Have you ever had your writing stolen?

[ecdavis]

Today I found someone took the first chapter of my first book, including some original artwork (that wasn't very good, by the way) and put it on a website called 'uwroteit.com'. The thief that stole it was named 'Gaurav Bharadwaj' and took out my name, my copyright notice, and added 'The End' at the end of chapter one, to make it into a really poor short story. I was completely surprised that someone could be so desperate that they'd steal a chapter and put it on a website, apparently to try to win a monthly contest.

I was miffed, so when I got home from work I e-mailed the site and threatened them with legal action unless they take the stolen stuff off of their site. So far the 'short story' hasn't come down yet.

My work is all on-line on Booksie; I haven't 'paper published' any of my books, as I know they are probably too poor for that, and so I knew on-line 'publishing' was a danger, as it is extremely easy to steal and then edit on-line stories, then put them some place else as their own.

It still is rather frustrating. I even signed up at uwroteit using a fake e-mail address so that I could comment on the thief's 'work'. It was rather funny giving my own first chapter 1 out of 5 stars. Then I let everyone know that the story was stolen and that the owner was going after the thief.

What a wonderful experience to go through; you're a nobody fantasy writer, thrilled to get your stuff on-line and then have 2,500 people actually read the first book, only to have someone steal some of it, including your own, very amateur artwork, and post it at another website as their own.

I'll bet that the site leaves the thief and my stuff on-line too. Even though it is in their 'terms and conditions' that they will remove stolen stuff from their site.

Anyone else have a similar experience? I'm really surprised that a thief would use my stuff to try to win some prize. He must have been really desperate.

ecdavis

 

[Steerpike]

I haven't had it happen, but I know a couple of people who have. It's one reason I don't generally post anything I am actively working on in internet forums or elsewhere online. Chances of it happening are slim, but it's easy to avoid too.

 

[Xaysai]

One day my work will be good enough to steal.

One day.

 

[ecdavis]

Xaysai, believe me, if mine is worthy of being stolen, ANYONE'S is worthy of being stolen.

One day my work will be good enough to steal.

One day.

 

[Alexandra]

Today I found someone took the first chapter of my first book, including some original artwork (that wasn't very good, by the way) and put it on a website called 'uwroteit.com'.

I think the theft of intellectual property is appalling but look at it this way: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

[Steerpike]

Stealing something and putting a direct copy of what you stole online, and representing it as your own, is not imitation.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I post on Literotica, which is such a high-profile target some people write computer programs to automatically steal and repost stories from it. I've been robbed at least once, but I don't make much fuss about it--the only partial protection is a paywall, and I don't want to charge for my stories at this time.

 

[ecdavis]

I've done some snooping, and I've found who the thief is; Here is his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groovy.gaurav.in The thief's wife was one of his fans on Uwroteit.com and simply by checking her page, I found him. It's no big surprise that he's from New Delhi, India. He's either really brave or extremely stupid, putting his stuff on-line like that and then blatantly stealing my stuff. He has no idea who I am or how I could really screw his life up by simply using the Internet. It's quite a risk just to try to use some amateur's writing at an extreme long shot to win some money. I'm so tempted to use what I know against him.

Instead I'll probably just wait and see if Uwroteit.com removes him, though I'm very sure they won't.

ecdavis

 

[A. E. Lowan]

This has never happened to me that I am aware of, but my mother, who is a writer as well and who is the one who first taught me the business, once told me that as a teenager she sent a teleplay to Rod Serling for his opinion. She says he never responded, but one night she was watching The Twilight Zone, and there was her story, changed here and there but essentially the same. I can't remember which episode it was off the top of my head, and it's too late my time to call her and ask. She wasn't telling me this to prove how good she was - she was giving me a lecture about copyright and protecting my intellectual property.

How does one find out their work has been stolen, anyway? I occasionally post snippets from my WIP on my FB author page, just to show all 14 of my fans how the work is progressing, but it's rarely more than a couple hundred words of a particularly exciting scene or two.

 

[Snowpoint]

I wouldn't recommend communicating with this person or "screw his life up".

The time you spend fretting about this is time not spent writing. If you made money at this, you (or the publishing company) could hire lawyers to defend your copyright for you.

He can't stop you from writing. And you will always have a better copyright claim on that work than he does. Nothing to worry about. However, I can only imagine how it feels to experience this.

 

[advait98]

...

Gaurav Bharadwaj stole your work. An Indian dude. Damn. I thought we had more pride than that.
I saw the entry. Seriously? Your name's right there on the first page, and he proclaimed himself as the author of the work? That is the height of carelessness. He is not a very good thief, I have to say.

But still, it's just the first chapter, right? Unedited, unrefined? Shouldn't be too much of a problem, though I can't account for what you feel. Snowpoint says it true. It shouldn't stop you from writing.

Uwroteit or whatever should respond to your demands, otherwise a certain feline overlord might bend their wrists...

 

[Chilari]

Gaurav Bharadwaj stole your work. An Indian dude. Damn. I thought we had more pride than that.

People all over the world steal and do evil; the fact that you share the thief's nationality shouldn't make you ashamed.

To the OP: stealing is not on, and legal fees are expensive. But the internet is powerful. Even without acting immorally or illegally, we can do something about it. There are times when sheer force of pressure, of people bringing it up, blogging about it, tweeting and retweeting etc has forced a company that's used stolen photos or artwork etc on their t-shirts and bags to back down, take down the products and pay the real artist. If several of us sign up for the website and comment that it is stolen, perhaps they will decide it's more trouble than it's worth. I have signed up and posted a comment, along with a 1 star rating. If more of us do the same, they'll have to do something.

