Author:
Back in Dec. I posted two of my novels were listed on other sites. I filed several complaints to the sites themselves, to the hosts of those sites and to Whos for their registration of the sites in question. Keep in mind one usually gives said offenders a chance to remove copyright material. Last month I checked before contacting a copyright lawyer. The stories had been removed from one site that was still operating and the other site no longer exists.
Story thieves can be fought and the original author can win provided several things most authors here don't want to disclose. Their real name, along their pen name, and all their personal information, the exact date they wrote the story, and they put a copyright on it.
Barbie Jean wrote those stories, they had ISBN numbers assigned to them, and they were copyright material. People if you write and you think your stories are worth saving, put a copyright on them even if you don't file for an ISBN. Protect your efforts. If they get stolen be prepared to out yourself to the world. Personally, I've been out to the world for so dang long Barb isn't.
Hugs Authors, take care of your works.
Barb
Life is a gift, don't waste it.
Comments
When we reach a certian age
It's well known that the older a trans person gets the harder it is to subjugate the trans nature. That is to live in denial of the trans nature. What is less well known is that the older we get, the less being outed matters. This is especially true for those of us who are retired. Right now, the only person's opinion, other than my own, that counts is my wife. I'm perfectly willing to let all and sundry know I'm transgendered. I have nothing to lose. My wife does feel a certain reluctance to have people know she's married to a transgendered person. For her sake, I don't shout it from the rooftops, but by the same token, I don't concern myself with just who knows.
So my advice to authors is to take stock of just what you have to lose if you need to reveal your birth name in order to right the wrong of your story being stolen. Then take into consideration just who will notice. You winning your case will hardly be headline news. It's highly unlikely it will be newsworthy at all, unless you seek a million dollars in damages and it's awarded to you.
Most likely it will be an obscure public record that only those researching case law would ever come across. I'd say go for it.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Not worried about being outed
For me, there were two things that make me less worried about being "clocked" or "outed."
1. At some point, I realized that no matter careful I was, I was going to die anyway (I could be run over by a bus tomorrow, after all), and hiding myself away wasn't living. As I put it, "I want to live before I die." I'd tried to be what "everyone" seemed to be telling me I had to be, and it made me miserable to the point of looking forward to dying. So, really, what did I have to lose by living in that supposedly "socially unacceptable" way? If they kill me, they kill me, but I'm not going to let the fear of them killing me hold me back from living (as opposed to merely existing.) By the same principle, I don't bother to hide the fact that I'm trans. And nobody's even tried to kill me.
2. I transitioned in my 60's, and I've noticed that old men and old women don't look as different as young men and young women. So "passing" isn't anywhere near as hard. After 6 years of HRT and electrolysis and with a good wig, I can look in the mirror and see an old woman. Besides, we old women are invisible anyway.
I still use a screen name, but it's mostly to make on-line stalking require a bit more effort: this way, people who do a Google search on my IRL name won't find my on-line opinionations and people who do the same on my screen name won't turn up my home address and phone number.
This was all true even before I retired, and now that I am retired, I have even less reason to care.
Perhaps Not Worth It.
If I was seen as one of the better authors here it might be worth the fight. Several of my stories have gone that way, or at least they have driven ideas for other stories. I did have someone edit one of my stories in the hope that they could improve it. I felt that the results were awful.
Were I at least 40 years younger, perhaps I could learn to write properly.
Gwen
Were I Younger...
"Were I at least 40 years younger, perhaps I could learn to write properly." Don't let age stop you. Also, don't be bullied into accepting certain rules that aren't in our language. (It's fine to split infinitives and to end sentences with prepositions.)
Once one reaches a certain age (old enough to be called "Grandpa") one thinks back about events from one's youth, such as the sixth-grade teacher who insisted that "61 divided by zero is zero."
-- Daphne Xu
New math same as the old math
Your sixth-grade teacher was a zero. The quotient that results when dividing by zero is undefined not zero.
Sammy
Indeed.
When I was much, much younger, we had Friden electromechanical calculators at work (they must have cost a small fortune and were no more powerful than a 4 function calculator costing a few quid today). Strictly for amusement, we would set them to divide by zero and watch (and listen) to them going bananas until we switched them off. So very undefined but approaching infinity.
