Stories being Sold without Permission

[The_shadow_rising]

While I am aware that this is a common, even if wrong, practice (so please don't reply about how this is always done, that is not helpful or relevant to my purpose), I wanted to post about it for a couple of reasons.

I have recently received a message from a reader notifying me that two of my stories are being sold on Amazon. I looked into this and read the samples of the stories and except for a change in character names and a few sentences removed/words added to one, the books are identical to my stories: Sophie's Football Dinner and Sophie's Late Night Phonecall.

Both of these stories I wrote and published on Lit in 2005, and here they remain (and, I may add, both are not my best work - being early stories - and have errors; which the 'books' have not fixed but just copied over also).

These books can be found here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tammys-Adu...&qid=1502980454&sr=8-15&keywords=gianna+quinn

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tammys-Adu...&qid=1502980454&sr=8-13&keywords=gianna+quinn

I have taken this issue up with Amazon who are currently looking into the matter. As I noted on a previous post, I do not sell my stories and never will and intentionally only post them on Lit and want to keep them free.

So I am posting this for a few reasons - and as noted at the beginning, yes I know people stealing and selling stories is common, but that is neither the point here nor does it make it correct.

First, this 'author' has several books and given that the two books above are clearly identical to my two stories, I thought other authors would like to check to see if any of the other books were stories they had written with names changed and now being sold on Amazon.

Second, I wanted to flag this up so that readers can be aware that this had occurred and so that they do not buy these plagiarized stories what they can get for free in the original.

Third, I wanted a written online record about the matter under my account name.

Do I believe this will stop other people stealing stories? No. But I hope you can see the reasoning I have.

Thanks

 

[jehoram]

You might want to PM Laurel about this, since Lit has gone to bat for authors in the past regarding this.

It does bring up another thought for us who submit stories to multiple sites, though. I'm thinking of making very small revisions to the stories I post on different sites, so that if the work gets stolen, we can identify which site it was stolen from. (Things like "He fell with a thud" on one site, and "He fell with a thump" on another, for example.)

Comments?

 

[The_shadow_rising]

Laurel just sent me a link to a thread Manu wrote about how best to deal with this kind of situation:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1055555

I've looked over the whole thing and it really helps, so I would suggest any other authors who have had this issue/are concerned about this - and who have not seen this thread - take a look, especially if you find any of the 'author's' books I mentioned are copied from yours.

I will see what Amazon's response is before I proceed, just in case they do something or have changed their procedures since, but otherwise I will file a DMCA complaint/take-down to Amazon for each of my two stories. If no one else has caught this author out that would be two out of three strikes, so if any other authors notice their work in these books and files another that would ban the 'author' from Amazon (unless they have already got one or more strikes before mine anyway, of course).

As for your thought Jehoram, I was wondering if having slightly different versions on different sites could make it harder for you? I mean, could someone not then claim it was not clear who posted the original or what the original was? I know you may have the same name and state the connection of author, but then would that not also make it unnecessary to make revisions? You may find out which site it was from but would that information help too much, given - as Manu notes in his thread - how such thieves search the internet? Just a thought

 

[oggbashan]

If Amazon will not act, you will probably have to file a DMCA but don't hold your breath.

Your copyright is effectively unenforceable even if you had filed it (and paid the fee) in the US. You have suffered no financial loss.

PS to add: I found one of my stories posted as another person's work on xhamster. They hadn't even taken my copyright notice off the story. Now I have posted some of my stories on xhamster so people can read my stories with my name on them.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I will see what Amazon's response is before I proceed, just in case they do something or have changed their procedures since, but otherwise I will file a DMCA complaint/take-down to Amazon for each of my two stories. If no one else has caught this author out that would be two out of three strikes, so if any other authors notice their work in these books and files another that would ban the 'author' from Amazon (unless they have already got one or more strikes before mine anyway, of course).

As Ogg says, if you haven't paid to register copyright you have no solid proof of ownership and you probably won't get much joy from DMCAs. But there's another option.

Amazon's self-publishing rules say that you can't set an Amazon price higher than the price for the same story elsewhere. If the story is available free on Literotica, under Amazon's rules you're not allowed to charge for it at all. You can report the story on that basis, and it might be an easier way to get it taken down.

One thing I sometimes do is to include a pirate trap in the text of the story - something along the lines of "if you're reading this story somewhere other than lit erotica dot com it has been stolen". This doesn't have the legal status of a DMCA, but it does make the stolen work pretty obvious and it's resulted in Amazon readers getting in touch to let me know about the theft. Pirates rarely bother reading the whole thing.

Another option is to tweak the story in a way that makes it hard to search-and-replace character names. If your heroine is sometimes called Susan and sometimes Sue, and somebody in the story is a lawyer who likes to sue people... you may not prevent people from ripping off the story, but it will be very obvious that they've done so.

