How would you handle being plagiarized?

[KillerMuffin]

You can hit the Storyfeedback Board re: a story that was recently plagiarized. By the way, Laurel, you handled that remarkably well. I would have just deleted the thing rather than tracking down the actual author like you did.

Being an erotic story site, I imagine this sort of thing happens occasionally, more often than any of us would like. It's nothing to copy a story, paste it into a word processor, then submit it to some other site under your own name. It could probably be done in about 5 minutes for single paged stories.

Because these are sex stories, I imagine several people out there think that they aren't proprietary, particularly since they are posted under a psuedonym. They would think nothing of stealing someone else's story and doing with it what they will. After all what would KillerMuffin do? Just have the story deleted from another site? Is there an immunity from prosecution? Or just the appearance of one?

Personally, it would depend on the story. Some of mine I couldn't care less about. Some of them I'm fiercely protective of. Alot of hard work and effort goes into these stories, as anyone whose tried to write can attest. I would have a major cow if someone plagiarized me and rant and rave for at least a month to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. I have one story now that is extremely lengthy and has a lot of blood, sweat and tears in it. Mostly cause it's frustrating me. It isn't ready for submission, but someday I will submit it here. If someone stole it and made it their own, I would do my best, even to the extent of revealing my personal identity to have them prosecuted. Of course, if they stole something like Stalking Tango, I'd probably just bitch to webmasters until they blocked my email.

 

[CelestialBody]

 

[call me master]

Stealing a story

I can think of nothing lower than taking credit for someone elses work. Whether it's a story or just telling the boss you did something when someone else did it. Not sure that anything that is done and published in here is proteted under copywrite laws. If a story is that important to you then before you submit it here send a copy to the Library of Congress(I think) and get an ISBN number for it. A friend of mine is writing a series of adventure novels and has submitted all of them and gotten an ISBN number. At least that is what he told me he does before he submits them to publishers to protect himself. Hope I have been helpful muff. love ya!

 

[bulld]

Re: Stealing a story

I can think of nothing lower than taking credit for someone elses work. Whether it's a story or just telling the boss you did something when someone else did it. Not sure that anything that is done and published in here is proteted under copywrite laws. If a story is that important to you then before you submit it here send a copy to the Library of Congress(I think) and get an ISBN number for it. A friend of mine is writing a series of adventure novels and has submitted all of them and gotten an ISBN number. At least that is what he told me he does before he submits them to publishers to protect himself. Hope I have been helpful muff. love ya!

Of course the above only provides you with legal redress and some slight protection. The honest writer will not plagerize you but the dishonest.... well all bets are off. Bye the way the log out button magically apeared today so I'm back and I'm bad. Love ya muff.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Love ya too my delightfully sexy twit.

You can get an ISBN number for online material? I did not know.

 

[Ezzy]

LOL, oooooooh help me LOL...

You can hit the Storyfeedback Board re: a story that was recently plagiarized. By the way, Laurel, you handled that remarkably well. I would have just deleted the thing rather than tracking down the actual author like you did.

Being an erotic story site, I imagine this sort of thing happens occasionally, more often than any of us would like. It's nothing to copy a story, paste it into a word processor, then submit it to some other site under your own name. It could probably be done in about 5 minutes for single paged stories.

Because these are sex stories, I imagine several people out there think that they aren't proprietary, particularly since they are posted under a psuedonym. They would think nothing of stealing someone else's story and doing with it what they will. After all what would KillerMuffin do? Just have the story deleted from another site? Is there an immunity from prosecution? Or just the appearance of one?

Personally, it would depend on the story. Some of mine I couldn't care less about. Some of them I'm fiercely protective of. Alot of hard work and effort goes into these stories, as anyone whose tried to write can attest. I would have a major cow if someone plagiarized me and rant and rave for at least a month to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. I have one story now that is extremely lengthy and has a lot of blood, sweat and tears in it. Mostly cause it's frustrating me. It isn't ready for submission, but someday I will submit it here. If someone stole it and made it their own, I would do my best, even to the extent of revealing my personal identity to have them prosecuted. Of course, if they stole something like Stalking Tango, I'd probably just bitch to webmasters until they blocked my email.



EZ http://cgi.tripod.com/smilecwm/cgi-bin/s/cwm2/sleep.gif

 

[KillerMuffin]

That's it. Assume the position! Drop trou and grab those ankles! Corporal Punishment is about to do her thang!

