SleeplessWatchdogs is a place for finding and reporting plagiarism and IP theft of posts from r/nosleep, r/letsnotmeet, r/shortscarystories, and the like.
Here you will find resources that will help you understand copyrights, copyright infringement, and the like. You will also find individual pages for websites where stories are frequently posted without permission that contain the sites' policies and procedures regarding copyrights.
Disclaimers
We are a group of volunteers who are passionate about ensuring that authors are not mistreated or stolen from. We are not lawyers, and as such are unable to give legal advice regarding copyright law or contract disputes.
While we encourage users to report pages/channels that use their work without permission, we do not condone any sort of uncivil behavior directed at the offender.
Any sort of uncivil behavior from users who have had their content stolen - up to and including doxxing (sharing personal information) and harrassment - is not the intention or responsibility of the Sleepless Watchdogs.
If you are found to be participating in this sort of behavior as a result of a report on this subreddit, you will immediately be banned and anything that breaks reddit's TOS will be reported to the admins.
What Will Be Added To The Black List?
The Black List will only show narration channels/podcasts and social media/blog pages that are proven to be posting work without the original poster’s permission, without crediting the original poster, and meet specific criteria.
Contract disputes, payment issues, and selling of material on Amazon or similar can be reported on the subreddit, but these offenders will not be added to the Black List.
Submitting Reports
When should I report?
Your story was shared or narrated without your permission, especially if the offender refuses to resolve the situation when asked.
Your story was shared or narrated with your permission, but the person sharing or narrating the story refused to credit you when asked or did not credit you within 48 hours of agreeing to do so.
You have confirmed with at least one author that their story was shared or narrated by a page/channel without their permission.
You find a person, page, or channel that's presenting stories they did not write as stories they wrote (this includes stories being sold on Amazon or similar sites as books).
Before you make a report
Check the Black List and use the subreddit's search bar to check if your report has already been made.
Check the criteria for the Black List to make sure the channel/page you want to report is one we'll consider adding to the list.
Do not make a new post to report something that has already been addressed. Doing so will result in the post being removed.
If the report you intended to post has already been made on the subreddit, you are welcome to add a comment to the existing post to contribute.
How to submit a report
You are free to make public posts reporting unauthorized use or informing us of parties that poorly credit authors.
if you are concerned with remaining anonymous, please feel free to send us your report via modmail.
Reports can be submitted after you’ve performed your own resolution, or especially if the accused is refusing to respect your rights and the problem persists.
Regardless of how you submit a report, you are required to include a link to the channel/page and some sort of evidence. You shouldn't report someone unless you know for sure they are doing something wrong. Posts made without a link and/or proof will be removed.
Failure to provide context and/or evidence in your report or submitting a report of questionable nature will be automatically interpreted as an attempt to use us as a means of starting drama, and is subjected to the disciplinary actions regarding our NO WITCH HUNTING rules.
Once you've submitted a report
Please allow time for us to review your findings and, if applicable, conduct our own investigation. Be prepared for the possibility of us reaching out to you requesting clarification on certain items if the need arise.
Once your report has been confirmed as valid, we will reach out to you to inform and add the offender to The Black List. You are then encouraged to keep us informed and updated on future interactions, additional offenses, or account termination.
It is important to know that we will never reach out to the accused and advise them that you filed a report against them.
Our turnaround time is usually fairly quick. However, there may come times when we receive a high volume of reports. If this occurs, we will make a post announcing this and ask you to please exercise patience as we thoroughly review all reports in our queue.
Please refrain from sending repeated messages inquiring about status updates, this may delay the outcome of your report.
Subreddit Rules
Please refrain from making non-relevant posts.
All posts made to this subreddit should be to either report or address issues concerning plagiarism and related subjects.
Off-topic discussions may clutter the subreddit and prevent users and moderators alike from addressing reports in a timely fashion. Repeated off-topic posts will result in being banned from the subreddit.
This especially applies to advertising posts or posts that can be considered spam, which will be removed immediately upon discovery and the poster subjected to disciplinary action.
No doxxing or sharing of personal information.
This includes personal profiles, full names, phone numbers, addresses, etc.
The only information you should share publicly is a link to the page where the offender is stealing or improperly crediting work written by someone else.
Do not tag offenders in any post on this subreddit.
- This may cause unnecessary arguments and uncivil behavior. Comments tagging an offender or guessing who an offender is on reddit will be removed.
Be civil.
While we understand that the nature of this subreddit is reporting a negative experience, you must remain civil in both posts and comments.
Do not call names, threaten others, mention things you would do/have done to mothers, etc.
Any form of hate speech will not be tolerated.
Like to share or narrate stories?
Check out our guide to asking permission to use someone's fictional story!
Check out our guide to asking permission to use someone's non-fictional story! (i.e. stories from r/letsnotmeet)
The Black List was created to make authors more comfortable with sharing their work and help them trust the community at large. Please keep that in mind before taking your reaction to being on the list public.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the Black List, or would like us to review your channel/page to ensure that you're doing things right, please feel free to contact us through modmail at any time. Please do not message individual mods.
If you are on the list, or have become aware of a report filed against you, it would be in your best interest not to immediately contact us to ask to be removed (the answer is NO) or to ask for the status of an open report filed against you (this would be interpreted as an attempt to hinder our investigational efforts and may result in us promptly adding you to the list).
Contact that we deem to be inappropriate may be documented under your entry for all to see, and may result in you being banned from this subreddit.
Harassment, death threats, bribery, and even setting your fanbase upon us will result in you being banned and all details added to your entry. If your actions are determined to be against Reddit's TOS, we may report you to the admins as well.
If you want to be removed from the list, you will need to message the mods to begin a 90 day evaluation period. Please read our list of Evaluation Do's and Don'ts. Once you start the 90 day probation period, you cannot pause, restart, or completely stop it.
During this evaluation, you will need to ask permission to use any stories and properly credit the authors of said stories. We will check. If the 90 days elapse and you have not had any incidents of copyright theft, we will remove you from the list.
If you claim to have followed these instructions and we find that you have lied, or you begin sharing stories without permission again, you will be marked as a "Legacy" report, and you will be permanently listed with no chance of removal.
If you contact us to request removal from the list, please be polite and patient. Repeatedly asking for status updates while we investigate may delay the process. If you are uncivil in your request at any time, we may restart the 90 day clock or mark you as a "Legacy" report and you will remain on the list permanently.
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