Please, something should be done quickly, people are getting angry and sad. I am not happy at all.
Mr Seun, please, at least give us updates on what you are doing to protect nl writers.

Ishilove:
Hush it! You could have very well acknowledged the writers of the stories when you were copying and pasting, but you chose not to. Instead, you gloried in the accolades that kept pouring in. Everything you did, you did deliberately so your apology doesn't wash.

You and your ilk should stay the fucck away from my stories otherwise na court get all of us. Your fada!

Ishi-babes, pls tell me to cover my 32 naaa...b4 somebodi @ d summit gives me query
choi....babes yu don vex wella

@Damex, dat's true.
The whole thing is becoming very funny,
Its like Love-life on campus and tenth generation are published already #probabilty-not so sure#, cos his fans are asking for published copies.

Hmm, God is great!

@Seun...its well with Nairaland.

BukkyDan: @Damex, dat's true.
The whole thing is becoming very funny,
Its like Love-life on campus and tenth generation are published already #probabilty-not so sure#, cos his fans are asking for published copies.

Hmm, God is great!

@Seun...its well with Nairaland.

He still has your story up there?

ujchief:

Keep quoting irrelevant rules and ignore the core issue. You should try and know copyright rules the way you know nl rules.

Lol, why am I not surprised? It's ok to discuss a plagiarist but your cowardice and law breaking should be left unattended to?

I know copyright laws. The rules and regulations of the literature section inculcates it.

What you guys are asking is the connection between Nairaland and these copyright laws. Or how Nairaland intends to prevent this incident from reoccurring.

And I have asked you all to be patient. How do you get a solution in a tense environment?

It distracts the purpose and doesn't get anything done. Can we all calm down, be composed, so Seun can address the matter?
For Christ sake, we are adults.

The so called threads with scammers on the FrontPage has not refunded or recovered the funds. Hasn't it been derailed with unnecessary side comments and insults?

ujchief:

Keep quoting irrelevant rules and ignore the core issue. You should try and know copyright rules the way you know nl rules.

please remind us why

At this point, I would love that people take a breather and ease off this Seun issue. The cases of copyright is a complicated on especially on the internet. While it is obvious that what that person did was wrong, we should be patient with Seun as this issues is being looked into.

You must realise that it has to do with contacting the NCC and speaking with legal advisers so answers would not be as fast as we might want it to.

I am a writer here and I have followed this issue. I can assure you that the mod is putting pressure on Seun and just give her and Seun TIME........ I say you give it some time and admin will come out with a statement. If not I will be the one accusing Seun of being insensitive.

I am not known to kiss backsides so when I say Seun has been notified and is constantly reminded, I am serious.

Just wait for some time and in the meantime, I will advise that everyone does a google search of his/her works. This will tell you where your work is being used. I do that regularly to be sure.

Again I implore you to be patient

This whole matter is disgraceful.

Having said that, I think we (writers and readers alike), have all learnt sone serious lessons here.

Writers: Have your works, your sweat & blood copyright protected AND registered for goodness sake! Additionally, make sure these are visible / easily seen on every segment of your web page. At least, at the bottom of every entry you post.

Readers: It's been mentioned countless times - ignorance (pretended) is NO excuse. Infact, we have it clearly stated within the rules and regulations of this section that plagarism is wrong. It's a criminal offence every where! This was why I pushed really hard a couple of months ago to have a Rules and Regulations thread (which addressed issues of plagarism), stickyed high up for everyone to see!

How hard can it be to take a few moments to aquaint one's self with the rules of conduct here?

Anyway, it's gonna be interesting to see how this issue panders out...

BukkyDan: @Damex, dat's true.
The whole thing is becoming very funny,
Its like Love-life on campus and tenth generation are published already #probabilty-not so sure#, cos his fans are asking for published copies.

Hmm, God is great!

@Seun...its well with Nairaland.

Now that is unbelievable...it's taking the micky, more like.

As Seun&co are trying to find solution to this,as writers and readers what can we do? To be candid,am happy this happen cos am seeing opportunities,opportunity to be proactive.So I ll go first.......
As some1 said,writers should check for their work online and open a thread immediately to alert us if there is any discrepancy.Cuddlemii I don't know if it is possible to send mails to us in order to bombard the site massively.
Am still thinking of more idea.

luvmijeje: As Seun&co are trying to find solution to this,as writers and readers what can we do? To be candid,am happy this happen cos am seeing opportunities,opportunity to be proactive.So I ll go first.......
As some1 said,writers should check for their work online and open a thread immediately to alert us if there is any discrepancy.Cuddlemii I don't know if it is possible to send mails to us in order to bombard the site massively.
Am still thinking of more idea.

What of facebook? You cannot just run a google search of FB content and expect to see something meaningful. Some stuff cannot even be discovered with FB local search.

