Plagiarism

[sr71plt]

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.

Finding it isn't the problem. If the one who stole it has an understanding of how copyright protection works in the United States (it's barely breathing), they'll just ignore you with impunity no matter what you send them.

 

[sr71plt]

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.

Best way to protect it, do you mean? You haven't copyrighted it that way. In fact, in the States now, since we signed the Berne Convention, if you put a copyright symbol on your story and you haven't officially copyrighted it, you are breaking copyright law yourself--false use of a U.S. government symbol. (Not that you'll be prosecuted--you'll just be playing a game of bluff illegally.)

 

[sr71plt]

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.

As a practical means to at least get the author/Literotica credit for a story in many places where it's stolen and republished, Literotica (or the authors could try it) could change the story submission requirements so that a byline source slug would be included at the start of the story text, e.g. "[Literotica, by XXX]." This wouldn't be intrusive if it was the regular format and it would go a long way to obtain originator credit. The story has been given away free for posting to the Internet already, so the author has already dropped it out of copyright case interest in the courts. If this is done, most republishing bots will just sweep it up and include it in what they publish.

 

[OmnislashXX]

You guys are the experienced aithors so I stand corrected. Still, would be nice if we had easier ways to protect ourselves.

 

[oggbashan]

As a practical means to at least get the author/Literotica credit for a story in many places where it's stolen and republished, Literotica (or the authors could try it) could change the story submission requirements so that a byline source slug would be included at the start of the story text, e.g. "[Literotica, by XXX]." This wouldn't be intrusive if it was the regular format and it would go a long way to obtain originator credit. The story has been given away free for posting to the Internet already, so the author has already dropped it out of copyright case interest in the courts. If this is done, most republishing bots will just sweep it up and include it in what they publish.

On most of my stories I start with my credit:

Copyright Oggbashan February 2017

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

As I am UK based my assertion of copyright is valid in UK Law AND under the Berne Convention.

But if I do a simple google search for "copyright oggbashan" many of the stolen stories are shown.

 

[Handley_Page]

Best way to protect it, do you mean? You haven't copyrighted it that way. In fact, in the States now, since we signed the Berne Convention, if you put a copyright symbol on your story and you haven't officially copyrighted it, you are breaking copyright law yourself--false use of a U.S. government symbol. (Not that you'll be prosecuted--you'll just be playing a game of bluff illegally.)

I got the impression that "copyright" meant Apple suing Samsung for billions when the phone case had the wrong 'bend'.

 

[rjordan]

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.

I don't think anyone was "marveling" at how fast it was done. Of course, there are databases already existing with this information. The lab who was identity checking me didn't do it themselves. It was redirected to a service that does this instantly from existing databases.

I was marveling at how old and largely insignificant the information was in my case. A temporary residence nearly half a century ago and a tiny specialized BBS with four private telephone lines that was never advertised catering to local motorcycle racing. Maybe one of my rival competitors ratted me out.

rj

 

[rjordan]

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.

Why would a reader care where it came from or that it was stolen. What they might like is a link here for the rest of the story.

Maybe a randomly placed Literotica.com near the end of page 1 of each story as a sort of watermark.

rj

 

[rjordan]

Finding it isn't the problem. If the one who stole it has an understanding of how copyright protection works in the United States (it's barely breathing), they'll just ignore you with impunity no matter what you send them.

There was a small automotive/motorcycle publisher in Los Angeles who started in the 1950s by reprinting entire service manuals with their own name on the cover and absolutely no mention of the origin. They are still around, though I believe all their stuff is now original, but they were still stealing the stuff with impunity into the 80s.

When they published the VW Beetle manual in the early 60s, they used the well-known overlapping VW logo on the first page. For the first time, VW sued them. To VW's embarrassment, they had never trademarked or registered the logo anywhere in the world. The small publisher, being the first to use it, claimed they now owned it. VW quickly settled out of court for a significant amount for a tiny LA publisher.

Copyright doesn't mean shit if you don't enforce it. If you let one case slide, you essentially lose the right to defend the copyright. That's what happened to the car companies. They didn't see publishing manuals as their business, so didn't enforce the copyright. Once one publisher stole it, all their competitors did the same and none of the copyrights involved could be enforced.

A single writer of Lit Smut isn't going to be able to enforce anything against porn websites.

rj

 

[Bramblethorn]

I got the impression that "copyright" meant Apple suing Samsung for billions when the phone case had the wrong 'bend'.

That was about patents and trademarks, rather than copyrights:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electronics_Co.

 

[sr71plt]

Copyright doesn't mean shit if you don't enforce it. If you let one case slide, you essentially lose the right to defend the copyright.

