hey porn mags: stop stealing my shit.
Yeah, that means you, Tight Magazine. It’s appropriate that my rapey post was the one you chose to steal because, well…
And it’s one thing to have someone lift your writing. It’s something else to see that writing dumbed down and run through the imagined voice of a teen. I’ve just been blog-raped.
This is what I wrote:
And then, one evening, I was sitting at my desk with the windows open when I heard him down in the campo calling up to me. I heard, “Muta… Americana...” and when I stuck my head out the window, he waved furiously and then gestured for me to come down. I just shook my head, but he was making such a scene that I attempted broken Italian to hush him up. And when that didn’t work, I grabbed my apartment keys and ran downstairs to stress, emphatically, that he needed to go home. But the moment I cracked open the door, he pushed his way inside.
I broke into nervous laughter because I couldn’t believe the gall, and I tried to push him back out, but he wasn’t having it. He just pushed me against the wall and ground his body against me while he mumbled words I couldn’t understand. Ever the American, I thought, Is this legal? Can men do this?
This is what they wrote:
Italian guys are ballsy. This one would follow me all the way home, going like, “Mai dai,” over and over. It means like ‘come on…’. It was the sort of thing that’s funny at first, then isn’t, then comes back to being funny again because he would just not let up! Then he was outside my window, “Muta…Americana…” I was like “Shut up!” but he wouldn’t stop. When I opened the door to tell him to quit making a scene he pushed his way inside. I broke into nervous laughter because I couldn’t believe the gall…
The second I opened the door he gripped my body with both arms and threw me down on the bed, kicking the door closed behind us. My mind was buzzing. Can he do this? Is this legal? What the fuck?
Yeah.
*
Thanks to the wonderful reader who sent me this note, which I’m reprinting with permission:
My wife and I enjoy your blog, as well as the occasional ‘barely legal’ porn mag. Occasionally we even read the ‘girl copy’ that runs alongside the pictures, and explains how 18 year old Casey never thought of her butt that way until… etc.
So I was shocked to recognize a pretty close copy of your post ‘fucktoyism’ – about your ambiguous hook-up in Italy, accompanying pictures of “Jessie” in the most recent Tight magazine (July 2008, starting page 52). Maybe you re-wrote the story for them, or gave them permission to use it, but it seemed really sketchy to us. Here are some excerpts:
Italian guys are ballsy. This one would follow me all the way home, going like, “Mai dai,” over and over. It means like ‘come on…’. It was the sort of thing that’s funny at first, then isn’t, then comes back to being funny again because he would just not let up! Then he was outside my
window, “Muta…Americana…” I was like “Shut up!” but he wouldn’t stop. When I opened the door to tell him to quit making a scene he pushed his way inside. I broke into nervous laughter because I couldn’t believe the gall…The second I opened the door he gripped my body with both arms and threw me down on the bed, kicking the door closed behind us. My mind was buzzing. Can he do this? Is this legal? What the fuck?
It was like a porno. He thrust into me in one strong stroke. It was strong enough to make me jerk under his body. He was hyper-masculine, brutish, animalistic. He fucked me like he was fucking me into submission. And he kept at it, giving it to me in steady, strong, hard strokes; to remind me-again and again and again- that I was getting fucked! The thrusts felt hard enough to bruise me. I kept my eyes fixed on his forearm, the veins, the sinews, my mouth open with perpetual shock.
…I was just a body to be fucked, a cute, mute things from America that was now caught. I was being treated as nothing more than a hot throbbing and increasingly slutty cunt to be held down and fucked hard.
So as you can see, some of this is word for word, some of it isn’t, but it’s obviously the same. I’m guessing you weren’t involved, and if not, I think it’s really fucked up.
42 comments to “hey porn mags: stop stealing my shit.”
On June 1st, 2008 at 7:26 pm, What Liz Said said...
That’s just awful. I’m glad it was brought to your attention. Some people have no originality whatsoever. Of course they never think that they’ll get caught. I’m sorry, though. :/
On June 1st, 2008 at 8:03 pm, brownrabbit said...
Your original post is audacious, spare, graceful and brutish. It is astonishing writing. That post, quite frankly, is why I (obsessively) check to see if you’ve put up anything new 19 times day. This egregiously plagiarized mess loses all the psychology and all the poetry and all the muscularity of your writing… and with so few changes. … just goes to show that the artfulness really is in the details. I am duly appalled. Intellectual property infringers be damned. Damned!
On June 1st, 2008 at 8:04 pm, Maria said...
Uh, that’s awful. I’m glad you were informed – I hope they remedy it. This is becoming all to common nowadays.
On June 1st, 2008 at 8:18 pm, Thais said...
