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how does theft after sale work
Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 9:13 pm
by carpenjoyce
Can someone please tell me what happens in this situation? I sold an article for fullrights. After the sale, the buyer discovered that part of the article had been stolen and posted on bizcovering.com. CC has already credited my account for the sale, but naturally the buyer is not happy. Does CC refund the buyer's money and take the money back from me, or do they just tell the buyer they can't control theft? I'm just curious about how this works.
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 11:22 pm
by nichewriter
CC refunds the customer and the amount is taken from your account (the 65% of the price). This happened to me a couple of weeks ago - the buyer found that the excerpt was posted somewhere after he bought my article. Really ticked me off. The thief was hiding behind a domain protection service so I couldn't find out his name, address or webhost info, but I contacted the service he was using and filed a copyright infringement claim. They contacted the thief for me with a note saying they'll remove the protection to his domain if he doesn't remove my content so I can take further action. A few days later, my content was removed from the site. Of course, I've already lost the sale, but oh well...I've moved on, because I've sold several articles since then
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 5:42 am
by carpenjoyce
My article was lifted by someone who writes for Triond and then posted to bizcovering. He is writing under the name hosenpas. I contacted both of Triond and bizcovering. Is there any more I can do?
I wish I could get over this as easily as you did. Most of my articles cost over $100, because they require quite a bit of knowledge and take a lot of work to write. My customer got accused of plagiarism because he used my article on his blog.
I made over $1000 so far this month, but now I have to worry that I could lose more of it if more of these articles were stolen. And although cc changed the website, they don't seem to be doing anything else to help the writers with this. I have been really happy with this site and it's a great concept, but something has to change.
Why couldn't we just post an outline of our articles, with a message that explains that the author no longer posts full articles due to theft problems. The message would invite readers to submit a no-obligation private request to the article title if they found the outline interesting. Unless we can do something like this, it just isn't worth it for me to write here. I need to know that if I go to that much work, I can keep the money I made. The theft problem seems to be getting worse and worse.
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:20 am
by J. A. Young
I feel very strongly about NEV ER posting the full article in the long summary. I have one client I do this for--but the requests are private and the articles don't wind up showing in my catalog. I simply use ... to indicate that there's more to a paragraph. I might give the first paragraph and part of the second before skipping down to the fourth and giving a couple sentences. In this way, the buyer has a strong indication of where the article is going. I also provide enough content to give them a good idea of my writing style. It works for me. I've had one instance of theft that I know of--they stole my partial article and that is pretty annoying, but so long as it remains a rare occurrence I can continue to do it this way. Good luck. I'm sure you are frustrated, but it's something we all need to stay on top of. --JA
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 9:22 am
by carpenjoyce
Using ellipsis marks to skip part of each paragraph is actually a great idea. If CC doesn't buy my outline proposal, I think I'll try that. Thank you!
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 12:36 pm
by jak
A recent theft from me was a complete article, even though I only have part of it showcased. I don't know how they managed it, but thought I'd better warn you.
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 1:51 pm
by carpenjoyce
That doesn't make sense unless some sort of loophole in CC's system allows them to grab the full file. Does anyone else know anything about how that could happen?
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 6:59 am
by Sharion
No, but the same thing happened to me that happened to Jak. I only post 1/3 of the article in the summary, and yet had the FULL article stolen that had never been sold or posted anywhere.
I often read of writers who sort of blow it off, established writers who make a living in spite of it. When you have not achieved that level of sales, when you are attempting to build your portfolio and work your way up, a theft can feel very devastating.
I'm a bit confused about the "theft after sale" however. If the theft happened after he purchased it and posted it on his site, why would the original writer be penalized?
Surely we cannot be held responsible for thefts that occur once the article is posted publicly. Wouldn't there need to be a way to determine when the article was posted on the theft site? Prior to the sale or after?
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 7:42 am
by carpenjoyce
In my particular case, someone grabbed part of the article after I posted it but before it was sold. When the purchaser posted the article on his blog, someone called his attention to the fact that it was posted somewhere else. CC's system checks the article for originality when they post it, but if someone steals it while it's on the site, the buyer still gets and article that isn't unique any more. I could tell from the dates of the posting that the thief stole it from me rather than from the customer's blog.
Re: how does theft after sale work
Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 7:39 pm
by avaviney