Sounds nice, but it's totally irrelevant to Literotica erotica. There's no worth to anything here--that was established by posting it here. There's no copyright case to be had. Nothing to enforce, no money to be gained. And no one here is formally registering their copyrights. Let's get real on that.

 

[rjordan]

Sounds nice, but it's totally irrelevant to Literotica erotica. There's no worth to anything here--that was established by posting it here. There's no copyright case to be had. Nothing to enforce, no money to be gained. And no one here is formally registering their copyrights. Let's get real on that.

I guess you thought the last line of my post would carry more force if it came from you:

"A single writer of Lit Smut isn't going to be able to enforce anything against porn websites."

Can't thank you enough.

rj

 

[Handley_Page]

Those interested might find this one of interest, one way or another; especially for images:
http://jaclev.com/common-myths-about-image-copyrights/

 

[Bramblethorn]

Copyright doesn't mean shit if you don't enforce it. If you let one case slide, you essentially lose the right to defend the copyright.

This is a myth. Trademarks do work that way; copyright doesn't. Once you have a copyright, it's yours until the term expires or you sign it over to somebody else.

https://sites.lib.byu.edu/copyright/about-copyright/basics/
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

 

[rjordan]

This is a myth. Trademarks do work that way; copyright doesn't. Once you have a copyright, it's yours until the term expires or you sign it over to somebody else.

https://sites.lib.byu.edu/copyright/about-copyright/basics/
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

Try defending a copyright infringement against someone when you have ignored others who have infringed. You don't legally lose your copyright, but you won't be able to defend it.

American Honda decided at one point that they were going to sell service manuals for profit in their dealerships. They had been ignoring the outright theft from at least 3 publishers around the world for years. Their lawyers sent out all their intimidation letters and at least one of the publishers contested it in court. American Honda lost.

They abandoned the existing manuals which continued to be pilfered here and there, then came out with select new ones which they vigorously defended. That was the beginning of those publishers generating their own original material instead of stealing it. What a concept.

Sometimes mythbusters promote new myths. Sometimes myths have a basis in reality.

rj

 

[sr71plt]

Try defending a copyright infringement against someone when you have ignored others who have infringed. You don't legally lose your copyright, but you won't be able to defend it.

As Bram suggested, I think the courts take each case one by one. There's no provision for copyright mitigation by not exercising it every time it occurs. I don't believe your example worked the way described. It's irrelevant to anything related to posting a story to Literotica anyway, so it's only use here is to confuse forum users.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Try defending a copyright infringement against someone when you have ignored others who have infringed. You don't legally lose your copyright, but you won't be able to defend it.

American Honda decided at one point that they were going to sell service manuals for profit in their dealerships. They had been ignoring the outright theft from at least 3 publishers around the world for years. Their lawyers sent out all their intimidation letters and at least one of the publishers contested it in court. American Honda lost.

They abandoned the existing manuals which continued to be pilfered here and there, then came out with select new ones which they vigorously defended. That was the beginning of those publishers generating their own original material instead of stealing it. What a concept.

Sometimes mythbusters promote new myths. Sometimes myths have a basis in reality.

rj

Do you have a cite for that case? I searched but couldn't find anything about such a case, so I suspect the story's been garbled somewhere along the way.

Meanwhile, here's another link to people in the copyright industry saying that no, you don't lose copyright by not defending it: http://copyrightmanagementservicesltd.com/the-7-most-notorious-copyright-myths-explained/

If this "defend it or lose copyright" was really a thing, surely it ought to be pretty easy to find a source to back it up.

 

[SimonDoom]

Best way to protect it, do you mean? You haven't copyrighted it that way. In fact, in the States now, since we signed the Berne Convention, if you put a copyright symbol on your story and you haven't officially copyrighted it, you are breaking copyright law yourself--false use of a U.S. government symbol. (Not that you'll be prosecuted--you'll just be playing a game of bluff illegally.)

This isn't correct. Under U.S. law, you own the copyright from the moment the work is "fixed in any tangible medium of expression" (Copyright act section 102)-- on paper, on canvas, or on a hard drive. You are fully entitled to use the copyright symbol on your work from that point forward, regardless whether you have registered the work. Ownership and registration are two different things. Registration is a formality, and it's necessary to go to court, but it's not the same thing as ownership, and it's not a prerequisite for use of the copyright symbol.

Here's a copyright office circular on the use of the copyright notice that makes this point: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf. Section 401 governs use of the notice; there's no requirement to register the work before using the notice.

