Have you ever had your writing stolen?

[ecdavis]

Thanks for the advice, but I've already found the domain address and filed a complaint (and you are right about Godaddy). I've also asked Facebook to take down the website's address due to fraud. I don't want to ruin his life, I do want to make him never so something like this ever again. Next time it could be someone else, and I don't want that.

ecdavis

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!

 

[Butterfly]

I can't access the site. Looks like it's gone. Can anyone else get in?

 

[advait98]

No, looks like it's gone. Well, isn't that dandy?

 

[Addison]

Here's a piece of literature for all who would even consider stealing someone's work; For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails...and when at last he goeth to his last punishment, let the flames of hell consume him fore ever.

That is the Curse on Book Thieves from the monastery of Sand Pedro, Barcelona, Spain.

 

[ecdavis]

Yes indeed, it is dandy, as long as they don't try the same thing somewhere else with other writer's stuff. If they try again, using mine, I'll do the same thing. Thanks, GoDaddy, for doing the proper thing. The site went down about an hour ago, as I checked when I first got on-line and it was there.

No, looks like it's gone. Well, isn't that dandy?

 

[Butterfly]

It's back!!!

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble.

 

[ecdavis]

Well, the battle continues, then.

It's back!!!

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble.

 

[ecdavis]

Here is an update on my on-going battle with Uwroteit.com. I received a reply from GoDaddy yesterday that I had to submit a 'Statement of Good Faith' that I was the copyright holder of the work. They told me I had to reply by today, and I only received the e-mail from them this morning. Quickly I fired off what I hoped would pass for the statement. This afternoon, after work, I received a reply from them saying that now they have contacted Uwroteit.com and have told them to contact me by May 24th and if they don't, then they may take the site down.
We'll see, but I can tell you that it sure is a big hassle trying to get your work taken off of a thief's site. It really has screwed up my week; I have only written about 40 pages all week. It doesn't really make you want to post anything more on-line ever again, but I'm going to anyway, as I don't want to have some scumbag mess up what I like.

 

[Foah]

A good thing to do to keep your work more protected - or rather, more easily protected when you post bits and pieces of it online - is to launch your own website where you publish your work first of all. While doing this, it's easier to refer to your own website when making copyright claims of your own work, to help define the origin of texts and the dates of their upload. With all the companies that provide web hosting services today, it shouldn't be too big an investment either.

I used to dabble in web design a while back, and this was definitely my top priority. I dare say web design is an even more lucrative target for imitation and flat out theft. With my own website, I had little trouble making copyright claims the half a dozen times I found my artwork slightly modified elsewhere on the internet.

 

[ecdavis]

That's a very good idea, Foah, and in fact I have been working all week using Wix, which is a very basic HTML editor to create a page for my stuff. It's nothing fancy of course, and it is still a subdomain of Wix's servers, but it is better than nothing, and I really like the easy WYSIWYG format. I haven't kept up to date on the newer web page platform formats and really don't want to spend more time learning the stuff, so I'll probably just stick to a basic page with Wix.

A good thing to do to keep your work more protected - or rather, more easily protected when you post bits and pieces of it online - is to launch your own website where you publish your work first of all. While doing this, it's easier to refer to your own website when making copyright claims of your own work, to help define the origin of texts and the dates of their upload. With all the companies that provide web hosting services today, it shouldn't be too big an investment either.

I used to dabble in web design a while back, and this was definitely my top priority. I dare say web design is an even more lucrative target for imitation and flat out theft. With my own website, I had little trouble making copyright claims the half a dozen times I found my artwork slightly modified elsewhere on the internet.

 

[The Dark One]

I know it goes against the spirit of sites like this, but I never post my work and am amazed that others do. Simply can't see the return being worth the risk...unless you're posting something you don't ever intend to publish for the sake of feedback on your craft. Even then?

I have, however, had ideas stolen, and there's even less protection there because there's no copyright in ideas. I used to wok with a children/YA writer who eventually became successful enough to leave his day-job. I'd had no qualms about talking to him about my ideas because we wrote for different genres/markets, but a couple of years after he left work, he published a book of 'adult' short stories and I was horrified to discover that one of them was predicated on a very original idea central to one of my novels (now published) which I had told him about one lunch time, by which he'd been quite fascinated.

