RE: We Can't Have Anything Nice: A Warning to My Fellow Steemitzombies Users
I don't understand a lot about steemit so far. I'm a little worried about posting my writing on the site since after seven days, it becomes permanent and cannot be edited. It is my writing, but since it becomes "permanent", does that mean the blockchain possesses it? I have the copyright to the writing since I have it available for sale on Amazon and Smashwords, but still it worries me a little. That's why I have added a "copyright by" at the end of each chapter.
I know that situation is different from the reblogging of old posts, but the fact that someone believes it's a form of plagiarism to repost your earlier writing makes my paranoid nature start to wonder whether the "blockchain" becomes the owner of your writing. In essence, when you repost your content, it's no longer considered your content since it's "possessed" by the blockchain.
As far as I am aware we own our work. The thing is there are no actual rules to violate here. We are supposed to have community based policing of spam, plagiarism, and fraud but some people are to dim to understand the distinction between spam and posting a revision (which to mind is a very normal thing for any writer).
I am no legal expert (I majored in lit) but I would imagine if you hold the copyright no one else can claim ownership. I have gone through the long faq but I do not recall seeing anything about the subject.
I don't know exactly what violation that person was referring to because the comment was vague but I can only imagine it was an accusation of plagiarism because it was all my work from an earlier post. I used some screen captures and a picture that was essentially promotional material but that easily falls under fair use (a fact which I mention at the end of the post).
I feel you about paranoia though. Most of what I post here is stuff that I come up with on the fly so If it was lost to me it isn't a huge deal but for someone who makes content that represents a large investment of time and work it is kind of scary.
With Wackos it's not such a big deal. It took a lot of time, but I had to write it anyway. I have completed the trilogy, but a fourth needs to be written to finish it. After that is done, I'll either quit writing completely or move on to something else.
I feel you. I took a three year break where I didn't write anything and I am still scrubbing off all that that rust. I had planned to seek a post graduate degree but I was just so sick of writing stuff that I didn't really believe in and I found myself doing that more and more so I finished what I was doing and I took a break for a while.
You have some talent though so I hope you keep writing. It's a lot of work and whether it will be a success or not is a craps shoot but it is like they say about of the lottery: "You can't win if you don't play."
It's therapy. I suck at writing, but I've been doing it a long time. Yeah, it's a craps shoot. I really don't care about success, I just wish more eyeballs will see it and maybe feel it wasn't a complete waste of their time.
Same but you aren't bad. I don't know what your writing process is like but from my own experience editing and polishing ones own work is a bitch. Writing can come pretty easy if you have a vision of what you want to say but it is hard to criticize and not over criticize your own work. For myself, this is the cause of most of the issues with what I write. I miss a mistake because I love the sound of sentence so much or something like that. It also makes me play it too safe sometimes and I remove something that might be "too edgy" or too whatever. That is my flaw anyway.
The trick, I think, is to learn to recognize whatever it is that you don't like about your work. Once you see the issue, you can make an effort to avoid it. Which is what I am not doing right now because I am procrastinating on editing my next post lol.
Thanks for the inspiration. I agree that the editing process sucks since it's never finished.
I'm looking forward to your next post.
The blockchain actually functions rather nicely as proof of ownership and date of creation. If you ever have to defend your ownership of your work in court, it would be an asset, not a detriment.
However, by posting here, you are in some sense giving up the right to ever completely remove your work from being available to the public for free if they know where to look. How much that matters to you I don't know.
Considering the meager sales I have had, I'm more concerned with eyeballs seeing my work and possibly wanting to read more. I have other books they can buy if they want. Mostly, I wrote Wackos because I wanted to. It was therapy of sorts; an attempt to make sense of the chaos swirling around as the earth nears the black hole.
By the way, thanks for clarifying the role of the blockchain.