Over the last couple of weeks me and some of my good friends from silcotwt and tumblr have been working on this collab to celebrate one year of community! Enjoy our Silco’s and all of their various crimes <3
(from left to right: @bethegusto, @mauvedraws, @rcntlydcccased, @skale93, @/doctorstrcnge, @/silcohuspat, @nxarrt, @/_abikore, @/_voodoodles, @olethrus-arts, @whiskikistudio, @/arty_the_ninth)
As some of you know, I was recently made aware that my fic Drink With Me had been plagiarised, and was being monetised as an erotic audio by a company called Best Kept Secret (BKS).
I'm relieved to confirm that this has now been resolved, and I cannot express how grateful I am to each and every person who rallied behind me on this — those who left comments under the audio, those who filed reports on YouTube and Patreon, those who reached out to me to offer condolences and advice, those who helped spread awareness to get the word out further, those who were simply enraged on my behalf — you have no idea how much it meant to me to have a community of people at my back during what was an extremely upsetting and stressful time. I truly don't think this would have been resolved (or at least not nearly as quickly) without your help. Thank you. And I hope you know that I am always ready to throw a molotov for any one of you too <3
Now, because I'm a propa Brit who loves a cuppa, I'm going to spill the tea (Jokes aside – I'm sharing this because I think it's important to have an open record incase anyone else finds themselves facing a similar situation in the future, god forbid).
[[OG tumblr post for context if needed]]
On 15th May it was brought to my attention that my Silco fanfic Drink With Me had been plagiarised, and was being monetised by an erotic audio company called Best Kept Secret.
The full audio story was locked behind a subscription paywall on Patreon, but I was able to access the free SFW sample via their YouTube channel. I listened to a few random snippets at various different points in the audio — it couldn't have been more than 30 seconds worth in total — and this, along with the story description, was more than enough to convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Drink With Me had been plagiarised in its entirety. Even the story title, In The Dark With Me, was a poorly veiled appropriation.
It was late, I was tired, I had just finished watching Project Hail Mary on discord with some buddies and was feeling some type of way about Rocky, and the realisation that my beloved fic had been stolen sent my brain into a weird sort of frozen state between fight or flight. I left a number of comments on the YouTube video calling them out, and went to bed feeling sick to my stomach. In the morning, I checked again, but none of my comments had been responded to. After attempting and failing to find a method of communication via Patreon, I was able to locate the company's website and submitted a message via their contact page form, providing them with my email address and urging them to contact me as a matter of urgency.
Maybe I could have given them a little longer to respond, but by this point I was completely gutted and felt utterly helpless. My words had been stolen, and now my words were being ignored, and it made me feel voiceless. So, by lunchtime, I sent a message to a few Silco friends to ask for their help, hoping that if a few other accounts were to leave comments under the YouTube video it might help to get BKS's attention and put some pressure on them to respond...
Boy howdy did y'all cause a ruckus. Their YouTube video was flooded with angry comments calling them out, and within 12 hours it had been privated. Big shout out to @bethegusto and @silcozaunite for making awareness posts on TikTok, Twitter and Tumblr – thank you for leading the charge whilst I was incapacitated by my bum-ass nervous system <3
That evening, an employee of BKS (Ellie) reached out to me directly via Tumblr dm to initiate conversation. She informed me that this audio script had been licensed to them by an external author claiming it as their own original work. So, not only did this author steal my words, they got paid for them. We then moved the conversation over to email, and Ellie asked me to send her the link to Drink With Me so that she could check the source material against their audio. I have to say, I felt very vindicated that it only took her a few minutes to confirm blatant plagiarism, and that the matter would be immediately escalated to their CEO.
I went to sleep that night feeling cautiously optimistic, but also incredibly moved and loved by the Silco fandom.
The next morning I woke to an email from Rob, the founder and CEO of Best Kept Secret. He offered his sympathies and apologised for what had happened, and corroborated what Ellie had said previously; that this audio script had been submitted to them by an external writer claiming it as their own original work, and that they had paid that author a license fee to use it. He confirmed that they will be blacklisting this author from any future projects, and that their new Head of Writing is looking into implementing plagiarism protections going forward.
