OK, rather belatedly catching up with this thread.

I had this conversation with a mate when I first started talking about the WW site and how good I thought it was. He was adamant that this was a sure fire way to get my work nicked. My argument goes something like this:

Writers want to write their own stuff - there's quite a lot of ego involved, and the motivation is simply not there to sit down one day and say 'Ah, ha! Let's see what I can find to steal and re-print. The effort involved - unless you know the name of the author you're aiming to plagiarise - is quite substantial for the return I would have thought.

The same could be said for submitting work to publishers. When they ask for digital copy, what's to stop them finding a tame author to change a few details and publish it without having to pay me a bean? Again, I think the effort is generally not worth it. The tame author will want paying in some form, so much easier to pay the usual pittance and get the genuine author to do the re-write...

Of course, we all think our own stuff is the best thing since Shakespeare, but realistically, it would have to be astoundingly brilliant for someone to be bothered to go to the trouble of plagiarising I would have thought. The internet, though huge and powerful, is a deep and hidden ocean - only the superficialities on the surface are seen. Someone would have to either know that you're worth nicking from and set out to do so deliberately, or be incredibly persistent to find gems amongst the dross that is invariably sitting out there.

Ho hum, seem to have exhausted my energy burst. I'd be sad to see everyone's profile hidden, as I find it useful to get a sense of an author in terms of their age and location, if not their hobbies and interests! Yes, hide e-mail, but allow oursleves a few clues about each other!

Thanks
tanya........

Thanks Tanya, I think you've got the right idea.

Hi, only just come across this. I would be very much in favour of a choice of making uploaded work available to members only. This is especially the case now that there are several groups for, say, fiction, so that restricting the work to your own group only means hiding it from others you would be happy to have comment.

How big is the membership, David? Are we talking in terms of tens or hundreds now?

Cheers, Hilary

I would also be in favour of members only availability.

My head is spinning, yuck. Well, I'm speechless, I'm sure I can't add anything useful here. I'm going to check the internet.

Just hidden my email, and just hidden my profile, but it says it's available to members of any group I join, so that's all right. But any story on here I've posted comes up with goggle. Gasp!

Forgive me for 'butting in' but I did notice that when one uploads a piece of work there is the ability to restrict it to group members only. I presume that this would stop the wide-spread reading of work by just anyone; am I correct?

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but the concept of internet security is extremely flawed. It only takes one WW member to share his details with other people (to prevent their friends having to pay the annual fee), and before you know it, "hidden" work, is once again available to pretty much anyone.

I cannot stress strongly enough that if you don't want things read by a mass audience, you should never, ever put it on the internet.

I suggest to anyone who wants to keep their work sacrosanct, that they remove all of their work and instead join a local writing group to gather whatever feedback it may offer. And even then, there are no guarantees.

I think it's much better that people just keep their private and preferred works to themselves, and share it only with whatever agents and publishers you think should see it.

At the end of the day, there's no point being paranoid, unless you have a top firewall, someone could prop themselves onto your PC and start reading everything you have stored there, or plant a bug which records every time you save a word document and covertly e-mails it out without you knowing.

Welcome to the 21st century. Today we are all connected to eachother's little fingers by invisible redstring, and day by day, the internet makes that string shrink, bringing us all closer together. There is no reverse, no turning back. Privacy is a medieval sacrilege we can no longer afford, and our human rights are being waved aside by our own desires to invade the rights of others.

Run, by all means, hide if you think you can. But however safe you think you might be, somebody, somewhere, is watching you. Just you. And there is nothing you can do about it.

The words 'can' and 'worms' spring to mind...

That was a good piece you wrote there IB, but I wish you didn't seem to be enjoying this so much!

I'm not enjoying this so much as experiencing a state of shock that so many people are only now realising how well connected the internet is.

I find that a tad patronising IB.

What shocked me was someone mentioning they'd seen evidence of plagiarism on the site. I'm not concerned about the scary monsters 'Out there' . But I do think people with access to work on the site should be made aware of their moral and legal responsibility. Perhaps a flag at the top of each piece would force readers to consider these issues and make them realise what a talentless shit they would be to betray the trust of the writer. Also encouraging people to be give more details about themselves on registration for retention by the site administrator. I'm sure this would act as a deterrent.

Forgive me if I ask a plain question but what are we actually talking about here? .. Has someone actually pinched someone else's work? Without necessarily naming names I would like someone to explain.

Sorry to be blunt and thick

Andrew )

Yes, Andrew, but we have no details and I'd have to go back and look at the first posting to see if it's someone who is a member here or not.

I find that a tad patronising IB.

you think? the way some people are talking here it's like the first time they've ever encountered google.

I don't mean to look down and sneer at anyone, but I used to think it was common knowledge that you can pretty much get to any site on the internet in less than 5-6 clicks, and I could code a spider myself that could map out a few tens of millions of web pages.

*shrug*

Maybe I am slightly amused by all this. But I have every reason to be.

IB. I think you need to drink some beer and eat some profiteroles. Only three or four though or you may feel sick as I do.

We should be working on a practical solution to this not narking at each other. Have you got any ideas?