Plagiarism

[BradBigBrain]

There's a site out there that has taken all of my stories and is using them... I've sent them a cease and desist email.

Here's a link to the website....if you want to search for your stories. No good search function on the site, you'll have to go to the story category, then locate the story by page...and the pages are in reverse order ... from Z to A.

 

[oshaw]

It appears they've stolen a large portion of Literotica's LW library from various titles I recognize. I suspect that will hold true for each Literotica's genre.

 

[sr71plt]

Yep, they've apparently stolen and republished the entire Lit. collection.

 

[RejectReality]

Standard page 1 only scrape with no editing that's common with these sites. They at least took the time to make sure the formatting wasn't atrocious.

If you write stories longer than one Lit page and include a notice at the opening mentioning Literotica and your pen name, these lame sites can actually drive a little traffic to your Lit account. People get wrapped up in the story, find out only the first page is there, and then track you down from the information.

Example:

http://www.amateurpornose.com/erotic-story.php?id=heart-the-wood

This is my entry in the Literotica.Com 2011 Earth Day Contest © Copyright Les Lumens 2011

Very few of these sites bother to copy more than page 1 or edit them at all. Trying to track them all down and send them cease and desist is an endless game of whack-a-mole. Better to provide a way for people to find your stories in their original location and let the scumbags unwittingly drive traffic to Lit and yourself.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm not sure what editing has to do with anything. Literotica doesn't edit the stories either.

This is the second site I've been pointed to in a week that apparently has taken and republished the entire Literotica file. At some point folks are going to recognize that this is a fact of life on the open Internet.

 

[LesLumens]

"Editing" as in removing text that points back to the original location and/or identifies the author. Most of these sites just scrape and upload blind.

 

[sr71plt]

It's really disconcerting when you post under more than one name on a thread--especially to occasional readers who don't know that you post to the forum under multiple names.

And editing means far more than that narrow definition. For clarity, you should be clear what you mean. Also, under the definition you now give editing, your meaning is the opposite of what you posted. If the pirate sites are only using the first page of a multiple-page story, they aren't doing "no editing," they are editing it (under your definition).

The bottom line is that if you post content to the open Internet, it can, and likely will, be copied and reposted completely outside your ability to control it--and not just once. Even if you manage to get it taken down in one place, copies of it will continue to multiple across the Internet. And although the Literotica FAQs say Literotica has the right to have them taken down, in the next paragraph of the FAQs it says it doesn't have the obligation to do so--and in real life its practice and ability to do so matches that of the individual author. It's not going to happen across the Internet.

It was your choice to post it to the open Internet. If you can't live with it being stolen and reposted--even for profit--your choice is just not to post it to the open Internet to begin with.

 

[LesLumens]

I'm sure most people understood exactly what I was talking about through the context of the post.

 

[Hypoxia]

It appears they've stolen a large portion of Literotica's LW library from various titles I recognize. I suspect that will hold true for each Literotica's genre.

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a poodle, but anyone can take your stuff and flaunt it.

Security? Ha. Consider privacy. Your smartphone is a surveillance device upon which you run apps, play games, and occasionally make phone calls (which are recorded). Traffic cameras ID your face and vehicle. Almost anything you do out-of-doors (and much indoors) can be seen from somewhere. And every keystroke you commit can be tracked.

Yes, we live within ubiquitous surveillance. And LIT authors worry about their immaculate words being taken and sullied? Hey, this should be the LEAST of your worries. Fret instead about engines building comprehensive profiles of your history and proclivities. Be glad only your stories are stolen, not your soul.

 

[sr71plt]

Reminds me of the ads that pop up on my Facebook page after I've bought something on line. Or those years after I left government and was editing books for mainstream publishers--much of it on Middle East terrorism, since that's what I was dealing with my last years with the government. I'd have a book on Middle East terrorism to edit and to fact check on my computer and I'd get this friendly call from a former colleague saying, "I just called to see how you were doing," and I'd have to say, "It's fine, X; I'm just editing and factchecking a book by Y on Z for Brassies or the Brookings Institute or Praegers or such, and he'd be, "OK, just checking on how you're doing." I always wondered how soon my doorbell would ring if I had answered, "I'm just sitting here making a pipe bomb, X."

 

[Boxlicker101]

It appears they've stolen a large portion of Literotica's LW library from various titles I recognize. I suspect that will hold true for each Literotica's genre.

They stole quite a few of mine from a variety of genres. I haven't tried to track down all of them yet, because there are too many for me to do that. But they only take the first page.