He then offered me two options for resolution:
1.) They change the writing credit to my name, and pay me a license fee for the continued use of the audio across their platforms
2.) They remove the audio from their platforms entirely
I chose the latter, and responded with the below on 17th May:
[Quick interjection here to say that this email is exempt from the whole 'hey don't fucking steal my words' thing — if anyone ever needs to use it or any part of it as a template or verbatim to battle their own case of plagiarism then please do so]
During the time in which I was waiting for a reply from Rob, I decided to reach out directly to the author who had plagiarised my work. I don't know why exactly, or what I was hoping to achieve, I just felt that it was right they should face the person they hurt.
I'm not going to share any screenshots from that interaction, because at least one of us knows it's wrong to share another person's words without their permission, but it was a brief conversation, and not particularly dramatic. They had the grace to be ashamed of their actions, and apologised for the hurt they caused. They also confirmed that they will be paying BKS back the money they took as a license fee.
On 19th May Rob replied to my email to confirm that they have deleted the audio from their Patreon and website, and that their social media team have removed any content related to it from Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. And that if any instances of it appear again on any of their platforms, in any capacity, to let them know so that they can remove it as fast as possible. Additionally, they ran the author's other BKS works through a plagiarism checker and manually looked through those results, and were able to confirm that the rest of their scripts were at least their own original works.
They also posted the following public announcement on their Patreon:
[[Direct link to the Patreon post here]]
Finally, Rob thanked me for raising those other points regarding genAI usage and a donation to AO3, and said they will feed these back to their marketing and tech teams which in my opinion is corporate slang for "lmfao we definitely aren't going to do that"
From the sounds of it, this isn't the first time this company has had an issue with stolen works, and despite their assurances that plagiarism protections are being put in place, I would urge writers and creatives to keep an eye out regardless. If anyone ever finds themselves needing to reach out to BKS to contest their own cases of plagiarism then please don't hesitate to DM me and I will happily supply the relevant email details.
So that's all folks. I'm pleased to be wrapping this whole mess up so I can get back to what's important; daydreaming about crusty old men. Thank you all, once again, for your incredible fighting support. Silco would be so proud of his fandom. And I also want to thank @dudewithastick for bringing this to my attention in the first place. You the MVP for real <3
our beloved @ink-and-dagger (InkAndDagger on ao3), and author of the iconic Silco fanfic ‘Drink with Me’ has had their work plagiarized & monetized by a large erotic audio company called 'Best Kept Secrets' WITHOUT her permission.
Inky has not compensated, nor even credited. she has attempted to reach out to them to resolve it, but those attempts have been ignored.
if y’all can spare few minutes to flood that video’s comment section on youtube to call them out on their theft, it could help put the pressure on them to respond to her.
SUPPORT INKYS WORK HERE
💬 7 🔁 139 ❤️ 984 · Drink With Me 🥃 · Banner by @kikorenart 🖤
[Main fic link 👆🏼 ]
Silco x Fem!Reader | Explicit, NSFW | Wc: 138K
Slow Bur
The Silco community is honestly full of just the absolute best people ever. Thank you to everyone who has rallied behind me on this, and to @dudewithastick for bringing it to my attention in the first place. I started the day feeling sick to my stomach about it all, but now, whatever happens, I feel so much better just from seeing all the people who are willing to fight for me on this. This really is the best community ever. Love you all <3 <3 <3
No because what's actually getting me is not even the similarities anymore.
It's the fact nobody even asked Inky.
Like you loved Drink With Me enough to shuffle around the furniture, lie about the zipcode and attach a fake mustache, but not enough to send a two-sentence message to the person who wrote it???
The lack of basic courtesy is what's taking me out. And this is a pretty big ASMR channel so they must have known at some point someobody would notice?
Like damn. Stand up. Have shame.
Reported that whole mess and I hope others follow.
Disgusting. Who even knows how many audio books or e-books out there are just stolen fanfiction. And it sounds like "Best Kept Secrets" just takes people at their word that the scripts they're licensing aren't plagiarized? Like, you have no plagiarism protections in place?
Don't take this shit laying down. You own the content of your stories, even if you don't own the characters. That's why the legality around fanfiction is more complicated than fanart. This story belongs to Inky, full stop, and this scumbag plagiarist and publisher have no right to it.
I finally got around to writing this for AO3. I will be going back through Season 1 to update the prompts accordingly since they were so short when I started.
TikTok and Tumblr both have character limits, therefore each of the chapters will be significantly shortened on both platforms in order to fit.
If you follow the story, please go to AO3 so you can read each chapter in its entirety and you don’t miss anything! 😄
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