Suddenly I feel hypocritical...
May. 20th, 2004 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kuangningbut in the best of causes.
Someone on my friends list today brought up poetry.com. If there ever was a slimy scam... this is the one. Hopeful writer submits a poem to a "contest", is flattered and elated to find that they've been selected for publication. There's just one catch... in order to see your work in the huge anthology of the year, you have to pay them.
Come a little bit later, you get another letter. Awards! it promises. Ceremony, shiny trophy cup... you get to read your poem at the ceremony... and all of it with a price tag.
When you find out that it's not what it seems, that's when you also find out there's nothing you can do but try to ignore them. They're in possession of your poetry, copyrighted though it is to you, and you can't disassociate yourself from them. They don't respond to emails. Good luck with phone calls. In short, you're screwed.
Except.
Poetry.com is hosted by PSI.net, run by Cogent. Cogent, according to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jrenken, is: so-so about abuse complaints. They used to have a bad reputation, but got LARTed enough that they're generally better.
Here's what I'd like to see happen. If you've ever been burned by poetry.com, and you want to see them go away, first contact poetry.com and tell them you want your work removed and you're revoking your permission for them to use it. (You'll get nowhere, but go ahead and document it). Wait a day or so, then email abuse@cogentco.com. Tell them you have a problem with poetry.com, and that you'd like your copyrighted poetry removed from the site. You can retrieve your information by doing a search for your name at poetry.com itself. Tell them that you are revoking your consent for your copyrighted material to be displayed or shared through poetry.com, and that to continue displaying it under those circumstances violates the DMCA. If everyone does this, the odds are better than good that Cogent/PSI.net will dump the site. PSI.net's abuse policy, like most every large webhost's policies, prohibits the display and sharing of copyrighted information without the author's consent.
Will it stop poetry.com permanently? Probably not. But it will give them a huge headache. They might even be offline awhile trying to find a new webhost who will close their eyes to the scam and who won't care why they're changing webhosts. If your material isn't removed within a reasonable period of time, or they change webhosts and it's still displayed, send a second email to their webhost's abuse address, and keep emailing, pointing out that they're in violation of even their webhost's abuse policy, let alone the laws of the land. The point is to make it clear that hosting poetry.com's more trouble than it's worth. These people have been running this scam for more than a decade, because they can and do get away with it. Let's make it harder for them to get away with it, and see if maybe we can't save a few young writers from getting ripped off.
Someone on my friends list today brought up poetry.com. If there ever was a slimy scam... this is the one. Hopeful writer submits a poem to a "contest", is flattered and elated to find that they've been selected for publication. There's just one catch... in order to see your work in the huge anthology of the year, you have to pay them.
Come a little bit later, you get another letter. Awards! it promises. Ceremony, shiny trophy cup... you get to read your poem at the ceremony... and all of it with a price tag.
When you find out that it's not what it seems, that's when you also find out there's nothing you can do but try to ignore them. They're in possession of your poetry, copyrighted though it is to you, and you can't disassociate yourself from them. They don't respond to emails. Good luck with phone calls. In short, you're screwed.
Except.
Poetry.com is hosted by PSI.net, run by Cogent. Cogent, according to
jrenken, is: so-so about abuse complaints. They used to have a bad reputation, but got LARTed enough that they're generally better.Here's what I'd like to see happen. If you've ever been burned by poetry.com, and you want to see them go away, first contact poetry.com and tell them you want your work removed and you're revoking your permission for them to use it. (You'll get nowhere, but go ahead and document it). Wait a day or so, then email abuse@cogentco.com. Tell them you have a problem with poetry.com, and that you'd like your copyrighted poetry removed from the site. You can retrieve your information by doing a search for your name at poetry.com itself. Tell them that you are revoking your consent for your copyrighted material to be displayed or shared through poetry.com, and that to continue displaying it under those circumstances violates the DMCA. If everyone does this, the odds are better than good that Cogent/PSI.net will dump the site. PSI.net's abuse policy, like most every large webhost's policies, prohibits the display and sharing of copyrighted information without the author's consent.
Will it stop poetry.com permanently? Probably not. But it will give them a huge headache. They might even be offline awhile trying to find a new webhost who will close their eyes to the scam and who won't care why they're changing webhosts. If your material isn't removed within a reasonable period of time, or they change webhosts and it's still displayed, send a second email to their webhost's abuse address, and keep emailing, pointing out that they're in violation of even their webhost's abuse policy, let alone the laws of the land. The point is to make it clear that hosting poetry.com's more trouble than it's worth. These people have been running this scam for more than a decade, because they can and do get away with it. Let's make it harder for them to get away with it, and see if maybe we can't save a few young writers from getting ripped off.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-20 09:49 pm (UTC)Take care,
Chantal
no subject
Date: 2004-05-20 10:05 pm (UTC)They took Misha and I for several hundred dollars, in a brilliant scheme. I think they should all die.
B'boo
no subject
Date: 2004-05-20 10:52 pm (UTC)They prey on dreams.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-20 11:44 pm (UTC)I should get so lucky as to get rich from people's gullibility on poemranker.com.
well, yeah, I don't quite mean that.
step 1) rate poems
step 2) ???
step 3) BAKA!!!!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-21 04:53 am (UTC)You are literally better off paying a printer and publishing it yourself.