@WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL Why don't Webnovel respond to my DMCA request when I reported it over 7 times.
Plagiarism
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You mean, besides the fact that you're (respectfully) a no-name author with probably very limited irrefutable proof of copyright ownership and you're asking for help from a company based in a country notorious for their lax enforcement of intellectual property law and copyright protections?
Odds are, the reports haven't even been read. This site is perpetually busted, and the most recent update galactically screwed things up even worse and it has stayed screwed up for days with no fixes and no communication.
It really really sucks that this is happening to you, and I sympathize so much more than I can explain. I would change this in a heartbeat if I had any way to do so.
I don't mean to be terse in this reply, but seriously, if you think WN is actively concerned about your book being stolen when they can't even be concerned with the basic operation of their service, I'm afraid you may be a bit naive.
You wanna get a ton of attention about it being stolen? Why not leave a thousand 1 star reviews on the stolen work with the plagiarism complaint, as well as a link to your original posting of the novel. That'll probably grab the attention you're looking for.
Clowniac I have proof. All of my books are written by hand, dated and then typed online. I have the book on two online platforms, thumb drives, google drives, word. If that's not proof I don't know what is. But I get it, the only plagiarism they care about is there own. But if the company I am contracted with won't say or do a thing to them then I shouldn't expect any better.
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Mounchy All of my books are written by hand, dated and then typed online. I have the book on two online platforms, thumb drives, google drives, word. If that's not proof I don't know what is.
Hate to break it to you, but none of that constitutes anything close to irrefutable proof in the realm of copyright.
- Handwritten pages could just be hand-copied from someone else's work. There is no way to prove they were written at a specific time in the past without independent 3rd party verification from a credible governmental or corporate institution.
- You probably cannot prove definitively you are the one who put the work on those platforms, and even if you did that serves as absolutely no burden of proof you wrote them first and didn't just steal them from someone who wrote the story but only posted it online after you did.
- word and drive files can be copy-pasted from another digital source and have their file data altered by third party software to appear to have last been edited at a specific date in order to serve as "proof" of original ownership. Even if you have files that show a clear history of writing and editing that extended far before the time the story was stolen, it's still not solid proof that you actually wrote it first.
I know all of this seems very unfair, but the burden of proof for plagiarism is firmly on the one making the accusation, not on the one being accused, and the burden of proof is exceedingly high. All of this serves to protect legitimate copyright holders from some rando just claiming to have come up with something first and taking all of it away. You, unfortunately, are on the proving side of the argument despite (as you say) being the rightful IP owner. This means you unfortunately will either need to retain legal counsel with experience in international copyright law, as well as provide certified, concrete proof that the IP belongs to you and that you are the sole owner of its creative properties and pursue legal action, OR just wait and see if WN does the "right" thing.
Clowniac The burden of proof in a DMCA claim falls on the accused, to claim infringement through the DMCA procedures, it suffices if you send the proper documents and swear under penalty of perjury that to the best of your knowledge the material you report infringes on a copyright you own. The other party can dispute the claim, after which you can go to court, but the only proof you need to make a claim is the oath thats part of the claim.
That is why there is so much abuse of the DMCA, because there is no need to provide actual proof in the process before you go to court. Companies can get away with that on Youtube and other platforms precisely because there is no need for actual proof and they just use software for it without actually checking to avoid doubting the truth of their claim.
@Mounchy The reason WN doesn't reply? There could be a few. For a DMCA claim, you need to fill in the right document with legally correct information, so for instance you can't use an internet pseudonym as your name unless it's also a registered entity in the US that you represent. You also need to link to the infringing material, every page of it. So just the novels main page would not neccesarily be enough (although it would be possible to find it that way, it wouldn't be a link to an instance of infringement). And the most important is that it's actually a DMCA claim, as there are some improper forms floating around, which do not meet the requirements set by the DMCA. If there is a mistake they don't neccesarily need to act or reply. They can act, but depending on the nature of the mistake they may not have to.
Because plagiarism is a big part of Chinese culture, you can't expect them to take a nobody like you seriously when they steal from everyone else. Just look at all the translations they have stolen, they own the rights of the source material, but have no right to take the labor of someone who translated said material. But what are they doing? They are bribing and extorting translators, and if they don't comply qidian just steals their work without any ramifications.
Here is my advice to you. If your claim is true, then just rally everyone against the one who stole from you. Spam every chapter and write 1000 reviews and like your own reviews and comments to get them to the top. Get your truth out there, don't expect justice from a communist company like qidian.
At this.point I have given up but the good thing is that the person took the chapters down. They now need to take down the entire novel.
Fight for your rights. Don't give up. It's your work but they stole it.
Clowniac The DMCA can be enforced on webnovel, they are actively providing a service to US citizens and thus bound by the DMCAs rules. Foreign entities have been found guilty of US copyright violations and punished for it. If you think the DMCA can't be enforced on foreign entities, you need to study up some more.
In case of non compliance, a cooperation with local enforcement is used to the extent that they have similar laws and if that has no result the site gets blocked. There is at least personal jurisdiction to be found as long as it's targeted at US citizens, regardless of where the site is hosted or the company originates from. There is legal precedent for this and foreign websites have been taken down for ignoring DMCA requests, even ones from China. China has signed international agreements to, among other things, assist in enforcing international copyright infringement judgements.
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Matirion Foreign entities have been found guilty of US copyright violations and punished for it. If you think the DMCA can't be enforced on foreign entities, you need to study up some more.
Of course foreign entities can be held liable for DMCA violations. It's just exceedingly difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, and is not guaranteed to work even part of the time.
Foreign corporate entities have been found guilty in the past when sued by domestic corporate entities to the tunes of millions or billions of dollars in damages and legal fees, as well as potential international sanctions at the behest of these corporate entities by the federal government.
However, this doesn't stop the millions of "Chinese knock-off" producers that steal intellectual property from US companies and individuals and produce lower-quality, cheaper copies, even when doing so is overtly theft and both the original IP owner and the federal government send cease and desists to the thieves. If you think DMCAs and intellectual property theft concerns are actively respected by the Chinese legal system on a consistent scale, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Coach, Nike, Reebok, AMD, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, McDonalds, etc. would all like a word.
Things only get worse for smaller entities who don't have the means to enforce their DMCA. And that's assuming the Chinese government doesn't just step in and protect the company being accused from legal action.
Matirion There is legal precedent for this and foreign websites have been taken down for ignoring DMCA requests, even ones from China.
Again, via the efforts of massive American corporations with the full backing of the US government to the tunes of millions or billions in cost.
And yes, the site will be blocked in the US. Sure. Except the overwhelming majority of Qidian's money and userbase come from non-American sources, and those sources won't be affected by the site being blocked in a specific region. And again, it being blocked doesn't serve to resolve the issue at hand, which is intellectual property theft of writing that will still be live on all non-American access channels.
Matirion China has signed international agreements to, among other things, assist in enforcing international copyright infringement judgements.
Yeah. Okay. Ask Intel how well that's working out for them.
Again, the term I used is "functionally useless", not non-existent. And for the vast majority of people, especially individual citizens without lots of clout, resources, and time, DMCAs against foreign companies are frankly in most cases a waste of time, in spite of all of these "protections". That's my only point.
You're not wrong about how the rules as written should and sometimes do operate. I'm simply asserting that how things "should be" is rarely how things actually are.
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Are you sure the reader took it down and not webnovel?
I'm not arguing whether it was one or the other since I have no idea. But books on Webnovel can't actually be deleted by authors. Though I would assume webnovel has a way to do it through the backend.