to my time depending on what I'm asked to do.

When I was a contract programmer, I charged anywhere from $75 to $250 an hour over the years.

As a writer, I would charge not quite that much, but more than minimum wage.

Fox News?

UnderMyKilt said:

Check the image. Do the story categories look familiar?

While doing an occasional, though infrequent, search of the internet using unique sentences from my stories I stumbled across this little gem.

It looks like the whole Literotica story index copied. The whole thing is basically a snapshot of stories, or excerpts of longer stories, taken at some point in the past. Stories are listed in the categories in reverse alphabetical order.

I asked them to take down one of my stories and they did after about a week but I then realized they had "Chapter 2" of that story as well.

You might want to take a look....or not...depending on whether it matters to you or not.

Click to expand...

Zeb_Carter said:

Hmmm...financial loss. How much is your time worth? I always put a number to my time depending on what I'm asked to do.

When I was a contract programmer, I charged anywhere from $75 to $250 an hour over the years.

As a writer, I would charge not quite that much, but more than minimum wage.

Click to expand...

My time when a manager was much more expensive than that. But I don't think anyone stealing my stories would have the resources to pay my legal bills let alone compensation for my time and effort.

oggbashan said:

My time when a manager was much more expensive than that. But I don't think anyone stealing my stories would have the resources to pay my legal bills let alone compensation for my time and effort.

Click to expand...

I realize that, but there may come a time when the guy who stole your stories gets a big movie contract...

Well you get the gist.

Zeb_Carter said:

Hmmm...financial loss. How much is your time worth? I always put a number to my time depending on what I'm asked to do.

When I was a contract programmer, I charged anywhere from $75 to $250 an hour over the years.

As a writer, I would charge not quite that much, but more than minimum wage.

Click to expand...

Ogg's already put that time in regardless of whether anybody pirates his work, so I don't think a court would recognise that as a "financial loss" caused by the copying. Financial loss is more about people who would otherwise have paid for your work, but don't because there's a free copy available.

Bramblethorn said:

Ogg's already put that time in regardless of whether anybody pirates his work, so I don't think a court would recognise that as a "financial loss" caused by the copying. Financial loss is more about people who would otherwise have paid for your work, but don't because there's a free copy available.

Click to expand...

A court wouldn't recognise ANY loss from a free story being stolen. However if someone uses my work to make a big budget movie - very unlikely - all they need to do is acknowledge that their inspiration came from my story and I'd have no redress.

If however they claimed that the story was their own work when selling it to a production company they could be prosecuted for fraud, or, more likely I would be given an ex-gratia payment if I created a media storm.

I just found one of mine, Beyond the Forest, on Smashwords. An author named Erik Parker copied it word for word but changed the title to Beyond the Woods.

I have sent them an e-mail asking them to remove it.

Edit: I have also found more of my stories listed on a site called eroticstoriesofsex.com Apparently they were in so much of a hurry to copy it they forgot to remove the first line, which reads, "This is an entry for the 2014 Literotica Halloween contest." Plagiarism is bad enough, but that is just lazy!

This thread and several others like it combined with zero response from Literotica on requests for assistance has made us decide to put all further stories on hold.

We'll keep our eyes open for any change, but for the near future, we will be researching self publishing.

-MM

MindsMirror said:

This thread and several others like it combined with zero response from Literotica on requests for assistance has made us decide to put all further stories on hold.

We'll keep our eyes open for any change, but for the near future, we will be researching self publishing.

-MM

Click to expand...

I'm sorry that you have made that decision. The reality is that Literotica's owners have fewer powers of redress than you have - and that is effectively none.

Wherever you publish on the internet, whether here or on a site you own personally, your work can and WILL BE stolen. Depending on WHO stole it and WHERE the internet site is based your only course of action is to appeal to the site owner and/or issue a DMCA complaint. Sites hosted in many countries take no notice at all of DMCA complaints so you would be wasting your effort.

Only the copyright owner can issue a DMCA complaint. Literotica can't.

The problem isn't Literotica's. Part of the problem is in US legislation that provides minimal protection of copyright and took more than 100 years to implement even the slightest version of the Berne Convention. When the Berne Convention was signed the most prolific thieves of copyrighted work were US-based (and protected by US legislators). The UK signed the Berne Convention in the 19th Century mainly because of complaints by UK artistic creators against US piracy. Some of those directly affected and suffering considerable financial loss were Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Gilbert and Sullivan.

The US still has minimal protection of copyrighted work and doesn't even recognise that work IS copyrighted unless and until it has been registered and the appropriate fee has been paid. In US terms, if you haven't registered your copyright you can't issue a DMCA notice because you have NO copyright.

