What do you guys do about plagiarism?

[ablondegoddess]

My first story here, "The Taking of Lena", has been appearing on multiple non-Lit sites for years. I usually didn't care, because oddly enough, the illicit postings almost always mentioned my Lit handle or linked back to my profile. Today however...I just found out that there are at least two people on a different amateur author site who are submitting my story and claiming originality. The first changed the name of the two main characters (along with a couple of other details), but has preserved about 85-90% of my original prose, word for word. The second person has copied and pasted the entire thing, under a new title, and is submitting that as original work. As you guys can probably empathize, this has been pretty upsetting to me. I'm feeling kind of violated right now and very frustrated. Any advice would really be appreciated!

-xoB

 

[Zeb_Carter]

If the site he posted them on cares about copyright law, notify them of the violation. If they don't care, not much you can do.

You might want to check Amazon there are a number of buttheads that rip off stories from here and sell them as their own on the Kindle Store.

 

[ablondegoddess]

This is all very depressing...I'm almost afraid to check Amazon. I sent messages directly to the users and asked them to remove the stories, but I'm not holding my breath for a response at this point.

 

[RandyVicar]

If the site is hosted at a legit hosting service based in the US, you can file a DMCA notice.

http://www.sfwa.org/2013/03/the-dmca-takedown-notice-demystified/

But that may not be worth the trouble.

 

[Handley_Page]

This is a continual problem. I seem to recall another thread about it (don't ask me to remember the title), that had the right procedure to get the rip-off removed.

 

[Bramblethorn]

This is all very depressing...I'm almost afraid to check Amazon. I sent messages directly to the users and asked them to remove the stories, but I'm not holding my breath for a response at this point.

Sorry this happened to you; it's pretty common but no less obnoxious for that.

If it looks like a legit site, report the theft to the site owners - if you look around there should usually be some sort of instructions for reporting stolen content. If these users are stealing from you, they're probably stealing from others too, so it's worth letting the owners know. Swiping somebody else's story and claiming it as your own isn't a good-faith mistake, you don't owe the thieves any politeness.

Some sites seem to harvest content from Literotica via automated scraping. The content often gets mangled (bad formatting, pages missing etc) but they don't care; the point isn't to sustain a community of readers, it's just to catch search hits and draw readers in long enough to view ads/catch malware. With that sort of site, it's probably not worth trying to get the content taken down - the site owners are the ones doing the stealing, so they're not going to cooperate, and even if you DMCA them they'll pop up again somewhere else.

But if somebody went to the effort of changing character names etc, that doesn't sound like a scraper bot.

And yes, I would check Amazon too; there was at least one Amazon "author" who was raiding Literotica wholesale.

 

[Messier82]

And yes, I would check Amazon too; there was at least one Amazon "author" who was raiding Literotica wholesale.

That sounds like a huge task, how do you trawl all the e-books on Amazon for your content without actually buying the product?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

There are at least 5 threads on Lit about this problem.

Always contact the website about the violation, never the user that stole the story. He stole it, he knows he was wrong, why warn him you found out?

Send a DMCA notice to the website as a follow-up, they will most likely ask for one anyway. This lets them know you are serious. Most site will respond by pulling the offending material. Or as in one case we had, just shutting down the site.

If the website ignores the DMCA and they are on a US hosting server, send the hosting company a DMCA.

If you do a Whois search on the website domain, it will tell you who the hosting company is, or you can get the IP address and search on that...the IP will be one of many in a block owned by the hosting company.

If the site owns the server and is in the US, you can notify the FBI about the copyright violations...if you really want to take it that far and have the courage to answer all the questions.

Just an FYI.

 

[ablondegoddess]

Thank you guys so much for the advice, and I'm really sorry if this post was redundant -- I haven't spent a lot of time on the forums yet and I didn't know that this was such a popular question (I hate that it is ). I submitted a request to the website directly. I haven't gotten a response yet, but one of the users has already taken the story down. Not sure if it was in response to my message or not, but I'm counting that as positive regardless.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If the site owns the server and is in the US, you can notify the FBI about the copyright violations...if you really want to take it that far and have the courage to answer all the questions.