 

[oggbashan]

They stole quite a few of mine from a variety of genres. I haven't tried to track down all of them yet, because there are too many for me to do that. But they only take the first page.

They do it to fill the site and make it look genuine. Their real objective? Finding ways to get bots on your computer and/or money out of your bank.

 

[Boxlicker101]

They do it to fill the site and make it look genuine. Their real objective? Finding ways to get bots on your computer and/or money out of your bank.

Well, I'm certainly not going to buy anything from them, because I have free access to everything they offer anyhow.

 

[OmnislashXX]

They probably steal from Literotica because they know they can get away with it. Perhaps if Lit took some steps to protect itself and the authors who post here...

 

[BradBigBrain]

They probably steal from Literotica because they know they can get away with it. Perhaps if Lit took some steps to protect itself and the authors who post here...

I sent a note off to Laurel and she and Manu are working the issue.

 

[oggbashan]

They probably steal from Literotica because they know they can get away with it. Perhaps if Lit took some steps to protect itself and the authors who post here...

They steal from anywhere, even Project Gutenberg.

 

[sr71plt]

They steal from anywhere, even Project Gutenberg.

Which wouldn't be stealing. The Project Gutenberg material is in the public domain and free to grab and reuse. There are people making money off of slapping a cover on it and distributing it in the marketplace.

Looking forward to the report on what Literotica did on this and to what result.

 

[rjordan]

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a poodle, but anyone can take your stuff and flaunt it.

Security? Ha. Consider privacy. Your smartphone is a surveillance device upon which you run apps, play games, and occasionally make phone calls (which are recorded). Traffic cameras ID your face and vehicle. Almost anything you do out-of-doors (and much indoors) can be seen from somewhere. And every keystroke you commit can be tracked.

Yes, we live within ubiquitous surveillance. And LIT authors worry about their immaculate words being taken and sullied? Hey, this should be the LEAST of your worries. Fret instead about engines building comprehensive profiles of your history and proclivities. Be glad only your stories are stolen, not your soul.

I recently signed up with the medical lab I deal with to receive copies of my lab results. They had to verify my identity. They did it with a series of multiple choice questions. For example, which of the following addresses have you lived at? then listed several. One I had lived at for a year 39 years ago. Another asked which of the following organizations have you been involved with? One was a BBS (bulletin board system, precursor to web sites for the kids on here) I had 30 years ago, and as far as I know never used the name for a business license, phone connection or anything else!

rj

 

[CeasarBoobage]

I recently signed up with the medical lab I deal with to receive copies of my lab results. They had to verify my identity. They did it with a series of multiple choice questions. For example, which of the following addresses have you lived at? then listed several. One I had lived at for a year 39 years ago. Another asked which of the following organizations have you been involved with? One was a BBS (bulletin board system, precursor to web sites for the kids on here) I had 30 years ago, and as far as I know never used the name for a business license, phone connection or anything else!

rj

Even as far back as about 3-4 years ago, I had something similar when applying for a credit card. Within about a minute, they had a webpage for me to choose which of the historical stuff about me was true. Multiple choice things, one of which was the right answer, and by getting 100% I could prove I was me.

It creeped me the hell out! Addresses and phone numbers from ages ago, people I knew, jobs I'd had, etc. it was partially what some random card company had access to, but how fast it popped up. And that's just one company. Now imagine how tech has improved over the years, and how much more "they" know.

Makes me want to be a hermit living in the woods. But then I'd lose Lit, so meh.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Even as far back as about 3-4 years ago, I had something similar when applying for a credit card. Within about a minute, they had a webpage for me to choose which of the historical stuff about me was true. Multiple choice things, one of which was the right answer, and by getting 100% I could prove I was me.

It creeped me the hell out! Addresses and phone numbers from ages ago, people I knew, jobs I'd had, etc. it was partially what some random card company had access to, but how fast it popped up.

I wonder if that's solely about verifying who you are, or if it's also about getting some more info out of you. If I had info about John Smith #1 and John Smith #2 but I wasn't sure which one was you, that sort of question might be a way to find out.

 

[Green_Knight]

...Security? Ha. Consider privacy. Your smartphone is a surveillance device upon which you run apps, play games, and occasionally make phone calls (which are recorded). Traffic cameras ID your face and vehicle. Almost anything you do out-of-doors (and much indoors) can be seen from somewhere. And every keystroke you commit can be tracked...

Veering OT, but this is very much the theme of the UK 'reality' TV show Hunted, in which a bunch of people go on the run and a team of hunters have to track them down.

