Heads-up to HP fic authors

[celandineb]

Look here. pureimmortal has put up a very long list of fic titles (no authors, no summaries, no links, just titles) and is evidently distributing said fics to anyone who requests them through this Yahoo groupThere are a couple listed there that might be mine (none of the really obvious titles, but "Aftermath" and "Secrets" are titles I've used), and I

Comments

[aome]

Thanks for the heads-up. Draco In Darkness is most definitely mine, but there was at least one other one there that might have been mine - not sure because, like yours, it has a title that might have been duplicated by someone else. I've left a "You may not" comment.

[celandineb]

One of those cyclical things -- every few months to a year, seems like, someone does something along these lines. *rolls eyes*

*g* I'm not sure if I should be thankful or offended that I'm not sure if any of mine were there...

[tayefeth]

I just poked my nose over there. pureimmortal has taken down the list as of now, but it's not clear if it will be back up or not.

[celandineb]

She's saying that the database is still in progress but fics will not be distributed. Frankly if she just credited authors and provided links to public access sites, it would be a perfectly fine thing to be doing... and maybe that's what she'll do with the database now.

[roh_wyn]

That's interesting. Do you think that maybe this is meant to be a fic rec list, and this person just forgot to put in the necessary attribution (and links) out of, say, incompetence or laziness?

[celandineb]

Nope. It's pretty clear that her intention was to provide the actual text of the fics to anyone who requested them, although she may well have intended to eventually include at least author names and perhaps other info as well. She's obviously not simply lazy as simply tracking down this many stories is in itself a pretty big undertaking...

[torn_eledhwen]

Obviously I'm not involved, but I'm bemused as to the point of distributing fics. Why not just post a rec list with links - far less stress!

[celandineb]

I completely agree. What I've picked up is that apparently she belongs to a Yahoo group where members sometimes ask if people have copies of fics that they can no longer find online, and was extending that. I'd suspect she didn't quite realize that if someone pulls all their fics from the web, there's probably a very good reason for it and redistributing is a bad idea.

[sulky_rhino]

It makes me sad when things like this happen, because I know that either the person doesn't know they shouldn't do that, or they just don't care. :( If it's the first, then I feel bad because they probably feel awful after being contacted by their favourite authors, and if it's the second, then it's just mean. :/

[celandineb]

I strongly suspect this was a case of not knowing, rather than not caring; but it did look like most people replying weren't trying to really yell at her, more say, please don't do this and here are the reasons why. Though I'm sure she still felt attacked, inevitably. :-(