So, I repeat, I'm sorry you don't want to continue to publish on Literotica because they won't defend your copyright. They have tried. They continue to try in general terms but they can't protect you. No one can, not even yourself. If you haven't registered your copyright IN the US, you don't have any copyright to defend.

.............

KindofHere said:

Jesus Christ. (I don't mean he can protect you, I mean Jesus Christ that's dark).

Click to expand...

Unfortunately that's the reality of the internet. If you don't understand that you are deceiving yourself. Look at fan fiction, even on this site. It rides roughshod over the copyright of the individuals or storyline creators and even big companies can't do much about it despite their lawyers.

Disney try but just search for 'Disney Princess Porn' and you will see what I mean.

US legislators don't want to protect copyright. Some countries make money from breaching copyright on an industrial scale with cloned DVDs and Games.

...................

oggbashan said:

I'm sorry that you have made that decision. The reality is that Literotica's owners have fewer powers of redress than you have - and that is effectively none.

So, I repeat, I'm sorry you don't want to continue to publish on Literotica because they won't defend your copyright. They have tried. They continue to try in general terms but they can't protect you. No one can, not even yourself. If you haven't registered your copyright IN the US, you don't have any copyright to defend.

Click to expand...

It isn't clear if you are speaking for Literotica. We have copied Literotica on our take down notices but have heard zero, so it is very difficult to believe they are trying or have tried to do anything that is eluded to in their FAQ.

If they aren't going to assist then the language should be changed and made more blunt. https://www.literotica.com/faq/05235347.shtml

If I submit a story to Literotica, do I still own the copyright?

Absolutely. You are simply granting us a non-exclusive right to publish your story on Literotica.com and granting Literotica the right to enforce the copyright on your story should it be used without your permission by any other publication - online, print, or other media.

While Literotica is not in any way required to enforce your copyright for you, you are granting us the right to do so if we become aware of anyone using your story without your explicit consent. The right to enforce your copyright that you are granting us includes the right to file DMCA complaints, file lawsuits, and any and all other necessary actions, both foreign and domestic, to prevent unauthorized people and companies from using your submissions without your permission.

The reason we require you to grant us the shared right to enforce your copyright (of course you also retain the right to enforce your own copyrights) is so that we have the legal power needed to protect your works from unauthorized publication on websites and in other media. As long as you grant permission to a website or other media to publish your stories, we have no right to enforce copyright law on them. Only websites or other media that publish/copy your stories without your permission are included in this granting of rights.

Other than these two issues, all rights to the story still belong to you, the author.

Click to expand...

Thumbs up to Smashwords. All it took was one brief e-mail and they removed the plagiarized version of my story from their site within hours and sent me a reply to thank me for bringing it to their attention.

MindsMirror said:

It isn't clear if you are speaking for Literotica. We have copied Literotica on our take down notices but have heard zero, so it is very difficult to believe they are trying or have tried to do anything that is eluded to in their FAQ.

If they aren't going to assist then the language should be changed and made more blunt. https://www.literotica.com/faq/05235347.shtml

Click to expand...

I'm not speaking FOR Literotica. They tried to support many authors in the past with limited success. What they do now? I don't know.

I am presenting the reality of copyright breaches and the internet. Literotica is based in the US. US copyright law is effectively useless for protecting amateur authors like us. Even if US copyright law was more effective, as UK laws and the Berne Convention are, we have NO redress if the story is stolen and posted on a site based in a country that is not signatory to the Berne Convention, or nominally is and in practice ignores it.

To be blunt: Your only redress against theft is by embarrassing the thief or the website on which the stories have been reposted. Many thieves and internet sites just don't give a fuck about authors' rights or DMCAs. It applies on many mainstream sites. Look at YouTube. How many performances are posted on YouTube under 'standard YouTube licence' which are effectively stolen?

Trying to use lawyers to enforce your copyright would be very expensive and useless.

It's not just Literotica. Posting ANYWHERE on the internet means your story WILL BE STOLEN.

Seanathon said:

Thumbs up to Smashwords. All it took was one brief e-mail and they removed the plagiarized version of my story from their site within hours and sent me a reply to thank me for bringing it to their attention.

Click to expand...

Good for them. But that is an exception.

Edited for:

I have just searched Smashwords and Asstr for my stories as me and jeanne_d_artois. There are none, perhaps because of my copyright statement on most of my stories.

That doesn't mean my stories aren't on those sites if the thief stripped off my headers.