 

[Bobtoad777]

Dropping pants for punishment

You can hit the Storyfeedback Board re: a story that was recently plagiarized. By the way, Laurel, you handled that remarkably well. I would have just deleted the thing rather than tracking down the actual author like you did.

Being an erotic story site, I imagine this sort of thing happens occasionally, more often than any of us would like. It's nothing to copy a story, paste it into a word processor, then submit it to some other site under your own name. It could probably be done in about 5 minutes for single paged stories.

Because these are sex stories, I imagine several people out there think that they aren't proprietary, particularly since they are posted under a psuedonym. They would think nothing of stealing someone else's story and doing with it what they will. After all what would KillerMuffin do? Just have the story deleted from another site? Is there an immunity from prosecution? Or just the appearance of one?

Personally, it would depend on the story. Some of mine I couldn't care less about. Some of them I'm fiercely protective of. Alot of hard work and effort goes into these stories, as anyone whose tried to write can attest. I would have a major cow if someone plagiarized me and rant and rave for at least a month to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. I have one story now that is extremely lengthy and has a lot of blood, sweat and tears in it. Mostly cause it's frustrating me. It isn't ready for submission, but someday I will submit it here. If someone stole it and made it their own, I would do my best, even to the extent of revealing my personal identity to have them prosecuted. Of course, if they stole something like Stalking Tango, I'd probably just bitch to webmasters until they blocked my email.

 

[Corporal Punishment]

This here is an Equal Opportunity Spanking!!! I will not discriminate based upon race, creed, or color. Don't ask don't tell.

Assume the position boys, I'm warmed up and ready to smack!

If I get in enough smacks I'll get promoted to Sergeant.

 

[Never]

I'm trying to hard to create something worth plagiarizing to worry about that yet..

But if I ever manage to I'll dig this thread up (if the Lit. is still around in a decade or so) and tell you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[bulld]

ISBN number

Love ya too my delightfully sexy twit.

You can get an ISBN number for online material? I did not know.

I would treat it like your going to get your story published as a book. Send it in to the Library of Congress get your ISBN number and then publish it any where you want. Don't see how where you get it published will make a difference and if the story is half as good as what you've written before maybe yu should see about getting it published as a book. (And I'm not just sucking up i truly mean that your stories are good!) At any rate your story would still be protected then and you could prosecute those who steal from you.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Re: ISBN number

Love ya too my delightfully sexy twit.

You can get an ISBN number for online material? I did not know.

I would treat it like your going to get your story published as a book. Send it in to the Library of Congress get your ISBN number and then publish it any where you want. Don't see how where you get it published will make a difference and if the story is half as good as what you've written before maybe yu should see about getting it published as a book. (And I'm not just sucking up i truly mean that your stories are good!) At any rate your story would still be protected then and you could prosecute those who steal from you.

You aren't supposed to be sucking up! You're supposed to be sucking my toes!

Thank you darlin, love ya too! By the way, what name does your wife chat/post under?

 

[bulld]

Re: Re: ISBN number

You aren't supposed to be sucking up! You're supposed to be sucking my toes!

Thank you darlin, love ya too! By the way, what name does your wife chat/post under? [/B]

As of now she ain't sure what name she'll use. Could be berriesandcream could be lady macbeth. And I aint suckin up the truth is the truth. Ask anybody who has read your stories, they're good. They make mine look like a dime novel. Actually I would pay all of a quarter to read your stories. I really do love ya! got the scars to prove it!

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Stealing a story

Not sure that anything that is done and published in here is proteted under copywrite laws. If a story is that important to you then before you submit it here send a copy to the Library of Congress(I think) and get an ISBN number for it.

All that is required to prosecute copyright infringement, is to be able to prove you wrote the story. It is not even necessary to state that the story is copyrighted.

The simplest means of proving authorship, is to mail yourself a certified letter containing a copy of your work, The store it unopened. That provides a positive date of authorship for any legal claim.

Any story posted here is protected by the database recording the date of posting, and Laurel's records of who submitted the story. That does not stop you from posting it elsewhere, because you only grant a limited copyright to Laurel to post the story here, and retain the full copyright for yourself.

