Comments on: Thieves, Lawyers, and Web Posting

By: Tami

Tami — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:39:02 +0000

@Brad
True on the password thing, and that’s a great point. Being concerned about who you share your work with (especially if you have reason to distrust your friends) is a moot point if your passwords are easily guessable.

Birthdays, pet names, mother’s maiden names, and the same password you use for everything else are NOT strong passwords. =]
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By: Brad-o

Brad-o — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:58:06 +0000

@Tami

Either we agree or we’re two ships passing in the night.

I wasn’t criticizing the post. I just had semi-relevant personal experience on this one — mostly with the same friend getting the short-end each time (which is amazing but apparently happens in academia more frequently than you’d think). So, if I had a point, it would be that your ability to determine who you can trust might be bad and it may be a good idea to just keep the things near and dear to your heart, if you’re worried about someone stealing them, to yourself.

The encryption thing is mostly just me geeking out. If someone’s truly concerned about security on the cloud, it’s an easy thing to do. While it’s highly unlikely that the Chinese government was interested in your story when they hacked Google, you may be as bad (or worse) at password management as you are at trusting people. That means people you know might still steal, maybe without you finding out, and an easy extra layer of defence might not be a terrible idea for “important” or “valuable” work.

By: Tami

Tami — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:43:20 +0000

@Brad-o
I’m not sure we’re really disagreeing here. It’s just a matter of scale. Sharing only with people that you know you can trust. College paper and idea theft is absolutely rampant, and because the scale is so small, idea theft in that arena is also a concern.

There are authors unable to pitch their story to an agent because they’re concerned about manuscript theft, though, and that’s a point where it’s taken too far.

I’d also say that encrypted backups and avoiding allowing the manuscript to be privately emailed or stored on the web is also going to far, but that’s a personal preference.

My point in the blog post (which, if I have to say it here, means I did a poor job in the post) is that although novel theft CAN and DOES happen, it’s a lot rarer than many writers think it is, and taking basic precautions when sharing writing should be enough without taking it to extremes.

Most theft occurs because of deliberately shared information. The person most likely to steal your manuscript knows you and you probably let them read it.
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