Even there, if you haven't registered copyright, there's not much to prevent a crooked site from claiming that they own the story and you stole it from them. One scraper site I saw was backdating the dates appearing on its stolen stories to before the originals had appeared on Literotica, presumably to muddy the waters if anybody tried to go after them this way.

 

[HeyAll]

Some of my stuff has appeared on other sites, and I don't really care.

"Quarantined with Mom" was posted on another site, and someone emailed me about it. I checked the link and lots of readers of the other site pointed out that it was stolen. The person who posted my story commented that he acknowledged he didn't write it. That same person who posted my story had also posted other stories from Lit.

I think once you reach a certain level of popularity, readers will stick up for you if your work is stolen. In fact, just the other day, I saw that there was a plagiarized story, and numerous readers commented that it copied an old story and reported it to the site. By the way, the original story was posted in 2006. Yet many readers still remembered and reported it.

However, if someone sold my work for profit, without giving me credit, I think I would be pretty annoyed.

 

[Sammael Bard]

For authors, obscurity is a bigger threat than plagiarism.

Some wise bloke said that ^^ I don't remember his name.

Plagiarism is an occupational hazard. If the said person(s) are trying to sell your book, then there's a reason to be annoyed. I know I will be annoyed. In that case, you can file a DMCA complaint. You can see the procedures mentioned in the sticky on top of Author's hangout.

Other than that, these rats will keep popping up on various places and you'll be playing hit-the-mole if you worry too much about it.

My advice: Chillax.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

If the site is hosted at a legit hosting service based in the US, you can file a DMCA notice.

http://www.sfwa.org/2013/03/the-dmca-takedown-notice-demystified/

But that may not be worth the trouble.

It's worth the trouble. I've done it and it worked within 24 hours. The process is not hard, though it is a little painstaking, but if you do it any US website is going to sit up and take notice because they can get nailed hard for a violation.

And yes, it leaves a very sour taste in the mouth. I'd like a few minutes alone with the punk who put his name to my words.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Even there, if you haven't registered copyright, there's not much to prevent a crooked site from claiming that they own the story and you stole it from them. One scraper site I saw was backdating the dates appearing on its stolen stories to before the originals had appeared on Literotica, presumably to muddy the waters if anybody tried to go after them this way.

Copyright is automatic on first publishing; and Google can be convinced to say when it first cached a given webpage, though this won't help you if they steal it quickly. Proving you're author isn't usually a problem; getting someone to care (outside of US jurisdiction) might be.

 

[sr71plt]

OK, let's get real on this (again). In the United States, "copyright is automatic on first publishing" has no teeth, because there is no legal redress unless/until your register it. Also, if you file a DMCA, you have to provide your personal information (and have registered copyright). Reality time: Almost no one is going to actually do those two things for erotica. Everything else is bluff and bluster.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

OK, let's get real on this (again). In the United States, "copyright is automatic on first publishing" has no teeth, because there is no legal redress unless/until your register it. Also, if you file a DMCA, you have to provide your personal information (and have registered copyright). Reality time: Almost no one is going to actually do those two things for erotica. Everything else is bluff and bluster.

Untrue in my experience. I identified as HandsInTheDark in the complaint, and I don't generally have a copyright mark in my stories because it's not required.

Not sure that you mean by "no teeth". US law is, you publish and it's copyrighted, period. DCMA operates accordingly. No sane US site is going to test DCMA's set of teeth over a stolen story.

Maybe I hit a nice site that just happened to have a stupid thief they were happy to see the back of. But the one time I followed the procedure it went like clockwork.

 

[sr71plt]

Oh, God, do we really have to pin this down for the thousandth time here? Go to the U.S. government copyright page and look up what happens if you go to court--you don't unless someone produces a registration. If you can't take it to court, you are running on bluff.

If they accepted your DCMA on your Lit. handle, you got away with a bluff. That's nice; it's a successful bluff nonetheless.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Just an FYI to everyone...

Pilot is not a lawyer. He has no standing in the courts of the US. If you want to know exactly what's required to press a copyright complaint, talk to a copyright lawyer. Anyone else's opinion on the subject of copyright holds about as much water as a screen door...none and should be taken that way.