Unless you explicitly release anything you write into the public domain, or assign the copyright to another, (such as anything your write under contract is assumed to be assigned to your employer or publisher,) then you don't need to do anything to have a copyright except be able to prove you wrote it first.

Please, any lawyers who see a flaw or error correct me. I'm just expressing the situation as I understand it.

If I found a story of mine somewhere I hadn't authorized it to be posted, or under someone else's name, I would contact the publisher (webmaster), and ask for it to be removed. If it were in a book, I would ask for compensation, and take it to court if I could find an attorney who would take it on a contingency basis.

Even if it were a story I didn't particularly care about, I would do my best to have my copyright acknowledged and the situation corrected. If it were a case where a profit was being made from my work, then I would do my very best to make it unprofitable to disuade them from plagiarizing (or supporting a plagiarist,) in future.

 

[Closet Desire]

Grrrrrrr....

Stealing another's creative work...that's one of the most reprehensible acts around. I just learned that a friend of mine who does erotic sketches and paintings ( http://www.leaning.co.uk ) found one of his pen and ink sketches on the cover of a mobile phone! They lifted it from his web site and "poof" it's on a mobile phone.

Seriously folks...what WH has just said is a standard practice (well, should be, I'm too lazy). Send the first recognisable version of the story to yourself by recorded delivery and don't open it.

It isn't necessary to register your work with the copyright office because you are automatically protected the moment you write it BUT, unless it has changed recently, the work must be officially recorded before you can file civil action on the basis of infringement. The certified letter is your "proof" and the copyright is your grounds.

I'm a bit confused about the ISBN number. None of my copyright certificates have ISBN numbers associated with them. The publisher has always obtained those for me separate and apart from the copyright.

It costs $30 or $35 to register a copyright and you can fill in the form online, then print it and send it in. I don't have the web site handy, but it will come up quick on a search.

As for who steals creative work. It's often the publisher that writers fear the most, but I've never had any problem with publishers nor have I ever heard of a publisher stealing an author's work. I'm sure it happens, but I think it's in the struck by lightning sort of odds. It's other wanna-be writers who steal work. Even that isn't much of a threat because unless they can produce enough work this way to publish a book the worst that is likely to happen is that it gets sent to a porno mag to be published.

There are very few publishers who will publish erotica in the first place and then only from recognizable authors and most of the editors I've worked with can quickly identify the fact that stories have come from different authors. Red flags pop up and the work gets rejected when some fundamental questions can't be answered.

The academic world is the dog-eat-dog of stolen work. Nothing has infuriated me more than seeing my work, my research, published on the web or in a book by some jerk who didn't even give me credit. It takes ages to work through disciplinary channels (no point going to court...scholars are broke and the work has no commercial value) and remedies are almost non-existent.

I've had two experiences with commercial infringement and both were bad. Gannett newspapers published a colour photo of mine on the cover of several papers even though the original was clearly marked with a copyright notice. How do you fight a corporation that has deep pockets to drag you through the system for years? The other was a science magazine that managed to delay things until they went bankrupt. No joy in either case.

This is all near and dear to my heart since we publish erotic stories written by others. There has never been a shortage of writers wanting to have their first works published and there is no shortage of really good quality work. I WANT to know who wrote the story and give them full credit because I want the reader to know how much variety is contained in the book we are presenting them with. It makes it more interesting.

Whew...that's off my chest...I feel much better!

Killer...just tell me who you want wasted!

 

[Puddles The Wonder Poodle]

Here's what I would do

http://home.wanadoo.nl/astrila/a/udo2w.gif

 

[Merelan]

Wow.. Closet Desire. Your friend is incredible.
And I agree with Puddles.

 

[Closet Desire]

Cool!

Thanks! I'll pass that on to Ray. We love his work...have it all over the house. I buy everything he puts out and ran out of room long ago! There's a photo of him and his wife (you'll recognise her as one of his models) on his website and on our website as well from the London Erotica exhibit.

The wunda' poodle has it right!

 

[call me master]

Re: Grrrrrrr....

I'm a bit confused about the ISBN number. None of my copyright certificates have ISBN numbers associated with them. The publisher has always obtained those for me separate and apart from the copyright. [/B]

I may have misspoke. As I understand it an ISBN number is an identification number used by the Library of Congress here in the US to identify written works presented to the library. It is not a copyright as such. By sending your story to them and receiving a number you are simply filing proof with them that you wrote the story. It is simply another way of determining that the story is yours. It also provides a date and time verified by the US government as to when you sent them the story. It's a lot like the mail a registered letter to yourself idea except you don't have to keep track of the envelope that you sent yourself and the US government has a copy of your manuscript on file if you ever need it. Most books published in the US have an ISBN number on the flyleaf.