I tried looking up whois on the domain name, so that you all know who to express your feelings to:
Registrant: Make this info private
Mavety Media Group Ltd
225 Broadway
Room 2801
New York, NY 10007-3079
US
Domain Name: TIGHTMAG.COM
Administrative Contact :
Mavety Media Group Ltd
asheldon@MMGPUBLISH.COM
225 Broadway
Room 2801
New York, NY 10007-3079
US
Phone: (212) 966-8400
Fax: 999 999 9999
Technical Contact :
roccia, anthony **
tony@tonyroc.com
2524 South 5th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19148
US
Phone: 215-432-3973
Fax: na
Record expires on 21-Jan-2010
Record created on 20-Jan-1997
Database last updated on 04-Dec-2007
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=tightmag.com
On June 1st, 2008 at 8:23 pm, A. said...
I’m the reader who sent the email – my jaw absolutely dropped when I realized where I recognized the story from. It’s really, really bizarre, with some odd things added in about George Bush and (as you can see from the website) “How to fuck an American”. I’ll take a high-resolution picture of the pages and email it to you later. I hope you can really pursue this, I wonder how often it happens…
By the way, I am a girl with a wife! For some reason I feel weird that folks would assume I’m a dude!
On June 1st, 2008 at 9:37 pm, pitselah said...
wow. i understand why they would steal it as your stories are incredible and your writing top notch, but to take it and butcher it? sorry that both occurred.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 am, kt shorb said...
sorry about the plagiarism, d. as a writer and a former college lecturer who would try to hammer it into students’ heads what constitutes intellectual theft, this indeed troubles me. as someone who looks to your posts as writing that treats sex in an especially celebratory-yet-critical way, a way that pokes and prods at the current american culture surrounding sex, and a way that is just way hotter than most porn can ever be… well. i just shake my head. sigh.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 2:52 am, Disconnected said...
Everyone is sorry, which is supportive and it sucks that people freely steal texts of the web, probably hoping that it’s too hard to trace for it to come back to them, but no one seems to have asked whether it will be possible for you to do anything about it? I’ve heard rumours that people in the US can get sued some times…
Do you havecopyright over the writing? I haven’t read the blogspot.com EULA, but some kind of answer may be found there (fortunately or unfortunately).
On June 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am, BOINKOLOGY | Dear Porn Mags: No Plagiarism, Please said...
[...] apparently we were giving the porno mags too much credit. It seems our friend Debauchette was recently plagiarized by Tight magazine, which reprinted, and mangled, one of her past posts, with no permission and no [...]
On June 2nd, 2008 at 10:22 am, Ruiner said...
Is there any form of legal recourse you could take? if you’re into that sort of thing that is.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 10:48 am, Charity said...
I’m not sure which is the worse crime- the theft, or the terrible alterations. Talk about adding insult to injury!
On June 2nd, 2008 at 11:21 am, Tom Allen said...
D, I’m really sorry to hear that this happened.
Over the years, I’ve written a few erotic stories and posted them in several web story forums. A few years ago I found two of them, one simply reposted under another name, and one modified slightly, but only slightly, much like your own. I contacted the webmasters of both places. One was responsive, the other must not check his mail. :-\
I don’t write professionally, and I have no plans to quit my day job for the lucrative career of writing internet porn. But it’s still incredibly galling (heh) to see that some people have no sense of shame and no qualms about plagiarizing so blatantly. The truly ridiculous part is that had any of them bothered to contact me to ask if they could include it, I’d have agreed without even thinking about it.
Hope this resolves well for you.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 11:23 am, Anonymous said...
I’m no intellectual property lawyer, but I am a lawyer, and know just enough about intellectual property to fake my way through a 45 second discussion at a party.
You do have copyright just by virtue of having written it. Nothing else is necessary.
Find yourself an intellectual property lawyer who can write a nice, crap your pants cease and desist letter. That ought to do it.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 11:51 am, oshkosh said...
You should check with an IP (intellectual property) lawyer. I am about 99 percent sure that you have a case for copyright infringement. (I’m an attorney, but I don’t practice in the IP area.) In general, everything you write (and publish) is copyrighted by you (or your employer if you are writing for them). I don’t know whether you have to expressly reserve the copyright (”copyright reserved by debauchette, 2008″). I know reserving the copyright is a good practice, but I don’t think it is necessary. I also don’t know whether wordpress.com, or whatever site hosts your blog, contractually gives you additional legal rights or waives any legal rights that you would otherwise have.
However, ripping you off like this and publishing it in a magazine as if the material is theirs (not merely commenting on your blog) appears to be pretty much a slam dunk case — I would think. If so, you might get damages, attorneys’ fees, and an injunction ordering them to knock it off.
I would look into this if I were you.
I hope London continues to be fun.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm, Disconnected said...
