Alex Severin Responds! My Letter From Plagiarism Whistle Blower!

Earlier today I sent an e-mail to plagiarism whistle blower Alex Severin.  Below is Alex's response, and I think it is a further eye opener in regards to the problem and the lack of response from those who claim to want to protect the works of independent authors:

Hi there, Michael,

I've been following your ranty tweets!  LOL

I've got all her aliases and other details on Google Alerts, so I found
out about your friends blog and subsequently, your blog and Twitter.

Amazon are assholes. They don't give a shit. I can't even believe they've
not removed the remaining content after 5 have been subject to DMCA
notices and I told them the other two were also 100% plagiarized. They
don't remove anything without a formal DMCA notice and it has to be EXACT,
has to have certain lines in it; I knew that and this is why I put a
sample DMCA notice on my site and linked to it in the alert.

It took me days to compile all the stories. But kept on at it - I had
complete conviction that every story in every book belonged to somebody
else. When I get that feeling about something, I ignore it to my peril.

I'm sure Mistress Klepto is going to start up again under a new ID
somewhere else. Since none of us actually hold legal copyright
registrations for any of the works, there's no legal standing to file a
lawsuit. That's not to say that we can't go ahead and and actually do that
- it would only take ONE story to be registered to have grounds to file a
suit if needs be.

I'm really dissapointed at the response I've had. At first, I thought,
great, half of ASSTR's members are e-mailing me - they acted very quickly,
within hours of me sending out the alert. But, alas, none of the e-mails
were from any of the writers involved. It would seem none of them are
still using either the e-mails on file at ASSTR and Literotica, nor
logging into their accounts.  After the first batch of e-mails I sent out
like that (through the Lit interface and gathered e-mails,) I had no
responses whatsoever.  So, I decided to contact both sites directly and
disseminate the info throught my own blogs etc.

I also contacted a couple of writing site like WRITER BEWARE run by the
SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America,) but I've not had a response
from them either. Needles to say, Literotica did not respond to me, nor
did they post it on their forum. That was done by somebody on Lit who had
an ASSTR account also and got the messege from them. Just reading their
forum over the last few days, it would seem the Literotica owner doesn't
respond to anything at all.

The only reason word has started to get out is because a few people have
been incensed enough to repost my alert of blogs and forums. I'm so glad
that there are a few people who care. This has been pretty stressful! I
know nobody is gonna die or anything like that and it's not the end of the
world, but damnnit, it means something to me. And I felt obligated to do
everything I could to get this info out.

Actually, just before the word got out, I was considering doing another
round-up of e-mails and trying again. If the last two books don't
disappear in the next few days, I will do that. She needs to be shut down.

Sorry this is so long!  LOL

All the best...

- Alex Severin.

www.AlexSeverin.com
www.MySpace.com/Vampire_Erotica_Stories
www.Facebook.com/SeverinVampireErotica

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Thanks again, Alex, from Myself on behalf of everyone you have made aware of this problem.



Master Vyle