 

[Deborah]

No author of stories on this site is likely to do much about plagarism other than protest. Not many authors are going to spend $$$$ on legal action unless he/she is making $$$$ from the work that was plagarized.

I see that the stories in question are posted now under the real author. He seems to be handling the situation quite well. Must be a cool dude. BTW, the person who plays the Minx is still posting messages to this board. Go figure. I wonder what other stories the Minx has scarfed up for her own (under yet another pseudonym no doubt).

 

[Latina]

I think you guys are confusing ISBN (International Standard Book Number) with copyright.

Library of Congress issues U.S. copyrights. You file two copies of your story, one is filed with the copyright papers, the other is kept in the Library of Congress like any library book in your local public library. This gives you a legal copyright in the U.S., but does nothing to protect your story from plagiarism outside the U.S. Not sure how that works with the Internet, if the plagiarist was outside the U.S. but others IN the US could get to the web site, would you have legal protection? Any lawyers here who would know?

Various agencies around the world issue International
Standard Book Numbers (ISBN). In the U.S. these are isued by R.R. Bowker Company of New York City. All that an ISBN does is uniquely identify your story from millions of others, for ordering purposes (any bookstore anywhere in the world can enter the ISBN in their computer, and it will show the title and author, publishing date, etc.). An ISBN offers NO legal copyright protection. The date of an ISBN might establish that you created the story before the plagiarist posted it, but I'm not sure how much legal weight it carries in court if there is no copyright.

You should probably get both. The ISBN to uniquely identify YOUR story, and the copyright for legal protection.

-- Latina

 

[Skibum]

I was accused of plagerism when I wrote a story that had a similar theme to one written by Larry Niven. That has made me very aware of hw easy it would be to plagerize someone. I had my story pulled from the site for a almost a month while I verified that my story was indeed different from Mr. Nivein's. It was a very uncomfortable experience for me, but the fallout from the incident has changed my life for the better!

 

[CreamyLady]

I don't know about plagiarized, exactly, but I had one of my stories imitated almost to that point.

I wrote Laurel about it, and decided that it was the sincerest form of flattery and let it go.

Anyway, there are some stories I wouldn't care, and others for which I'd rip out a throat. Only I know which stories merit the death penalty; it would better if no one tried.

 

[Closet Desire]

Thanks Latina...

I immediately recognised the name Bowker as the issuer of ISBN numbers for my books in the US. I think they also maintain the database of all books in print for bookstores etc...am I correct? Anyway, as far as I know everybody uses ISBN numbers. My books here in the UK have ISBN numbers in the same format as the ones in the US although I couldn't say where they came from. I do know that if you enter the ISBN for a Brit book into Amazon.com it comes up with the right book. Again, my publisher always seems to have that well in hand!

I file copyright in any country I plan to distribute in although many countries have agreements to honour copyrights. In the end I'm not sure it matters unless you are a Stephen King. It's an insult to have your work stolen, a violation, and intrusion, but it isn't likely to net anybody financial gain. Heaven knows most published authors still haven't given up their day jobs!

Good thread...useful information. My only advice...don't waste time with copyright filings and ISBN's unless you're going to publish and then let the publisher do it for you (save yourself the fees). Spend your time writing good stuff instead! The thieves are already out there and there isn't much you can do to stop them.

If you want to know more about copyrights you can access the Copyright Office Website at http://www.loc.gov and if you want to file a copyright you want to download form TX (for a nondramatic literary work) Cost is $30 to file.

[Edited by Closet Desire on 12-05-2000 at 12:22 PM]

 

[Laurel]

BTW, the person who plays the Minx is still posting messages to this board. Go figure. I wonder what other stories the Minx has scarfed up for her own (under yet another pseudonym no doubt).

No, no! It's a different Minx entirely...The alleged plagiarist is HotLittleMinx, whereas the BB Minx is minx@literotica.org. The first submitted the stories and has a profile on the site, whereas the second is a bulletin board member. Different email addresses. Just wanna clear that up!