The problem is that it's total 'unreality'. People are spotted on CCTV and within minutes the hunters are on the scene and chasing after them. The reality is shown by a case a year ago in which a man's body was found on the moors north of Manchester, with no identification on him whatsoever - just three used train tickets. Assuming that he probably passed through Manchester's Piccadilly railway station, detectives began searching CCTV records. It took them three days to trace him on CCTV and another year to find out who he was.

So much for the instant ability to track people down.

The reality is that there is so much data out there that its use is limited. Fine if a jeweller's shop is burgled; the CCTV camera across the road may show what happened. For tracking someone's movements, though, it's such hard work that you've got to have done something pretty serious to justify the effort involved. And for someone who is determined not to be tracked, surveillance is easy to avoid.

 

[ChloeTzang]

They probably steal from Literotica because they know they can get away with it. Perhaps if Lit took some steps to protect itself and the authors who post here...

Wattpad has millions of dollars and a big team and their policy is very much that its up to the author.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

The reality is that there is so much data out there that its use is limited. Fine if a jeweller's shop is burgled; the CCTV camera across the road may show what happened. For tracking someone's movements, though, it's such hard work that you've got to have done something pretty serious to justify the effort involved. And for someone who is determined not to be tracked, surveillance is easy to avoid.

The "so much data" problem, aka Needle in a Haystack, is being solved bit by bit. Face and body recognition is becoming something computers can do. This proof of concept was working 3 years ago: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-camera-say-tracked-Boston-bombers-hours.html . I can guarantee that it's been improved upon. It's just not expensive to blanket a city with cameras and it's no longer data intensive to keep streams from all of them for days.

When quantum computing becomes more viable, it will be something governments have and you don't and it will make find-the-needle problems this like almost shockingly trivial - but the fact is it's achievable now.

On the other hand, Hypoxia going on about how your phone is a surveillance device - if you're a US citizen in the US, they still need a reason to watch you. How much longer that will be true is anyone's guess, but it's true now. If you're worried, use encryption for everything you do online. It works. (When quantum gets more viable, some encrypted data will be crackable, so try not to have secrets that still matter in ten years.) Phones are actually a much more effective surveillance device for the people than for governments or corporate masters. You have a right to record police activity and anything else happening in public, and abuses of power and authority have been caught and corrected that way.

As for plagiarism... same deal. Lit could be running frequent Google searches containing phrases from all our stories. When Google turns up anything similar, the same script could do a more extensive check to see if it's more than just a brief quote. The same script could prepare cease and desist letters; all that's left for a human to do is verify and send. Add a whitelist for stories that turn out to be deliberately shared to other sites by their authors, and my guess is you could be 99% effective at finding the ripoff sites pretty fast. It would take a fat internet pipe and a computer or three dedicated to the job, but my guess is Lit has both. And it's in their interest to be the only supplier for what they supply, so they should.

As for someone marveling at how fast companies can pull together financial information on you... you don't understand how that works. They aren't scraping thousands of databases looking for traces of you. All your credit dealings and any other significant activities have been gathered a long time ago, and there's a nice simple database column on each of us already prepared. Pulling it up takes milliseconds.

It's not even a big deal. The US population is coming up on 325 million. Let's say a file of information on your lifelong financial dealings is a whopping half megabyte of data (and it's probably much less). Storing it all? Call it 200 terabytes to give yourself some extra space for the future. That's 25 disk drives at <$300 each. Add enough computer to index it all... total investment, less than $10,000 and it would fit in a small kitchen cabinet.. There are people here who could buy that out of pocket, and for a business it's trivial. Storage and computes are CHEAP. Your entire lifetime of text chat, transactions, emails, stories, photo collection, even compressed phone calls... would easily fit on this laptop I'm using.

 

[OmnislashXX]

Probably the best way to Copyright your work is to actually put a copyright line somewhere randomly in your story. So if the person just randomly copies it, readers will know it was stolen when they come across the line.

 

[Hypoxia]

Probably the best way to Copyright your work is to actually put a copyright line somewhere randomly in your story. So if the person just randomly copies it, readers will know it was stolen when they come across the line.

As mentioned above, in USA the only way to (C) a work is to register with the copyright office. And whether in USA or elsewhere, legal action (at your expense) is needed to enforce your (C). Anyway, a notice buried in the text will be useless re: sites that merely scrape your first page.

If you *insist* on buried notices, try this: Write a single-file story containing numerous short chapters delimited by a row of asterisks and a blotch of text saying "OMNISLASHXX's PIG IN A POKE Ch.02 - MUD IN YOUR EYE". Name yourself in Author's Notes at the beginning and end, and mention LIT in the final note. This does fuck-all for copyright but *will* remind readers of the source.