 

[sr71plt]

Actually I do have an international law degree, which includes copyright issues, I did work copyright issues in the U.S. government, and I did work on the commission that was charged to take the teeth out of the Berne Commission as it applied to the United States (that old, yes, it's copyrighted upon creation, but, no, you can't get legal redress without registering it). So, you're wrong, Zeb. (What a surprise.)

But none of that matters. All you have to do is go to the copyright web site and read that for yourself--over the years, it's been periodically quoted by me and others. U.S. law is purposely worded that way so that U.S. courts aren't swamped with copyright cases (and it's worked--there are practically no publishing copyright cases to cite).

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#411
“no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.”


Of course, beyond that, Zeb (who supposedly has me on ignore and thus didn't read the post he responded to ) probably needs to take his head out of his ass tonight--on more than this issue.

And beyond even that, anyone who doesn't want to believe me on this can go on pretending and beating their heads against the wall, if they like. It doesn't affect me. Can't say you either weren't informed or had your hand held to the wording in the U.S. Copyright law, though.

 

[ablondegoddess]

Oh, God, do we really have to pin this down for the thousandth time here? Go to the U.S. government copyright page and look up what happens if you go to court--you don't unless someone produces a registration. If you can't take it to court, you are running on bluff.

If they accepted your DCMA on your Lit. handle, you got away with a bluff. That's nice; it's a successful bluff nonetheless.

I'm really sorry....I seriously didn't know that this was such a popular thread topic. I truly apologize for the redundancy.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm really sorry....I seriously didn't know that this was such a popular thread topic. I truly apologize for the redundancy.

It's not the asking of the question--it's a complex and convoluted issue-that's the problem. It's the regularity with which regular posters continue to want to fool themselves and not get it.

It's sort of like the insistence to claim that a company's failure to agree to publish what someone writes is a violation of their freedom of speech.

 

[someoneyouknow]

If someone wants to plaigarize my lousy work, they must be desperate.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm really sorry....I seriously didn't know that this was such a popular thread topic. I truly apologize for the redundancy.

Nah, not your fault. It's a reasonable thing to ask, just that this board isn't always a reasonable place

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Actually I do have an international law degree, which includes copyright issues, I did work copyright issues in the U.S. government, and I did work on the commission that was charged to take the teeth out of the Berne Commission as it applied to the United States (that old, yes, it's copyrighted upon creation, but, no, you can't get legal redress without registering it). So, you're wrong, Zeb. (What a surprise.)

But none of that matters. All you have to do is go to the copyright web site and read that for yourself--over the years, it's been periodically quoted by me and others. U.S. law is purposely worded that way so that U.S. courts aren't swamped with copyright cases (and it's worked--there are practically no publishing copyright cases to cite).

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#411
“no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.”


Of course, beyond that, Zeb (who supposedly has me on ignore and thus didn't read the post he responded to ) probably needs to take his head out of his ass tonight--on more than this issue.

And beyond even that, anyone who doesn't want to believe me on this can go on pretending and beating their heads against the wall, if they like. It doesn't affect me. Can't say you either weren't informed or had your hand held to the wording in the U.S. Copyright law, though.

Yeah, right, all while flying SR71's over Russia.

What a blowhard.

Not many here believe your claims and a lot secretly laugh at them behind your back, but you go ahead, claim whatever you want. You and your alts will not matter what I say anyway.

What a dickhead.

ETA: I wasn't talking about the civil action side of the law, but the criminal side. But I bet you have a bunch of learned quotes about that too?

Like I have said in the past, comprehension. That's what you lack. Go buy some.

 

[TxRad]

Yeah, right, all while flying SR71's over Russia.

What a blowhard.

Not many here believe your claims and a lot secretly laugh at them behind your back, but you go ahead, claim whatever you want. You and your alts will not matter what I say anyway.

What a dickhead.

ETA: I wasn't talking about the civil action side of the law, but the criminal side. But I bet you have a bunch of learned quotes about that too?

Like I have said in the past, comprehension. That's what you lack. Go buy some.

NO Zeb, he's giving you the right of it. You're the one being an ass.

Now, call me an alt. Kind of hard to do since we've met face to face. You were kind of an ass back then also.