So someone else has run off and reposted my work (this time, it's Twilight in Fifteen Minutes. NO DOGPILING, Y'ALL). I don't go looking for this stuff, because honestly, if I started trying to police the internet--which I did try for a little while, back when I was first writing these things--I would never, ever get anything else done. But I feel like once you've brought it to my attention--I don't know that legally I have to do anything; this isn't an issue of trademark, which has to be defended pretty vigorously; it's a simple matter of copyright flowing from the pen, as the expression goes. I wrote this, it is verifiably mine, and I have the right to decide who does and does not get to run off with it. So morally--perhaps, more accurately, emotionally--you feel like you're not supposed to let it go.

(The Creative Commons license, by the way--all you do is paste the code in for the graphic. You don't have to "acquire" anything. Copyright flows from the pen. It's like, if you own property, it is illegal for people to trespass on it. You can put up a fence with a PRIVATE PROPERTY sign on it, but that doesn't confer the ownership to you; you're simply stating an existing fact. And people can still climb that fence and get up in your shit if they want to. Which is why I have it the CC graphic--to state what should already be obvious to people who are completely ignorant of intellectual property rights--but it's also why I don't set a whole lot of stock in the usefulness of it. The kind of people who would jump your fence--a sign ain't gonna stop them.)

The problem with this one is that the girl's gotten defiant and is actually kind of being an assbite about it. It's not as funny as the time that one girl insisted she bought the rights to POTO in Fifteen Minutes from her cousin for $47.12, but it's still pretty absurd. And kind of enraging. But I am so tired, y'all. I've got a chest cold, we're in month four of the Compocalypse, I put in a full eight-hour work day on the "Vampires" e-book yesterday, my eyelid is jumping, The Littlest Edward is over there playing his violin just for me. And this is probably all my fault. I didn't go get an account at the stupid journal site and ask her politely myself. I let other people with accounts contact her--politely, I hope--and that probably put her back up. But I was so tired. So I got lazy.

I haven't looked at the comments myself--I did look to verify that she posted the entire thing without any credit--because I don't know that I can handle any more negative energy coming my way at the moment; I've had a lot of bad vibes sent my way in the last couple of weeks. But apparently the highlight is something to the effect of, "lolololol the author. It's a fucking Twilight parody. You're a moron. If she didn't want it posted on the internet, she shouldn't have posted it on the internet. Good luck with that lawsuit." There's a part of me that doesn't give a shit. I don't want to be all like, PEOPLE KNOW WHO I AAAAAM, I HAVE THE FAAAAAAME. Because, I mean, I don't. The Star Wars YouTube Kid is infinitely better-known than all of us here combined times ten. But my entirely predictable style is recognizable enough now, after five years of doing this, that there's a strong likelihood that someone's eventually going to be like, "You douche, someone else wrote this." So they might be able to "impress" their immediate circle of friends, but someone's going to call them out before it gets passed around too widely. I mean, someone came and informed me, after all. So I don't really have to "protect" my schtick the way I used to have to.

On the other hand, people who get mouthy and ignorant about stealing someone else's work piss me off. (And as one of y'all points out in the thread here, "I highlighted [the post] and all the 'do not repost in its entirety' stuff is not there. That alone says she knew where it was and to remove it." Apparently she claims she found it uncredited on another board, though, so we'll give her the benefit of the doubt.) I don't know what else she and her friends have been saying, but it seems to be pretty asstastic. (Apparently the post has now been amended with "which I did not write" and, at one point, "someone named cleolinda wrote this, if anyone cares.") And amid all my busyness and tiredness, there is a stubborn little part of me that's like, AW HALE NO. A very petty, vindictive, counterproductive part, because am I honestly going to waste my energy on something this inconsequential? My name's on it now, if not an actual link; let her be a fuckwit about it if she wants, it's no actual skin off my teeth, and I've got actual gainful employment to get to. So it's really stupid and I have someone with A Twin Lightsaber of Cease and Desist who's willing to handle it (I SAID NO DOGPILES. DON'T MAKE ME LOOK LIKE A JERK, Y'ALL) and I feel ridiculous for even caring about it.

My point, really, is simply that this is what's going on at the moment. And that I am tired, and that sometimes you get into a no-win situation that chaps your hide anyway, and this is the thought process you go through. It's stupid to get upset, and yet... you do. Fnarr.


ETA: Okay. She's apologized. As for you guys? I have finally read most of the comments, and while I said NO DOGPILING, most of y'all were admirably civil. However?

The authors onto you, BTW: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/820888.html?#cutid1

Check out the number of commenters on that post - that's the number of people who hate you right now.

BAD FORM. You better hope I don't find out who that was.

Tags: let me apologize in advance, let me tell you internets, m15m, oh dramatize, oh hell no, plagiarism, tribulations