Something that happened recently has been bothering me. I feel I'm being cast in a certain I'm certain light, and I think I need to explain my side better.
In the interest of helping a friend I went on Instagram to get an account to take down posts of writing that weren't theirs. This was a request for help, and I responded, because it really bothers me when people do that. I've seen a lot of it going around. I know it's a terrible thing for creators to have their intellectual property stolen, and it's definitely against the law. Many people don't realize what a huge amount of trouble they can get in for doing this, actually.
So, I followed the link that was provided, not even looking at the account, just looking at the post, and responding to it. I told the poster that the work was not theirs, that it was my friend's, and they are breaking the law. I then looked at a few other posts, and saw all the other works there, all totally improperly shared and improperly credited aka stolen, and told the poster as much.
When my friend took a screen shot of the account, I reblogged it, with proper credit through the regrann app, and shared it myself. In my post I called the owner of the account a "jerk". This was before I realized that it was a teenager I was talking about. It wasnt until I went back to talk to my friend about legal discourse that I realized the posters age.
After I posted the reblog, the OP came to talk to me about things. In this discussion I told them that they needed to take down all of the stolen works, in essence, I said, you need to delete your account because you've stolen everything there. I did not anticipate their reaction to this.
I went back to my friends to let them know the OP's reaction, and everyone seemed unconcerned at that time, so I became unconcerned as well. It definitely seemed like a spoiled child acting out because they got caught doing something they knew was wrong, even though they kept saying "I didn't know!" To an experienced parent, it comes across an awful lot like the old "it wasn't me" defense, when clearly it was. We all basically rolled our eyes. To me I felt like I was talking to a group of friendly moms. Clearly, this wasn't the case.
When speaking to the OP on Instagram, I think I may have come across brash, but when I spoke to them later, they completely understood why. It was to make my points stand out. That what they were doing was absolutely against the law (most certainly in the USA, likely in the UK, many countries in the Europe, IDK where else). We have since worked out our differences, made apologies, and the OP has said they will learn how to share properly.
In speaking to my own child about this, who at 17, is very experienced in the world of the internet, he believes tha my actions were not as harsh as I'm placing upon myself, and what others may be believing, as well.
Unfortunately, no matter what the truth may be, depression always tell us a different story. Right now, I'm trying not to believe that. I'm trying to believe that I was helping a friend. If this kind of instance comes up again, I'll definitely rethink some actions, for sure, but I still won't hesitate to go to bat for my friends. As one said "I'm the Mama Bear." And that's true. You don't touch my babies.
If you believe I've fucked up, this is me asking for forgiveness. Honestly, I don't want to count how many times I fuck things up in a week. Sometimes I feel like my life is one big fuck up. But that's neither here nor there. I accept that I was not great in this instance. I will try to do better next time.
If you read this whole thing, I thank you. If you think I'm still worth following, I thank you for that, too. And, if you think I'm actually worth being your friend, well, you might make me cry, which btw, I hate with a passion.