Nice one sha.

Oahray am not techy techy but this guy own was discovered on facebook,how come?

^^ It was a fb page. If you like a page, updates would always appear on your timeline; or if a friend comments on it. Someone stumbled upon it and alerted us. Dammex, if I remember correctly.

A google search reveals all except a blog which is hidden

Not true

*Sigh*

[b][/b]

BukkyDan: @Damex, dat's true.
The whole thing is becoming very funny,
Its like Love-life on campus and tenth generation are published already #probabilty-not so sure#, cos his fans are asking for published copies.

Hmm, God is great!

@Seun...its well with Nairaland.

now this is scary... i noticed some of them asking that he should post some parts of some of the books to their inbox, infact one fan was asking a different fan to post some parts to his/her inbox and i am like, does everyone now have copies? abegoooo

^^Be that ad it may, have you copyright protected your work yet, Frank?

This is so so catastrophically disheartening.

I really have to admit to all NL authors and the Literature/Writing section fans that this is a sensitive case that we all have to do something gigantic that takes care of the case.
Unfortunately, nobody but God know the frequency of other elusive and subtle viewers that paste your unparalleled and unbeatable efforts,creativity and hardwork to get cheap publicity and fame from your sweats on some webpages.
I'm so so sorry. I know how hard I hit you guys (esp Mynd, Mazi, Redmosquito etc) and bully you all over here for updates and I am using this medium to give kudos to all of you, I say BRAVADO. I doff my hat for you all. More grease to your elbows, more ink to your pens, more intellect to your brains not leaving any NL writer out. Thank you all!

Besides, I hope tthis doesn't affect your loyalty and you guys do not retract those creatively incredible literature works you guys are giving out to we your fans. Please, do not judge all with some minority silly actions. That 1diot boy needs to get laid.

May God continue to bless y'all and your family.

I'm not a writer, only a fan n reader n I feel dis huge rage boiling within me on visiting d motherfvckrs fb page. I wonder how d original writers here would feel if I am this pained.
Dat FB page should b closed for ur apologies to b looked into.

Efemena_xy: ^^Be that ad it may, have you copyright protected your work yet, Frank?

No, i have already scheduled to be at their office on monday

Redmosquito: Holy Sheet! Huhun! Na so abi! Hmmmm!!

guy are u studying for your Nth MB?

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

The way this issue has been approached by the writers in my opinion shows some level of ignorance I must say and hope no one is offended by my directness.

First I will begin by saying I sympathize with you guys that your work has been plagiarized and you must have toiled very hard to produce these stories.

I feel it is important at this point to clarify some issues and point at the direction each and every one of you should follow whenever there is a future reoccurrence of this kind of situation.

WRITERS COPYRIGHT RIGHT

Nigeria is a signatory to the Berne Convention so therefore you do not need a registration to claim full ownership to your created original works.
Once you have transmitted your work to a platform or medium of distribution to the public then you automatically acquire the right to your works and every territory where the Berne convention is in place.

You lose this right when you agree to any medium or platform requires you to give up those rights vested on you under the Berne Convention. You also give up this right when you sign agreements with a publishing firm or transfer this right to someone else.
I don’t know why you people are attacking seun as he was magnanimous enough not to take this right away from you through the nairaland privacy policy or requiring any form of user agreement before using this forum that would have required you to give up those copyright.

ABOUT NAIRALAND COPYRIGHT POLICY

“COPYRIGHT NOTICE - All content posted on the message boards of Paradox is the exclusive intellectual property of Paradox. Copyright ownership of that content resides with Paradox and the Company is free to use any of the content as they wish. Anyone other than Paradox seeking to reprint, republish, or reproduce content posted on the Paradox message boards must receive the express written permission from Paradox Interactive. By posting on the Paradox message boards you are agreeing to the above and relinquishing all copyright to the contents of the post(s) to Paradox.”

The above is an example of a copyright agreement you will find in some message boards or forums and it is usually embedded in the privacy policy or user agreement that is signed when registering to the website.

Luckily for every one of us, nairaland does not have anything of such, so we all have full rights to whatever thing we post here on nairaland and that goes for all your stories provided they are not copyrighted materials.

If you post copyrighted materials here illegally and the original creator finds it here then the rightful thing they do is to inform nairaland of this issue. The owner of administrator of nairaland will delete those comments and place your handle on a ban.

They can also go ahead to require seun to give them your private information through a court order or without a court order if you have given seun the right to use your private information through a user agreement.

RIGHT OF ACTION IN CASES LIKE THIS

I noticed that everyone has been disturbing seun and the moderator to do something about this issue but in truth they absolutely should not do anything concerning the request being made of them. The best they can do is to ban offending members, delete posts, investigate and reveal private information or cooperate with a court process.
The copyright notice at the bottom of this site is more focused on the programing code used to build nairaland, the graphics, features and various designs found all over nairaland. This same copyright could have extended to forum post if we all gave up those rights in the terms of service, privacy policy or user agreements when registering to Nairaland.

