Steamed!

[brightlyiburn]

I know I mentioned a few days ago a incidence of plagarism where someone stole one of my stories and turned it into fan fiction for some dumb T.V. show.
Well, today I get an e-mail from this girl daring to say that she didn't steal my work! She dares to claim that I am the plagarist and worse, she's accusing other people of stealing her work! No doubt she's thieving everything she posts from someone else.
I am beyond furious right now! Hours, months of work, and she dares to claim that I am stealing from her! She barely knows how to use a comma, and she's claiming my work as hers! What she should be doing is admitting that she's a liar and apologizing to her readers!
How can anyone derive pleasure out of stealing someone's work? I just don't get it! How could you possibly live with yourself, knowing every word of praise isn't meant for you?
I'm not sure whether she sent it to me on purpose or she couldn't block me fully when she blocked my ISP, but I got this is my e-mail:

I have been sick for the past few days and have not had the chance to get online here (on the board) but when a good friend of mine IMed me this evening to tell me about a disturbing post I immediately got angry and unfortunately because of this post I need to send out a message to all of you. This is untrue and SADLY...I've discovered TWO other stories of mine have been used by others without my permission.


High School Years & Every Season BOTH have been brought to my attention that someone else is using it as their writing. It upset me greatly and I am close to not wanting to post my writing up anymore, I do this for your enjoyment please don't ruin that for people and use my materail as your own, if you'd like to ask permission and give ME credit for it I'll be more than happy to let you do that but please don't just use it for your credit.

Thank you and I apologize for having to disrupt you all by e-mailing you, it is something I felt I needed to do though and get this out to you.

Thank you Ashley for bringing this to my attention and to Morgan (the girl who found my other too writings) Thank you very much for alerting me to this.

I'm sorry to rant, but I can't help being upset by this. Such dishonesty and injustice infuriates me. And the fact that neither fictionpress nor proboards has gotten back to me on this matter just makes it worse.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I know I mentioned a few days ago a incidence of plagarism where someone stole one of my stories and turned it into fan fiction for some dumb T.V. show.
Well, today I get an e-mail from this girl daring to say that she didn't steal my work! She dares to claim that I am the plagarist and worse, she's accusing other people of stealing her work! No doubt she's thieving everything she posts from someone else.
I am beyond furious right now! Hours, months of work, and she dares to claim that I am stealing from her! She barely knows how to use a comma, and she's claiming my work as hers! What she should be doing is admitting that she's a liar and apologizing to her readers!
How can anyone derive pleasure out of stealing someone's work? I just don't get it! How could you possibly live with yourself, knowing every word of praise isn't meant for you?
I'm not sure whether she sent it to me on purpose or she couldn't block me fully when she blocked my ISP, but I got this is my e-mail:



I'm sorry to rant, but I can't help being upset by this. Such dishonesty and injustice infuriates me. And the fact that neither fictionpress nor proboards has gotten back to me on this matter just makes it worse.

If the work was lifted from lit, Pm Laurel. Don't mail her, but Pm her. Let her know what is going on. She zealously gurads our works and since everything posted here is date stamped, she has proof that you posted the work before the plagirist.

 

[Lord DragonsWing]

I would definitely pm Laurel. One reason I feel safe posting stories here is because Laurel guards the copyright for everyone. It's ridiculous when someone steals anothers story.

 

[stingray61]

I would also try to go to the place she is sending it to claiming it's hers and explain the situation.

 

[brightlyiburn]

Unfortunately, she posts on a message board that she owns.
I'm waiting to see first if Proboards gets back to me. If they don't, I'll go to godaddy, which is their server. They're likely to take care of the situation, but if they don't, then I'll contact Laurel. I'm sure she's plenty busy, so I'd like to try to take care of this myself.


Or maybe not really "myself". I gave my readers permission to have at her.
Plenty of them don't get involved, which is fine. But there are a couple who'd have a field day with her if allowed. Since she's determined to keep up this deceit, well, I'm not going to stop them.
This is kind of like trying to stuff a cat into a carrier. You know you'll get them in there eventually, but they're gonna fight like crazy the whole way, cause they don't wanna go. Or in this case, she's trying to save face from her lie.