On the subject of piracy, I noticed a pirated novel written by LaurieS and posted on FM, also posted on Amazon by a different author. Laurie found out about it but, at the time, opted not to pursue the matter. I felt annoyed for her because it is a substantial piece of work.
R
Stop putting yourself down
Stop putting yourself down Gwen. You write well. Stories are a matter of taste. A lot of the stuff I write goes down like a lead ballon on here and gets tonnes of likes on other sites. My femdom stuff gets next to no kudos here. I get that. The more emotional trans stuff gets a lot more.
I don't read "magic" stories. I like a story to have a believable plot. Magic makes it all to easy. If something doesn't make sense, just say "wizard did it". That's not to say that there aren't some great magical stories out there. I just like to think that some of the stories might possibly happen .
Personally, it's the plot and subject of a story that I like, the grammar and spelling are gravy. I have to say that as I'm always findng mistakes in my stuff after it's been up for months. The readers on here don't tend to be grammar nazi's.
Leeanna
My way of putting it
Whenever I find a good story that is getting raked over the coals for bad spelling or grammar, I usually respond this way:
The Original Star Trek television series had 2nd rate production quality made on a shoestring budget, 3rd rate actors that chewed scenery like it was made of candy, 4th rate 'special effects' that looked terrible even in the 60s, and 5th rate promotion from the network that didn't want it to succeed...
...and also some of the best stories ever written... which is why it not only spawned 6 spin-off series and dozens of movies, but captured the imagination of generations and changed the course of history by inspiring real life technical advances. (not to mention its effects on our language)
If the first thing someone says about a movie is, "It has great special effects!" I probably won't bother watching it... because if that's the take-away from it, than the story wasn't good enough. To this day I haven't seen Avatar for that exact reason. (and probably never will) All anyone would say about it when it came out was "It had incredible effects!"... and nothing about the story. (and no, at this point I don't care to hear what it was about... it can't be that good if I haven't heard by this time)
The same can be said of a novel. Oh, I'm obsessively compulsive when it comes to my own writing at getting all the grammar right, but a good story with a thousand misspellings and dangling participles (so long as it's understandable) will beat out the most perfectly crafted collection of words ever made if it has a plot that's been done 1,000 times before and done better or characters so thin they disappear when they turn sideways.
Spelling and grammar are the 'effects' and 'acting quality' of a novel. They're just there to convey the story... not to be the story.
Just my perspective. YMMV. ;^)
Hugs,
Roberta
Another method of protection
Another method of protection is to form a corporation, then put your copyrights under the control of that corporation. Depending on the state, an S corp or C corp would work, and a couple of the places are rabid about not giving up the corporate ownership. For a minimal investment in the corporation, you move yourself away from being outed, plus protection in case someone tries to attack you.
Note: I don't think corporations should be allowed to hold copyrights, as they aren't people. They don't "die" and release copyrights. I'm just saying what is permissible and legal today.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
One of my stories
Was kidnapped and put up on Amazon earlier this year. I was rather annoyed but as I was able to prove copyright the folks at Amazon, bless their cotton socks, took down the fraudulent item in less than 48 hours! Result
I didn’t need to ‘out’ myself to do that.
It’s not the first occasion my writing has been stolen, I doubt the last, but it shows that it’s not all in the thieves corner. I must admit that other free story sites seem to have a very anarchic attitude to copyright but whilst annoying no one is making money of those thefts, it’s not worth getting het up about.
There are of course plenty of ways to thwart the crime, for that’s what they are, including a copyright notice is the simplest but please include the date with that - it’s much easier to show precedence that way. Other ideas are to include a spurious sentence or word somewhere in the text, something a global replace won’t pick up and have plenty of characters/location names that will identify your tale.
Simple stuff that identifies you as the author.
As regards getting outed well as far as I’m concerned that’s a need to know thing. I probably get ‘made’ all the time but I don’t go around advertising the fact, IME most people couldn’t care a toss, they are too tied up in their own lives to bother about the ‘weirdo’ . Maybe I live in a Trans hotbed, I know of 4 others locally but I see weirder looking cis women all the time so maybe we are less obvious than we might think.
Madeline Anafrid Bell