Tiffany M. Davis

I’ve been toying with the idea of posting short stories, etc, on this blog, so that more people can get a taste of my work. However, like most authors, I am very leery of people copying my work and trying to pass it off as their own–the Internet being what it is.  Filing my work with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is one thing; trying to police the internet is a whole ‘nother animal.

I know that there are various programs, plug-ins, add-ons, etc that can protect images, text, and the like from 95% of Joe Public. The other 5% are the computer hackers , and odds are that you can’t protect against them anyway unless you are a hacker yourself. Anyway, I did a search in the WordPress (WP) support forum to see what it had on offer. Cool stuff in the WP lab, BUT…can’t use it unless you’re on a site hosted elsewhere than WP. Dang it.

More searching (I had to get creative with the key words) and I found ways to protect blog content within the parameters of WP hosting. There was a laundry list:

• Post a static copyright warning via a WP widget
• Do a Google Search
• Use watermarks on posts (can I really do that?)
• Set up Google Alert(s)
• Get a Creative Commons license
• Change RSS feed settings
• Use Copyscape

Oy vey.

By the time I got through doing everything but the Copyscape, I needed a nap. Being that I’m not the most technologically proficient person in the world, it took me a minute.Trying to keep your intellectual property out of the hands of the unscrupulous is very tiring. Even then, there’s no guarantee that some Adrian Lamo/Alec Hardison wannabe doesn’t crack the code on your little piece of the interwebs, and jack your ish for fun and/or profit. If that happens, and the above steps have been followed, then you’ll need to file a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice.

So I will give some writings a test run and see how it goes. If folks act like they have some home training, then we can have nice things and you can check out more of what I have to offer #FREE. If not, then the content comes down and you’ll just have to pay for every fiction item that I write.

Get it? Got it? Good!

Thanks for stopping by.