 

[sr71plt]

This isn't correct. Under U.S. law, you own the copyright from the moment the work is "fixed in any tangible medium of expression" (Copyright act section 102)-- on paper, on canvas, or on a hard drive. You are fully entitled to use the copyright symbol on your work from that point forward, regardless whether you have registered the work. Ownership and registration are two different things. Registration is a formality, and it's necessary to go to court, but it's not the same thing as ownership, and it's not a prerequisite for use of the copyright symbol.

Here's a copyright office circular on the use of the copyright notice that makes this point: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf. Section 401 governs use of the notice; there's no requirement to register the work before using the notice.

Looks like you're right about it not being illegal to use it without formally filing. That circular also makes it clear that using it is optional and that it means absolutely nothing as far as protection in the United States since signing of the Berne Convention--without filing for a formal copyright.

It really gets tiresome to go around in circles here every month with folks trying to convince other folks that they have a shred of protection that they don't have.

 

[rjordan]

Do you have a cite for that case? I searched but couldn't find anything about such a case, so I suspect the story's been garbled somewhere along the way.

Meanwhile, here's another link to people in the copyright industry saying that no, you don't lose copyright by not defending it: http://copyrightmanagementservicesltd.com/the-7-most-notorious-copyright-myths-explained/

If this "defend it or lose copyright" was really a thing, surely it ought to be pretty easy to find a source to back it up.

Bad choice of words on my first post. I said you lose the right to defend a copyright. That might imply that I meant you lose the right to the copyright. I think I sort of corrected it on my second post. You lose the ability to defend a copyright. My understanding at the time this all happened (I was in the industry then and American Honda was a client of mine) was that if you ignore infringement you have a difficult time defending it against another infringer. You can't single out an infringer and ignore the rest which is what Honda had done. You have to go after all that you know of.

That doesn't preclude assigning rights to one and not others.

I don't have any citations. This was in the 70's and early 80's and involved at least two U.S. publishers and a U.K. publisher.

It's quite possible I didn't get the full story or forgotten key points. I didn't do any work for the publishers, but I knew them all socially and talked with them about the issue many times.

rj

 

[sr71plt]

Nope. If you filed for and received a formal copyright, you can defend it or not at any time until it goes out of copyright and you are still the copyright holder if full, maintain rights to uphold it.

But again that has nothing to do with what anyone does/can do here in the United States who doesn't formally register the copyright. This discussion has gone out of the realm of Literotica and stories posted to Literotica.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

As a practical means to at least get the author/Literotica credit for a story in many places where it's stolen and republished, Literotica (or the authors could try it) could change the story submission requirements so that a byline source slug would be included at the start of the story text, e.g. "[Literotica, by XXX]." This wouldn't be intrusive if it was the regular format and it would go a long way to obtain originator credit. The story has been given away free for posting to the Internet already, so the author has already dropped it out of copyright case interest in the courts. If this is done, most republishing bots will just sweep it up and include it in what they publish.

...for the first few days. Then the republishing bots will get a trivial addition to filter out the slug. That's the issue with any automatic process - it can be automatically undone with next to no effort. Anything that's hard for a one line grep or sed command to undo, will be intrusive enough to bother readers.

 

[SimonDoom]

It really gets tiresome to go around in circles here every month with folks trying to convince other folks that they have a shred of protection that they don't have.

Here's my one bone to pick with you on this: I think you have an exaggerated concern that Lit authors, armed with knowing the technicalities of the law on this subject, are going to jump into fruitless efforts to enforce their rights. I don't get the sense they are. Maybe I'm wrong. I think these discussions are interesting mostly on their merits -- knowing what the truth is about the rules. There are people on these threads who say things that are just plain wrong -- like saying that fan fiction is immune to copyright rules. There's some value in correcting those false statements about the law. There's value in knowing what the law and the rules are, for their own sake. My sense is that people are fairly realistic about the limits of their ability to enforce meaningful rights once they post stories to this site. I hope they are. I certainly agree with you that they SHOULD be.

I know something about my rights under copyright law in the stories I post to this site; I have no illusions whatsoever about my ability to enforce those rights. But it's still interesting to know the rights and talk about them.

 

[sr71plt]

Here's my one bone to pick with you on this: I think you have an exaggerated concern that Lit authors, armed with knowing the technicalities of the law on this subject, are going to jump into fruitless efforts to enforce their rights. I don't get the sense they are.

I guess you have missed them reinventing that wheel here every two weeks then.

 

[SimonDoom]

I guess you have missed them reinventing that wheel here every two weeks then.

I don't think so. I've seen the discussions come up. I haven't seen people indicate they are ready and eager to jump into the fray of pointlessly trying to enforce their rights.

I could be wrong about that. It's not something I would encourage. But I think it's possible to chat about the issues without encouraging foolish hopes.