 

[The_shadow_rising]

A quick update:

I spoke with Amazon who asked me to file a form reporting infringement - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/reports/infringement

Good news is this seems to have worked. First I received an email from the inquiries team at Amazon who concluded that due to the evidence I had given - the form asks for the amazon item being reported and any details you can offer - they were removing one of the books and it would take three to four days. After I asked about the other book, as the form allowed more than one item to be reported on it, they said that only one item can be reported per form so I would have to fill in another for the second book. However as I went to do that today both books, and the 'author' selling the plagiarised stories' profile/store, are no longer available on Amazon.

So long story short, reporting the infringement to Amazon seems to have worked and both books that were my stories (except for the small changes mentioned before) seem to have been removed. All without having to file a DMCA.

I would recommend others who find their work stolen and being sold on Amazon to follow this process. I noted how I write on Lit under my pen name, what the stories were, how I found out about them, that I had read the samples and compared them to my stories, when I published my stories on Lit - which Lit's system of showing day, month, and year helped - what small changes had been made, that they are marked as copyrighted on Lit and under the guidance on the UK government website (I sent the link) anything written is classed as the author holding the copyright, and I sent the links to my stories and my Lit profile with the dates on, noted that I was well known for the stories and fictional city I write in, and stated that I have given no one permission to use them or sell them, other than myself and having them on Lit. Seeing the stories' content and dates on Lit I think is what helped.

So I thought both hearing this outcome and seeing how it worked may help others stop this happening with their work. Amazon was extremely helpful and respectful about it.

I will keep my eye on if they really have gone, but so far (searches and using the links) everything comes up gone.

Hope this helps someone.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

So, you think the form you filled out wasn't a DMCA? How cute.

 

[The_shadow_rising]

Well the form did not look like other DMCA forms I have seen, nor mention the Act, so it seemed more an internal adherence to copyright for Amazon, especially as it is not limited to digital material.

But whether it was a DMCA or not does not matter - especially as I wrote earlier how I would be happy to take that path - as the point was just that the form seems to have worked and others could use it if they were in the same situation. Doesn't really matter if it was a DMCA and I was wrong or not.

 

[49greg]

As Ogg says, if you haven't paid to register copyright you have no solid proof of ownership and you probably won't get much joy from DMCAs. But there's another option.

Amazon's self-publishing rules say that you can't set an Amazon price higher than the price for the same story elsewhere. If the story is available free on Literotica, under Amazon's rules you're not allowed to charge for it at all. You can report the story on that basis, and it might be an easier way to get it taken down.

One thing I sometimes do is to include a pirate trap in the text of the story - something along the lines of "if you're reading this story somewhere other than lit erotica dot com it has been stolen". This doesn't have the legal status of a DMCA, but it does make the stolen work pretty obvious and it's resulted in Amazon readers getting in touch to let me know about the theft. Pirates rarely bother reading the whole thing.

Another option is to tweak the story in a way that makes it hard to search-and-replace character names. If your heroine is sometimes called Susan and sometimes Sue, and somebody in the story is a lawyer who likes to sue people... you may not prevent people from ripping off the story, but it will be very obvious that they've done so.

I've recently started putting in something similar to the 'pirate trap' mentioned above. I've put the lines in as part of a conversation in the last two I've posted. I was worried some reader would complain about the interruption, but so far no complaints.

 

[oggbashan]

I've recently started putting in something similar to the 'pirate trap' mentioned above. I've put the lines in as part of a conversation in the last two I've posted. I was worried some reader would complain about the interruption, but so far no complaints.

My pirate trap is very simple:

The majority of my stories start with "copyright oggbashan". Most pirates don't bother to remove it.

 

[oggbashan]

The Berne Convention on copyright applies in many countries, including the UK.

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

In the UK the copyright of an artistic work, including a story, is the property of the creator from the beginning.

But in the US, although a signatory to the Berne Convention, copyright is only legally assigned IF the work has been filed for copyright and the appropriate fee has been paid.

However, wherever you live, defending your copyright from piracy is difficult, particularly if the pirate is based in countries that have a very relaxed attitude to copyright violations.

Many of my stories have been stolen and reposted on sites based in Eastern Europe or SE Asia.

 

[Hypoxia]

Assume that anything you post online is beyond your control. You have given it up. That's reality. Bummer...

 

[sr71plt]

Assume that anything you post online is beyond your control. You have given it up. That's reality. Bummer...

Ulp. Be careful. I posted that to this this thread and the post was deleted by the Web site. The post was once #3, giving advice on the basis of having done this for a decade and having some 200 works in the marketplace, but yet still posting stories to Literotica. But my post was deleted by Literotica. In spite of forum rules that say this wouldn't be done (guess I'd better go see if that section of the forum rules has been deleted.)

