Mistress Milliscent,

I am so sorry about this. The fact is even worse, that I did realise that I needed your permission but that I have just been so improper and lazy not to ask you. In fact, I was a bit intimidated to ask and I thought that the link would have done right to your lovely article - although I knew it would not. I don't know what on earth made me post this without your permission and I am very, truly sorry about this. I totally understand that you are not waiting to find your own posts on others blogs all over the internet. I will never do this again, that is for sure, and I have removed that post from my blog at the minute that I read your reply.
Hoping you will accept my most humble appologies,
I remain,
a

Theft is actually "the felonious taking and removing of another's personal property with the intent of depriving the true owner of it..." according to Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edition. Copyright infringement is NOT theft or stealing.

That said, I'm glad to see you standing up for your rights. I enjoy your writing very much and think you should be allowed total control and ownership of your ideas and writings.

a,

I appreciate and accept your apology.

I am also pleased that you think so highly of my work.

Please don't feel intimidated by me, while it is true that I do bite, I am someone who enjoys other people, and loves it when people admire the little things I write.

Lastly please know that in most cases I likely would give permission to someone, including you, who asked to use my work provided of course that appropriate credit was given. Don't be afraid to ask.

I did edit your comment to remove your full posting name, you have addressed my concerns and I see no reason to have folks know which blog raised my ire.

Thank You again, I appreciate the positive actions you have taken.

M

anon,

Alas, I am a dominatrix, not an attorney, so I don't consult Blacks Law. The Oxford American Dictionary is just fine for me. It defines Theft as Stealing and Stealing as 'take another person's property without permission or legal right.' Good enough for me, my intellectual property was taken without permission, and as it was taken and used in it's entirety as is, that taking could in no way be considered fair use. A court of law might have a different name for the act, but I think that most people understand it to be theft.

Besides, as a kid I used to watch The People's Court. I remember one of it's tag lines as something like:

'Here, in his forum, Judge Woppner's decisions are final. The People's Court'

I must say that 'Here, on my forum, Milliscent's decisions are final. The Mistress's Court.' ;-)

I am pleased that you enjoy my scribblings, and I hope that you keep coming back to read again and again.

M

Mistress Milliscent, i peruse considerable fetish erotica on the web, if i do ever see an instance of Your work being used without Your authorization, i will inform You.

Copyright infringement IS theft. Intellectual property is property, no matter what, although it is immaterial.

Internationally -and the World Wide Web is an international space- the reference for the protection of intellectual property is the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, and it applies to all member countries.

I don't know about all member countries, but I know of at least some where copyright infringement is considered punishable as theft.

It is a matter of common sense to realise that our society is entirely based on the protection of intellectual property. And the whole world would come to a stop within weeks if intellectual property was not protected at all. It is exasperating to see many people still pretending that distributing copyrighted work without authorisation through the net is not like stealing. It is. And it is depriving many artists and authors from most of their income. And it is disastrous, for the cinema and movie industry, as well as for any artist or writer. People who insist on doing it pretend to make a confusion between the physical support of a work or art, and the intellectual/artistic work. A painter may sell an original oil painting, the buyer will only become the owner of the physical support of the painting, as an artifact, but he still will have absolutely no right to exploit it, for instance to distribute reproductions of it, to use it in a commercial or a book. Similarly, buying a book does not give the buyer the right to post its content on the net. Even if the buyer of a book the day after it was released would not have actually stolen that item, by reposting its content on the net he would be stealing from the author, and his theft would potentially deprive the author of his/her income. Now whether it would be called a theft in a court would depend on the particular laws of every country, but it is of little importance. It is still punishable as theft is.
Another misconception is that something found in the net is free of copyright, and it can be re-posted or distributed endlessly. Cars are found in the streets, it still doesn't entitle anyone to drive away with one unless being the owner.
You were perfectly right to make a point of not letting your text be reproduced elsewhere without permission, Mistress Milliscent. Most people tend to forget that when they see something they like, it's usually because it's someone's creation and a lot of work went into it.
Not to mention the fact -again- that this text was a very nice creation!

subworm,

Thank you. That is a valuable service to me.

M

nanshakh,

Thank you for this well thought out and informative post. I appreciate you taking the time to place it here.

I share your concerns about the negative effects 'reposting' on the web can potentially have on the arts.

I am blessed by all of you who comment upon this blog, it is wonderful moral support for me, and it is I think what I need to continue providing the blog. I used to write just as frequently, but I didn't share those writings. I simply sent them to my friends, and the wonderful people who play with me. I could of course easily go back to sharing my writings in that way as opposed to posting them publicly.

So, I guess this is a long way of saying that what I get out of the blog is recognition that people enjoy it.

Most writers (and all other artists) also need financial support for their art. I am concerned that such support is extremely hard to come by online.

My main concern however is the same as yours. That 'reposting' could harm artistic erotic endeavors. People like me could simply stop posting because they get tired of seeing their work taken without permission. People who need financial support could simply stop posting because the content that must be paid for is taken and posted elsewhere for free.

In time, this could become a trend that makes artistic erotic expression very difficult to come by, and that would be a horrible shame.

We each of course have it in our own power to stop this trend. We can simply choose to not repost anything which we do not hold copyright too, or which we do not have permission to use.

For those works that are protected by Creative Commons Licenses that permission is specifically spelled out, fair use and expired copyright are also perfectly legitimate ways to build upon the work of another.

Thank you as well for your further compliment, it is greatly appreciated.

M

Over the last several years, I have discovered some of my writings on other sites - fictions and non-fiction - and have simply explained to the site owner that the writing is mine, and should not have been published without asking permission. In most cases, I've had an apology, and the work was credited to me.

More irritating have been the several sites that I've found in which the work was published with no credit to me at all, giving the impression that the stories were written by the site owner or the person who "owns" the particular forum. In one case, various emails have gone unanswered, all the more irritating because many of the links on that site lead to pay sites.

I don't make any money from The Edge of Vanilla, and I do not think it appropriate for others to profit from my work.

I wonder how I would feel if somebody used my pictures as their own. Probably flattered, sine I'm sure I don't look nearly as alluring as Mistress M.
;-)

tom,

As to the picture incident, it was very strange reading the 'mistress's' words, her solicitation for submissives and all the while wondering just what those submissives would think when they showed up at her playspace and she wasn't me.

Very odd.

M

Quite often if they provide a link to our site I will turn a blind eye.

It is the blatent theft of posts that I have written without any accreditation and in some cases removal of any identifying links that really winds me up.

But you are right, there will always be someone out there who wants to make a living out of someone elses work.

Suzanne,

acker has wondered why I forgave him so very easily, but of course you pegged it with your comment.

He didn't try to hide my authorship of the post, so it was very easy to forgive.

I've never had a post stolen in the way you have, but I have had photo's of myself stolen with no credit back to me, and that is a truly horrible thing to happen.

M