I think it’s so cool to see the range of people who read this blog. Hooray!
On June 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm, Ed said...
Last year some people from a Canadian porn company contacted me to write dirty stories for their “forums” type digest. I’m a professional writer, and while the pay wasn’t great, it was beer money for doing something that’s pretty fun to do anyhow, plus I had a few lying around I could submit to them. Months went by and they’d stop contacting me, then I’d harass them and get some kind of tall tale about how the editor had been traveling in Europe for two months. They finally stopped replying to me altogether a few months ago. I have no way of knowing if they ever even used any of the stories, and I don’t even really care about the money, I just wanted my contributor copies. I thought it would be cool to see some of my dirty stories in print, you know?
As much as many of us enjoy porn, it does seem like a lot of the people who go into porn from the business side of things are total douchebags.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 3:12 pm, AgtShadow said...
Well, I went to law school but I am not a lawyer (IANAL) so take whatever I say with a grain or two of salt. You should consult a lawyer in the suitable field, no client-attorney relationship is formed by my comments, blah blah blah, etc.
Copyright invests upon fixture of the work in a tangible medium of expression (or something to that effect – it’s been a while). You don’t need to claim it or reserve it, it’s automatically there regardless and/or unless disclaimed or otherwise modified (e.g., works made for hire, contracts, etc.).
Problem, though. If you were to bring a legal action, you would have to disclose the source (this blog) and your name. (I’m pretty sure you can’t file a lawsuit anonymously.) And if I recall correctly, you don’t want your name associated with this blog.
What I might suggest, however, is sending the webmaster a cease & desist letter demanding that they remove any and all material that was purloined from your website. Identify the story & web page. Threaten legal action, wave a flag, sound the trumpet, brandish a cutlass, etc. I’m don’t think there’s a penalty for *not* bringing a legal action when you otherwise rightfully could (except for losing the right to bring the action due to waiting too long). (Again, IANAL.)
Yes, it sucks. Unfortunately, in this case the remedy may be worse than the act itself. And with the ubiquity of teh internets, these sorts of things will only become more common. But take some measure of comfort in knowing that you have a loyal base of readers, at least some of whom will openly despise the culprit. One corrective measure is simply word of mouth. Reputation and discussion are powerful weapons and you wield both with authority.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 3:15 pm, AgtShadow said...
I should have been clearer in my previous comment but that’s all US-centric. If the infringer and/or you are outside the US, different law may apply.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 3:26 pm, Tangawisi said...
FYI anyone reading this comment: Copyright is a default setting. You don’t have to apply for it. You can put on your blog that YOUR material is copyrighted to attempt to deter others from stealing it, but there is no registration process:
“Copyrighting your work is probably the easiest part of writing, because your work is automatically protected the moment you write it down.” From http://www.writing-world.com/rights/copyright.shtml.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm, Viviane’s Sex Carnival » Blog Archive » links for 2008-06-02 said...
[...] hey porn mags: stop stealing my shit. « debauchette Yeah, that means you, Tight Magazine. It’s appropriate that my rapey post was the one you chose to steal because, well… And it’s one thing to have someone lift your writing. It’s something else to see that writing dumbed down and run through the i (tags: plagiarism) [...]
On June 2nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm, szdivine said...
as a writer, a translator and daughter of a lawyer,
you should talk to a lawyer. and then sue.
and I almost never say that. but.
what they did isn´t right, and it isn´t legal.
if they have a good lawyer, they will hopefully want to settle.
good luck…
On June 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm, luna said...
Wow, that’s just horrible to see that people will stoop to any level to fill the content spaces of their site. I know I’d be furious and do all things possible to get an apology and possibly compensation for stealing your writing and not having the nerve to say (inspired by debauchette or anything. And I thought all I had to deal with were rss sploogers and theft that way.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 5:00 pm, oshkosh said...
AgtShadow is correct that you would almost certainly have to file suit in your own name. I understand your concerns about publicity, so that may limit your options. I agree, however, that the cease and desist letter would be the first step, regardless of whether you go forward with litigation.
Depending on the jurisdiction, you might be able to sue under pseudonym (with approval of the court), but I doubt that an adult could get away with that in a civil case.
Of course, I was also assuming U.S. law would apply all the way around.
The worse thing is that this is causing boring legal analysis to clog the blog! Send a nasty letter to the magazine and then return to your regular programming. Please.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 7:32 pm, Kelly said...
You most definitely have the right to contact the lawyer and demand action! I plead with you to do that. So many publications are doing this to blogs these day. I actually recently caught an extremely well known teen magazine stealing a blog post of mine and reprinting it as a fictional story, a little re-written, but in certain areas word for word. I immediately got a lawyer on it, and got proper compensation for it. Whether you are in it for the money or not, you are a writer and you have to protect yourself in these situation and make sure that people and companies know that you are serious about your blog.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 7:50 pm, Wallflower said...
