ok, so this has recently sprung up regarding poor @missyplatina and her fics being threatened to be stolen. i noticed that as a general audience, most people don’t understand how stealing fics/guest reviews work, so im making this for informative purposes only.
guest reviews of ffnet are completely anonymous.
we can’t track their ip address or location, we don’t get a link to block them, they’re just there. the only defense we have is the ability to delete these reviews, but even then, the threat still looms.
from a computer, copy and pasting is impossible on ffnet, however, for people out there who post their stories on tumblr, that stuff can be copy and pasted easier than making a take n bake pizza.
it’s also possible for people to copy and paste stories off of ffnet through the mobile version, which does allow copy and paste. pretty much everything we post is up for grabs.
the problem is, if people do steal our fics, we have almost no means of finding out. usually people who steal stories arent dumb enough to keep them in the same fandom - one quick control find and they can switch every natsu to naruto and the author has virtually no way of finding where these possible replicas of their fics could have gone.
im saying this as a warning - i know id never want to wake up and find out that someone had stolen my stories and completely changed the characters, because god dammit i worked hard on that shit.
even if these threats are false and attention-seeking, it’s not exactly motivating to us when we’re exposed to exactly how easy it would be for someone to screw us over with the click of a mouse.
please, please, please, if you ever read something vaguely familiar, delve into it. always inform authors if you think theres a possibility their work has been stolen - it means the world to us.
don’t steal fics. it’s disgusting and lazy and it kinda makes me wanna scream.
thats my little rant. dont do drugs and dont send anon hate, kids.