Having said that, I don't believe he deliberately ripped me off. I do believe though that the idea lodged in his subconscious and was eventually published to his profit. Ideas are very hard to protect, which is why I am happy to talk about the craft, but very much a lone wolf when it comes to my work.

 

[ecdavis]

Here is another update on this story. I was contacted by the owner of Uwroteit.com who claims that he had paid Evisualizers.com to create the webpage over a year ago, but they were dragging their feet and he couldn't even get e-mail from that site. He claimed he would take my stuff off the page tonight, so we'll see. I replied to him politely and told him that my investigation found that it was the husband of the web manager of Evisualizers.com that placed my work illegally on his site. If he is indeed innocent in all of this (and I think that he is innocent), then he should know what people he has paid to do work for him are doing. I suspect the whole situation went something like this: This man wanted a webpage, something like a weak version of Booksie. He didn't have a lot of money so he found Evisualizers.com, out of New Delhi, who probably promised web site creation at a really cheap rate.

He may have even told the lady who is the web manager that he wanted to create a site "Like Booksie". So she creates a basic site, and probably has her husband visit Booksie to see how they had their stuff set up. At the time he visited Booksie, my first book was being featured on Booksie's front page, so he would have easily found my stuff. He downloaded it, removed my name and copyright notice, adds "The End" at the end of Chapter 1 to change it over to a short story. He then generates a PDF of another of my short stories (not bothering to take off my name or copyright notice from this one) and he posts both onto Uwroteit.com, possibly to test the site for his wife.

Apparently they either ran into a problem and could not remove the 'test material' or else just didn't care what was there and left it, but didn't keep the website owner in the loop. I wonder if the owner will be able to remove or change anything on the site? I'll bet that will be the next hurdle; he won't be able to do anything to the site and he won't be able to get in touch with the web designer. Hopefully that won't happen and it will be resolved, because Godaddy has told me they will take the site down if the material is not removed. I hate to cause problems for an innocent person, but if you are going to run a web site, you have to take responsibility for it and have control over it.

 

[ecdavis]

I just checked Uwroteit.com, my stuff has been removed from the site, just as the website owner claimed he would do!

 

[Jamber]

Yay, ecdavis -- I hope it stays that way.

 

[Chilari]

Glad to hear you've got a happy ending with this one.

I started using Google alerts to keep a track of my story I published with Myths Inscribed - I picked a couple of phrases that are fairly unique to the story and have alerts on them if something comes up. Don't like the idea of someone claiming credit for something I did.

Thanks for keeping us updated on this.

 

[Chessie]

I know it goes against the spirit of sites like this, but I never post my work and am amazed that others do. Simply can't see the return being worth the risk...unless you're posting something you don't ever intend to publish for the sake of feedback on your craft. Even then?

I have, however, had ideas stolen, and there's even less protection there because there's no copyright in ideas. I used to wok with a children/YA writer who eventually became successful enough to leave his day-job. I'd had no qualms about talking to him about my ideas because we wrote for different genres/markets, but a couple of years after he left work, he published a book of 'adult' short stories and I was horrified to discover that one of them was predicated on a very original idea central to one of my novels (now published) which I had told him about one lunch time, by which he'd been quite fascinated.

Having said that, I don't believe he deliberately ripped me off. I do believe though that the idea lodged in his subconscious and was eventually published to his profit. Ideas are very hard to protect, which is why I am happy to talk about the craft, but very much a lone wolf when it comes to my work.

My sentiments exactly. The only work of mine I've put on forums was fanfic which technically isn't mine anyway. So steal away. I understand why ecdavis posts his on booksie but there's nutty people out there wanting a buck. I'm glad you pushed it to the end ec, that's your work and it was nice that the story was finally removed. By the way, I checked out your website and your storytelling/creativity is great. Don't bring yourself down, you've got plenty of potential. I liked book 2 of aurei (love the drow).

 

[ecdavis]

By the way, I checked out your website and your storytelling/creativity is great. Don't bring yourself down, you've got plenty of potential. I liked book 2 of aurei (love the drow).

Thank you Chesterama, I've been very reluctant to put any of my stuff in the Showcase forum of this site simply because I've read some of the other work there and really didn't want to embarrass myself, especially since I feel that I'm mainly just story-telling rather then writing books. I greatly appreciate your comments.