Having said that, uwroteit.com doesn't look that great a website. There's some very bad grammar there - spaces before exclamation marks, capitalisation of words that don't need it and all sorts of other errors. If they don't do anything, it might not really be worth it.

Alternatively, we could all try submitting real stories to the contest - thus giving some serious competition to Gaurev whateverhisnamewas and reducing the chance he'll win that surprisingly large figure with a stolen story.

Edit: actually, scratch that last one. The website relies on subscriptions for prize money, it says there is no current contest dispite what the front page says, and the forum contains three posts about Lorum Ipsum that was probably taken from Wikipedia.

 

[advait98]

Oh no, I meant that in jest. A major portion of today's cyberthieves would be from India, if the stereotypes are true.

I suppose that's a good idea, although the stupid website (Mail Have Been Sucessfully Sent) has not sent the registration e-mail. *slap face* I realised they all got sent to the spam folder. Seriously!

The alternative one, I am not such a fan of. It would be wasteful promoting the image of such a website with good entries, and plus, I don't see anyone gearing up for it. On a totally unrelated topic, what's the prize?

Let's see who's up for it, then. Gaurav has uploaded 2 of your stories, which is seriously stupid, considering the circumstances. Comment on both of them, I say. Heck, the first one is on their home page. The second one, in the link ecdavis provided.

ecdavis, don't be too hot about it. It's a poor site. There's another stolen work on the home page, for god's sakes! Another Indian guy, Parveen Bhasin, who apparently stole a short story from a certain Suprina Frazier. This is amazing.

Good luck.

 

[Butterfly]

Sorry to say, but it seems he has two stories up...

Aurei of Westmark

and

Ambush at Orc Pass (This one has your name on it)

Are they both yours?

 

[ecdavis]

Yes, they both are mine, both stolen. The thief's wife, I learned through detective work, is the web manager for e-visualize.com, which is the company that hosts the site. I suspect uwroteit.com is a scan site, probably set up by the husband and wife team to get e-mail addresses or stuff like that. e-visualize.com is a New Delhi, India company and both of them work for it. The site promises a contest for money as well as supporting charities, but none are listed at the site. It is a scam and they are using my stuff to fuel it. But I'm not going to just let my stuff get stolen, I'm going to fight back.

ecdavis

Sorry to say, but it seems he has two stories up...

Aurei of Westmark

and

Ambush at Orc Pass (This one has your name on it)

Are they both yours?

 

[KRHolbrook]

I haven't had my work stolen yet, as far as I know. I make it a point now days to only post my writing that I want to get published on a specific site for critiques. I used to join tons of writing communities and toss my work around for critiques all over, though.

 

[saellys]

Good luck fighting back, but I agree with Snowpoint that your time would be better spent writing, not to mention marketing your work so it's more likely to be recognized and reported when someone inevitably steals it again. Sorry if that sounds defeatist, but that's the nature of the Internet--it's a nebulous place with no real governing body, which means there are very few options for meaningful recourse if someone abuses Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

 

[ecdavis]

I think that something has to be done. I am not going to do anything illegal or immoral, but I do want to black flag this website. I'm very sure, the more I consider it, that the whole site is a scam. I suspect they picked my stuff because it looks like what some poor idiot who can't write worth a lick would submit to such a site. I suspect they aren't really using my work to win something with it (because they'll surely not win if they try), but to try to make anyone who stumbles upon the site to think that there are a lot of jokers like me who are putting work there. 'Filler" I guess you would call it, to make the site look more popular than what it really is.

But even if that is the only reason, that is still not acceptable. You know, I am not stupid; I realize my writing is not worthy of serious consideration among 'real' writers. That is one reason I haven't posted any of my stuff in whole or in part, to this forum, because I am certainly not of the caliber of those who write professionally or who are highly talented amateurs. So I posted my poor stuff to Booksie, which allows anyone to put their stuff there, no matter how poorly it is written. I put it there because I accept that my stuff is not professional. But that was the idea -- just enjoy writing and put the story out there in hopes that simple-minded persons such as myself might enjoy some of it. I was pleased with it, but then I have my stuff stolen and then put on a website supposedly to compete for a writing prize. I never wrote my stories to try to win something and putting them in a setting like that is like entering an old mule in the Kentucky Derby.

In other words, I think what upsets me so is not only did they steal it, but they supposedly tried to enter it into a contest to win. Even if they were just using it as 'filler' others reading it might think, "Man, why'd this guy put this garbage out to try to win something?'.

So I do indeed want it off that site. Leave the mules alone out there, thieves; we don't think our stuff is that wonderful, but we do not want it misrepresented.

As for posting stories on-line, I am working out a few ideas to make stealing somewhat more difficult. One idea is to post a story with part of the text of the chapter as an image. That way if they do the old cut and paste routine, they'll either have to embed the first part of the chapter as an image, or else will have to manually type in the text in the image file.

The image would include my copyright and name in it and so if they use the image along with the rest of the text, they'll either have to photoshop the copyright and name out of it, or type up the part that appears as an image.

ecdavis

 

[Jamber]

If anyone is curious about whether their work has been pinched:
Plagiarism Checker
However be careful... It may be more pain than it's worth to find out.
cheers
Jennie

 

[Nihal]

I would be pissed off if such thing happened to me, but I wouldn't try to ruin his life or anything unless he "officially" published my work somewhere; it's simply not worthy the headache.

Do you want a quick solution? Use whois to find out which registrar he's using and fill a copyright claim (it's like 90% of chances of it being godaddy). You'll have the stolen material taken down in no time. I also advise to keep a file with url you found it, names, since you know, and hotkeys this site have, so in one-six month(s) after the takedown you can to google it to check if he didn't create a new domain to post your work again.

It sounds paranoid, but once I've made a company stop selling my work only to find out that some months later they picked another work of mine to sell illegally, haha!