 

[brightlyiburn]

Ahahahahahahaha!!!

I love the "someone hacked into my computer" story! It's so goddamn funny!
I think that's on the list of Standard Scared Plagiarist Excuses. I've heard that one way too many times.

 

[rikaaim]

Even in that person's e-mail they prove themselves a damn fool. They couldn't spell corectly or use proper grammer. Why would anyone want to plagerize a bad writer? Thanks to Morgan for pointing out my other too works....

Something like that if I recall. If you are going to accuse people of stealing your works, back it up with some intelligence. All this person is doing is showing their stupidity.

Burn: Burn baby burn. Go get her. You have much support her. Don't fear the reaper!!! Something like that.

 

[Huckleman2000]

I know what you mean when you say that it's hard to imagine how people can live with themselves when they do such wretched things. It sounds like this person has some narcissistic traits. That she "owns" the board, and writes self-aggrandizing notes with a pretense of victimhood (not only was she victimized, but she was SICK TOO!) - it just seems like she has to draw from that constant reinforcement to feed her narcissistic self-image. People like that will do anything to set up and preserve their reinforcement systems - narcissism is really psychopathic in its worst expressions.

It's awful that you've been ensnared in this person's strange world - I worked for a company owned by someone like that once, and it was just a surreal experience. Do what you can to vindicate yourself, but don't get drawn into their pathology. Logic and right and wrong are just tools to those people, to employ in maintaining their pool of adoration. At some point, all you can do is decide to keep them away from you, because there's no basis for resolving an issue with these people except to feed them.

 

[Guest]

A few words of advice on protecting youself against plagerists and copyright violators; this won't stop them but it will give you the proof you need to fight them in court if it comes to that.

Backup. As a network admin this is the first thing I will preach to anyone and everyone who has a computer. If you save your work only to your hard drive and it crashes your work is gone. You may already have it posted here. but now you don't have a copy unless you cut and past from lit. Make backups to floppy disk every thing you write. Backing up to CD is even better, but even then I still back up to floppy as well. I always make several disk copies of my work. This is very important and I'm going to tell you why in a minute.

At the first opportunity after you have enough to make the document identifiable, I usually do it after the first page, save the document to the hard drive and then to a floppy. Once on that floppy do not EVER save that doc to that floppy again. It is your proof.

Now the most important part. Open the location you saved it to in explorer, if you are on a PC. Not sure exactly how this works on mac but I'm sure you'll be able to do something similar. Right click on that file and click properties. It will open a box that will tell you all sorts of info on that file. Most important is the dates. This window will tell you the date the file was created, the date it was last modified and the date it was last opened. At the top you will see a "Summary" tab. Click it. There you will see other important information like: Title; Subject; and MOST important, AUTHOR. These are editable fields. I recomend you fill them in with all the detail you can. Under Authour do not use your Lit Username. Use your real name. There is also a box for comments. In it you might want to make a note of where the story was intended to be submitted and under what name.

Now click on the "Advanced" button art the bottom. This will give you a much larger range of information. Some of it will be editable. some of it won't. Put as much detailed info in that area as you can.

One field here that cannot be edited it "Created:" This will show the exact date and time you first saved this file. This is the reason for saving it to a floppy and not saving to that floppy again. If you open the original file on your hard disk and then save it to that floppy it will overwrite the file and change that date. You want to keep an accurate record of the first time you wrote anything in that story and that date stamp is it.

Once you have the story complete, if at all possible burn it to a CD-R. Do not use a CD-RW. A CD-RW Can be erased and rewritten. A CD-R can not. You want to have an indisputable record of when that story was copleted. If you save it on a CD-R it cannot be modified and is therefore iron clad evidence. If you have a hard drive crash you can copy those files back to the new hard drive.

Any time you copy that file from your hard drive to any other medum or even to another hard drive, you are creating a new file and it will datestamp that new file with todays date. This is why you make that first save to a floppy and never open it again. Mark that floppy with the title and "PROOF" and put it somewhere safe. That disk will always have that original date no matter what.

