Starline Hodge's copyright issue

Don't know if you saw this, but there's a really disturbing bit of copyright theft being discussed.

Starlight Hodge writes the Candi webcomic. Some guy contacted her saying he'd put it in a book. She said no and refused permission.

He did it anyway and stuck it on Createspace with an ISBN and everything.

Whole thing's going down on Twitter here.

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So this ...gentleman... helped himself to someone else's work without their consent and published it, taking her first publication print rights in the process. I don't believe that can be dignified with the name piracy. It is simply theft. Createspace should not simply be taking it down, they should be participating in her lawsuit against him.

 

From her last update, it sounds like Createspace are refusing to remove it. They are making it unavailable but want her to "resolve" the issue with the thief rather than deleting it. At this point, if they refuse to remove it after seeing the Twitter campaign, the email chain where she refuses him permission, and receiving takedowns from both her and him, I'd say they are complicit.

 

This is awful! They are absolutely complicit if they refuse to take it down. They should have done it before it reached this point. Asking her to "resolve" the issue with the thief, without taking it down, is out of line.

 

Sounds like such a "nice guy" and by nice guy, I mean total and utter <enter Dive worthy material here>.

Some people always seem to think that if the person would just see how much a creative genius that work was on offer then of course they person being asked will accept it...everytime.

Most people call it delusional.

 

This really is outrageous, both on the part of the lowlife who decided to ignore the author's wishes and Createspace who undoubtedly will be harvesting all the revenue these books are generating until such time as the matter is sorted out.

 

Any updates on this, 'cos I haven't seen anything on this after Createspace refused to remove the book.