Okay, I’m not on Medium as much as I was in the past. Things change, and I’m busy with other interests. Despite this, I still check stories and articles ever so often and hope to publish here more frequently in the future.
With that said, I was distressed and disappointed to discover that plagiarized works exist on Medium. This is especially true in the erotic category. A friend of mine, an amateur author who dabbles in erotic stories, has found several tales on here lifted from Literotica and other sites republished, without consent, on Medium.
Tales copied word for word from works that have been up for years under pen names at other sites. The publishers of this give no credit to the original writer and promote those stories (with the same title) as the writer on Medium as their original work.
This site isn’t supposed to be for that kind of publishing. The stolen kind. What justification can a Medium writer use for this kind of theft. I’m guessing they’d claim the original author hasn’t filed legal copyright. Since when is theft okay if the person hasn’t proclaimed with a government agency, this is my story?
Yes, in the copyright’s spirit and common practice, it’s your copyrighted material when you first publish it. However, for court purposes, one must buy a copyright. This creates a legal loophole. You must have filed a copyright to file a claim in court.
How do we judge people who take others’ works? It is possibly more than we can ask for Medium to regulate this. But I thought we populated this place with ethical writers. Perhaps not as many as we believe are honest, or so it seems.
I’m not sure what the reporting process is for plagiarism here. I’m also not confident that Medium cares about whether published work is the property of the poster or other folks’ work.
It is disappointing to learn that Medium has stolen work on it.
Just my two cents worth, but shame on anyone who takes another’s work and posts it as their own.