If you can afford it. get a small fireproof safe to store those floppies and CDs in.

These things won't stop someone from stealing your work here. But it will damn sure prove to any court that it is your work and not theirs.

Ok, so, that was more than a few words, but you need to protect yourself properly. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

 

[rikaaim]

Dran, you are a genuis. I never even considered my stuff good enough to be stolen, but you never know. As soon as I get some time, this weekend perhaps, I'll take your advice. That way I'll know what to do in the future.

 

[brightlyiburn]

My stuff is actually backed up on CD-R, but I need to do an updated one soon.

 

[Guest]

My stuff is actually backed up on CD-R, but I need to do an updated one soon.

If you back up all your docs to one CD, which is what I do, make sure you save all the previous ones. Again it's those dates that will be important. And always label the disks, floppy or CD with the date you recorded it.

 

[Lisa Denton]

If you back up all your docs to one CD, which is what I do, make sure you save all the previous ones. Again it's those dates that will be important. And always label the disks, floppy or CD with the date you recorded it.

You are so right Dranoel, I try to make back-ups often and also throw things through my network shared files and save to hard drive on second computer. What really helps is that now DVD recorders and blank DVD's are affordable. You can take all your files, everything, and burn to one DVD. Keeping a backup on one disc.

My pics file with some movies in it somehow got to about 19 gigs, ooops, so I can't pu them on one DVD, but everything else except movies will fit.

 

[NoJo]

For the best protection, if you think your story could get published, use the WGA web site: http://www.wga.org/registration/index.html.

Or send a hard copy to yourself by registered post (and don't open it!)

 

[Black Tulip]

I hope you can solve this on your own. If not, do not, not hesitate to PM Laurel. She is never too busy to take care of this kind of crap.
Like others said before, she guards our copyright very closely.

 

[Op_Cit]

...
If you can afford it. get a small fireproof safe to store those floppies and CDs in.

These things won't stop someone from stealing your work here. But it will damn sure prove to any court that it is your work and not theirs.

Ok, so, that was more than a few words, but you need to protect yourself properly. Trust me, you'll be glad you did....

Um, no it won't.

Am I the only one here who knows how to fake all of these electronic attributes that Dran mentions?

There's shareware utiliities you cand find in 5 minutes that will let you change any of these things. And you don't have to be a computer geek. I can copy anybody's story here change all these attributes to show I wrote it two years ago and put the floppy or CD in my home safe.

Storing a story on a CD proves nothing, and do not expect it to hold up in court, unless it is a court of fools.

 

[Guest]

Um, no it won't.

Am I the only one here who knows how to fake all of these electronic attributes that Dran mentions?

There's shareware utiliities you cand find in 5 minutes that will let you change any of these things. And you don't have to be a computer geek. I can copy anybody's story here change all these attributes to show I wrote it two years ago and put the floppy or CD in my home safe.

Storing a story on a CD proves nothing, and do not expect it to hold up in court, unless it is a court of fools.

Now I'm worried.

Not that there ARE things like that out there. But that a writer here knows them.

 

[Op_Cit]

Now I'm worried.

Not that there ARE things like that out there. But that a writer here knows them.

Yes, Virginia there is no Santa Claus.

And, yes, Dran, there are computer programmers who write sex stories because they're too geekish to get a date.

Not that there's any thing wrong with that... and not that I can't get a date... And stop calling me a writer, I just make up stories about them.

Bottom line: There are traditional avenues for establishing and protecting copyright that predate computers. These are what will hold up best.

BUT: if you want a quick and dirty simple one: Just posting the story here or to ASSTR (with verifiable link like email address you can prove) will go a long way to establishing the time frame, because those electronic media are not within your control and therefor less subject to one person's manipulation. Usenet used to be the best "quick and dirty' method because postings were saved on many, many different servers and trying to fake that would be extremely hard.

 

[Black Tulip]

Um excuse me, but isn't that what was said in the first place?
Posting on Lit gives prove of the date of publishing?