Nope, it's still there:

Anything else goes. You may post whatever you like. Consequently, so can everyone else. The administrators here don't believe they are anyone's parents nor are they anyone's Jiminy Cricket. It's not their responsibility to make sure that everyone on the site uses free speech responsibly. It's up to individual users to be responsible for themselves. For those who are not, the programmers at Jelsoft have added an ignore function for your convenience. Just go here and add the user you don't want to deal with anymore.

In short, we believe in the First Amendment, and offensive content will not be removed unless it breaks one of the rules.

I would suggest that you read this post quickly, though, as chances are very good it's going to disappear.

 

[Black_and_White_Writer]

A quick update:

I spoke with Amazon who asked me to file a form reporting infringement - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/reports/infringement

Good news is this seems to have worked. First I received an email from the inquiries team at Amazon who concluded that due to the evidence I had given - the form asks for the amazon item being reported and any details you can offer - they were removing one of the books and it would take three to four days. After I asked about the other book, as the form allowed more than one item to be reported on it, they said that only one item can be reported per form so I would have to fill in another for the second book. However as I went to do that today both books, and the 'author' selling the plagiarised stories' profile/store, are no longer available on Amazon.

So long story short, reporting the infringement to Amazon seems to have worked and both books that were my stories (except for the small changes mentioned before) seem to have been removed. All without having to file a DMCA.

I would recommend others who find their work stolen and being sold on Amazon to follow this process. I noted how I write on Lit under my pen name, what the stories were, how I found out about them, that I had read the samples and compared them to my stories, when I published my stories on Lit - which Lit's system of showing day, month, and year helped - what small changes had been made, that they are marked as copyrighted on Lit and under the guidance on the UK government website (I sent the link) anything written is classed as the author holding the copyright, and I sent the links to my stories and my Lit profile with the dates on, noted that I was well known for the stories and fictional city I write in, and stated that I have given no one permission to use them or sell them, other than myself and having them on Lit. Seeing the stories' content and dates on Lit I think is what helped.

So I thought both hearing this outcome and seeing how it worked may help others stop this happening with their work. Amazon was extremely helpful and respectful about it.

I will keep my eye on if they really have gone, but so far (searches and using the links) everything comes up gone.

Hope this helps someone.

If some names are ‘copyrighted’ to you, that you’ve created for stories. You could do the old fashioned thing of sending the story through the post. To also ‘register’ it as a trademark. This will obviously be costly, but could cause a lot of problems for places like Amazon who inadvertently sell stolen works/products.

I suppose I’ve never thought about someone stealing my work, or keeping my fingers crossed. There are some great suggestions, such as changing a story in some way if you publish it to another site. So if it is stolen you know where it’s been stolen from (not that that will matter too much as sadly the websites cannot prevent people copying and pasting the text in the first place, although that would be a brilliant tool if they could).

I wish you the best of luck with stopping others profiting from your hard work and preventing you earning a living from it.

On a side note, a friend who writes erotica, mostly of the ‘taboo’ genre, incest and the like, does so because it’ll be hard to sell something like that as an ebook or an actual physical book anywhere.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I noted how I write on Lit under my pen name

That brings up a copyright question:

Is your copyright assigned to your pen name or does it automatically carry over if someone copies your work and posts it on another site? In other words, is your pen name a legal entity for the purpose of protecting a copyright?

 

[KeithD]

I noted how I write on Lit under my pen name

That brings up a copyright question:

Is your copyright assigned to your pen name or does it automatically carry over if someone copies your work and posts it on another site? In other words, is your pen name a legal entity for the purpose of protecting a copyright?

In the United States, your copyright isn't "assigned" until/unless you formally register it with the U.S. Copyright Office. Then its registered in the name you register it in. If you choose a pen name, you also would need to do some legal paperwork to associate that name with your true name or you couldn't legally go to court in the pen name. Unless the pen name is legally established as you, the pen name isn't a legal person.

It just gets irrelevant to talk "legal" about stories posted to Literotica. It's just a pipe dream to think that "legal" protection/redress enters into any of this.

 

[oggbashan]

I noted how I write on Lit under my pen name

That brings up a copyright question:

Is your copyright assigned to your pen name or does it automatically carry over if someone copies your work and posts it on another site? In other words, is your pen name a legal entity for the purpose of protecting a copyright?

No. To fill in a DMCA you have to use your real name and address. That deters some of us.

And as said many times, a copyright for a story posted in the US on a US site - for free - is in practice unenforceable. All you can rely on is the goodwill of the website where the stolen work is posted. If that site, like most of those with my stolen stories, is in SE Asia, you have no redress at all.

 

[KeithD]

No. To fill in a DMCA you have to use your real name and address. That deters some of us.