If Tight Magazine is at all inclined to do the right thing, or are at least smart, they’ll acknowledge the problem and wash their hands of the person who plagiarized your piece.
On June 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 pm, Damion said...
While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, plagiarism should beget the plagiarist with the fleas of a thousand camels under their armpits (as uttered by Max Klinger from M*A*S*H)
On June 2nd, 2008 at 10:22 pm, Ms Naughty said...
I feel your pain. I’ve had that happen to me a couple of times when I was trying to be a “real” (print) freelance journo. Juice magazine happily paraphrased one of my articles and didn’t apologise. And FHM told me they liked the idea for an article I pitched them… so they promptly gave it to a staff writer. Bastards.
I guess the lesson is to remain ever vigilant… and maybe hire a lawyer if you can find one.
On June 3rd, 2008 at 4:41 am, MonMouth said...
Well, at least they tried to apply a thin veneer of disguise on the post they stole from you. One of my posts got lifted wholesale by some top-shelf bottomfeeders, and I would have remained none the wiser if a reader hadn’t sent me a scan of the page. We put our stuff in the public domain, sometimes we get proper credit, and sometimes it just gets ripped off. My condolences, though, on having your elegant prose turned into pap.
On June 3rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm, isil said...
creative commons
On June 3rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm, collegehookerboy said...
Hahahaha. I laughed at the way they added in the teenage lingo into you’re story. Thats a hot fucking story. I wanna get raped. But yeah you should write them. I’m a journalism major and I deal with copyright issues alot. If you say you have a lawyer and you are ready to lake legal action then they will likely settle with you – just a small amount – but enough to scare them.
On June 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm, Wendy said...
Unfortunately a lawsuit (or even a C&D) might require you to divulge your identity, which I’m sure is the last thing you want to do. They appear to have a parent company, which would have a lot to lose and is probably risk averse enough to know not to do this. I would contact them if I were you, even anonymously, and tell them to 1) cease immediately, 2) print a clarification in a future issue and 3) make a generous donation on behalf of “Debauchette” to your favorite charity.
On June 4th, 2008 at 2:12 am, Ms Naughty said...
A day later and I discover some other blog has lifted an entire article of mine. So I’m really sharing your pain now. :(
On June 4th, 2008 at 2:21 am, I Hate Plagiarists said...
[...] the blogosphere heard about the frustration of blogger Debauchette, who discovered that porn mag Tight had lifted large parts of her writing and passed it off as [...]
On June 4th, 2008 at 9:36 am, Wallflower said...
I’ve been extremely fortunate over the years in that no one has lifted a word of my writing. Er…wait
On June 4th, 2008 at 3:10 pm, badinfluencegirl said...
man
man
man
that is so damn rude
man.
*shakes head*
On June 5th, 2008 at 11:30 am, Junkbuzzed: sex, lies, and .jpgs said...
[...] the last few days, Debauchette and Ms. Naughty (go read them; we’ll wait) have been bit by the greasy snake of plagiarism. Most [...]
On June 5th, 2008 at 6:12 pm, Dilettante said...
I agree with MonMouth – condolences of having something very well written turn into garbage.
It’s uncouth and nasty. You could just write the magazine a nasty letter – it’s easier than bringing a lawyer into it. Good luck!
On June 10th, 2008 at 7:31 pm, Cosmos Emeritus said...
I find myself uncertain which crime is the more vile; the plagiarism or the horrid editing that was done to hide it.
As a part-time editor, I experienced several instances where writers submit plagiarized material. That the editorial staff of Tight allowed this to be printed is a demonstration of their malfeasance and ineptitude.
If you can, spank them where it counts.
On June 11th, 2008 at 2:43 am, desirea madison said...
The girl that included word for word sentences from your blog obviously did not go to college because they would have beat the definition of plagerism into her head. You should write the magazine and get a settlement. Maybe even a job, since yours was so much better.
On June 13th, 2008 at 4:02 am, anthro.pophago.us » del.icio.us links for 2008.06.12 said...
[...] hey porn mags: stop stealing my shit. « debauchette [...]
On June 21st, 2008 at 11:35 am, Colette said...
I would be ripshit if somebody did that to me. It’s so pathetic to have to steal somebody else’s thoughts and words.
Great blog. I’m glad I discovered it.
On January 27th, 2009 at 6:41 am, Curious said...
oh dear. porn mags have reached a new all time low.
They clearly thought you wouldn’t notice. it’s ridiculous.
sue, sue away. but then the your identity would be in danger.
That’s a hard pill to swallow.