Nairaland is not a publishing house and posting your stories here does not transfer any form of ownership to seun and therefore he is not under any form of obligation to go to beyond nairaland to help you guys as his powers are limited to nairaland based on the various agreements found here.

The truth is that you guys retained full ownership to your works, they are already protected by posting it here on nairaland and should you find it anywhere else on the web without reference then it is your duty to go after the infringement yourself.
It is not the duty of nairaland moderators or seun to go to Facebook and ask them to bring it down as they are not the owner of those works but you guys. Putting a copyright notice or disclaimer with your work is actually not needed under the Berne convention and you only do that so people like the offender will not claim ignorance.

You are good to go by showing them your written works on a producing platform like a word document or showing them the difference in date between the post on nairaland and Facebook. You can also register your works and notify NCC so that you can get a certificate of ownership and this serves as a legal proof should you need that but it is not actually required to obtain copyright for your works or prosecute cases.

So please this post is just trying to point it out to you guys that the onus to protect your works rests solely on you guys as you are the original creators and still retain full rights to your works even if they have been posted here on nairaland.

If you post your works on naijapals originally and you find it here on nairaland without reference then you have the right to inform seun about this to delete the post and ban the poster and request for personal information to prosecute the case. That is the way the owner of a work goes about issues like this, so in this case and for future purposes . . .it is your job to go against the offender yourself and not nairaland, the moderator or seun.

Now i expect you guys to be angry with me by focusing on the writers only but here is it . . seun can be of help to you guys because he benefits one way or the order from you guys posting stories here so i will not expect him to leave you guys solely to fight this issues alone.

Love you guys and kudos to the wonderful stories you post here. . more grease to your elbows. I sympathize with you guys but it is important we know our rights and how to go about this from now on.
I can answer more questions if there is any and post links to copyright materials for you guys to read yourselves.

Regards
Pharoh

Redmosquito: Holy Sheet! Huhun! Na so abi! Hmmmm!!

holy sh?t, where av u bn?

Thank you Pharoh...I hope nobody is offended by this.

iykmora: Ishi-babes, pls tell me to cover my 32 naaa...b4 somebodi @ d summit gives me query
choi....babes yu don vex wella

Why manpikin no go vex? I have been ill for sometime now, that's why my updates have been slow. Now imagine struggling to write a story while sipping agbo and seeing double, only for one morrafocker somewhere is patiently waiting for you to update so that he/she can steal the fruits of your labour.

That's some plain nasty and evil shiit, if you ask me.

Ishilove:
Why manpikin no go vex? I have been ill for sometime now, that's why my updates have been slow. Now imagine struggling to write a story while sipping agbo and seeing double, only for one morrafocker somewhere is patiently waiting for you to update so that he/she can steal the fruits of your labour.

That's some plain nasty and evil shiit, if you ask me.

Is the illness related to old age?

the way una dey vex like dis una sure no be we the innocent pple go suffer so cos i dey notice some pple don make up their mind not to update.no wahala i pity una oh seriously cos even if am not a writer i appreciate one and i enter the useyless boy facebook curse am to him tenth generation.he messed up big time and he is lucky his name is not there.bukky.frank n isholuv etc take heart.this are pple devil aka the one way hate those on top use to discourage people with bright future.
-Ice4jez aka the dude who can do without a well written story

mr seun live up to your responsibility. you are hiding behind moderators and saying you don't know what to do about plagiarism. kept writers waiting for three days and a committee is all you can come up with.



we have to wait for decision after the 31st of march but all the while cuddlemi was putting pressure on you habaa. cut the crap we old members know how insensitive you are. . .on the 31st comes another excuse.

[b]I was wondering the same, seun is powerless over this issue. He cant stop anyone from pressing CTRL+V, he cant be looking through google for our stories, they're not his stories, they're ours. Literature/writing section, no matter how beautiful it is, it is just one small appendage in the whole being that is Nairaland, Seun cannot be going through that much stress for it.
As the well legally-intuited young man above me said, Seun has claimed no ownership, hence no respponsibilty to protect what is not his. He may say he wants to help us, but thats just it, voluntary service of no mandatory form. I look around google for my stories every once in a while, its been copied and pasted on other sites of course, but thankfully, the copier has been kind enough to put my name (Redmosquito) or in some cases, the NL link has been added to it.
Seun and the mods have no obligation to us, at least not in this kind.
This is my belief on the matter.


Chai! It feels good to type on NL after a while, my bosses, I flex my platysma muscle in respect for the voracious natures of your unique respective gray matters
Mr Rap and Brokoto waddup and all my niggas in da house[/b]