And as said many times, a copyright for a story posted in the US on a US site - for free - is in practice unenforceable. All you can rely on is the goodwill of the website where the stolen work is posted. If that site, like most of those with my stolen stories, is in SE Asia, you have no redress at all.

And, if a DMCA is successful, that happened by bluff not any legal application. Amazon (if that's where the DMCA was sent) has no legal requirement to either verify or accept a DMCA claim unless accompanied by evidence of a formal copyright registration. Barring that, it's all bluff. Great if it works, but it isn't invoking anything "legal."

I've noted a few times what I think is a remedy and what I apply myself. If you're worried about someone making money off it other than you, get to the market with it first yourself before anyone else even know it exists. That has the added benefit with distributors of being able to show, in their own records, who had it first in the marketplace and who, reasonably argued, owns it.

 

[oggbashan]

I've noted a few times what I think is a remedy and what I apply myself. If you're worried about someone making money off it other than you, get to the market with it first yourself before anyone else even know it exists. That has the added benefit with distributors of being able to show, in their own records, who had it first in the marketplace and who, reasonably argued, owns it.

But then you can't post that story on Literotica for free.

 

[KeithD]

But then you can't post that story on Literotica for free.

Oh, really? Have you researched that?

 

[ElectricBlue]

But then you can't post that story on Literotica for free.

I can't see why not. If you own it, you can publish wherever/however you like - for bucks in the marketplace, for free here.

I've got Apple e-pub versions, print versions, and Lit versions of a few novels and novellas. As far as I'm concerned they're essentially the same content, packaged differently, priced differently. The Lit version, for example, is not an e-pub version, it has no cover, has no isbn, and is read from a Lit server. An e-pub version can be purchased and read off-line. Same content, different product.

 

[oggbashan]

I can't see why not. If you own it, you can publish wherever/however you like - for bucks in the marketplace, for free here.

I've got Apple e-pub versions, print versions, and Lit versions of a few novels and novellas. As far as I'm concerned they're essentially the same content, packaged differently, priced differently. The Lit version, for example, is not an e-pub version, it has no cover, has no isbn, and is read from a Lit server. An e-pub version can be purchased and read off-line. Same content, different product.

Because most for-bucks places insist it isn't available cheaper elsewhere.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Because most for-bucks places insist it isn't available cheaper elsewhere.

None of my outlets do - but then, my ebooks aren't available through KDP. My print on demand books can be bought through Amazon for dollars.

I think the point everyone misses here is the difference between content and product, who is the publisher, and who is the distributor. Lit makes content available free, but that content is not a book, it's not a saleable item which is downloadable or able to be sent in a parcel. An epub is an electronic book, which in my case I publish and make available through distributors - including Applebooks - available for money, at prices I set. A print book is a tangible product, available through all of the online distributors (including Amazon), pushed out to them by Lulu Books - but I'm the legal publisher - I own the ISBN, I set the prices. But you won't find an ISBN anywhere on Lit - the product here isn't a book, it's only content.

When it comes down to this, I don't think people have done their homework thoroughly. The only publisher or distributor who will price gouge you to zero, that I came across, was Amazon KDP - so I don't distribute through them. But Amazon do distribute my print books - but they're not my publisher and can't dictate prices to me. Amazon book stores set all sorts of prices, many of them less than I set - but if someone buys through them, I get the same margin (a buck or two) regardless.

 

[KeithD]

Because most for-bucks places insist it isn't available cheaper elsewhere.

Stated policies, and even attempted practice, don't match reality. As I noted, you obviously haven't done research on that here. I won't post more other than to say your supposition of what actually happens is wrong.

Your response on this was to my note on how I handle this, disputing it. But I've been doing it for over fourteen years and the evidence is right there for you to see if you do the research. It isn't often fully discussed because this is one of the those cases of stated policy and enforcement of that being only for public stance. And, for that reason, it's not advantages to discuss it in detail--for any of the parties involved.

 

[oggbashan]

Stated policies, and even attempted practice, don't match reality. As I noted, you obviously haven't done research on that here. I won't post more other than to say your supposition of what actually happens is wrong.

Your response on this was to my note on how I handle this, disputing it. But I've been doing it for over fourteen years and the evidence is right there for you to see if you do the research. It isn't often fully discussed because this is one of the those cases of stated policy and enforcement of that being only for public stance. And, for that reason, it's not advantages to discuss it in detail--for any of the parties involved.

I wasn't disputing what you said. I was drawing on accounts previously posted on Literotica of people who have complained that their stories had been stolen and posted on for-profit sites, who have been able to get the stolen stories removed because they are available for free here.

If you can post here and get money for the stories elsewhere - best wishes to you. But it is a way, that has worked, of objecting to stories being stolen from Literotica.