After sorting through a tangled web of “how did this happen” over the last couple of days we (Brittany, Tyler and I) have figured out exactly what happened:
LemmeFind is a craptacular search engine from India. They crawl the web and gank erotic and pornographic content to be categorized in their own archives so that when people use them to search for such items they have URLs to link them to. What actually happened is that they somehow – purposefully or otherwise – “miscategorized” my story as being child pornography. (I don’t know how, I don’t know why – there are no keywords associated with the post which was on a publishing website and Digg – which would indicate that terms involving child pornography should be associated with my work of fiction.)
Anyhow: then apparently someone searched the terms “12 year olds get fucked” on LemmeFind and up popped my story. (???? Again, I don’t understand how this could happen since my story has nothing to do with this.)
This created a Google index of that search request. So when you search the USERID associated with the story – it looks like I’ve written something grossly obscene because it appears as: “12 year olds get fucked: Name of the Story by USERID that is actually Kate”
With the assistance of the publishing company and Brittany’s dogged efforts on my behalf – LemmeFind has corrected the searchable terms that will lead to my story (or, so we think because we cannot find it using “12 year olds get fucked” anymore.) In addition, Brittany contacted Google to explain the situation (that I’m a legitimate writer who doesn’t want her work associated with child pornography) and asked that the index be removed.
I have not heard from GoDaddy or the FBI; but, I’m presuming that there was involvement there as well. If I never hear from the FBI that would be fine with me, as it totally creeped me out to have to file a complaint with them… you know, them being the man and all.
Again: I don’t care if people reproduce my work (as long as it’s credited or permission is asked for) – I don’t care if people link to my work (as long as it’s properly categorized.) What I do have a problem with is my work being miscategorized so that it’s taken out of context – making me seem as something I am not. Especially when that “thing” is illegal and represents me as someone who would be involved in activities which would harm those who I work to protect on a professional level.
I think that everyone I’ve told about this (and, I told the people I work for) has understood that I have done nothing wrong; and, worked very hard to get the situation resolved. However, I still have the nagging feeling that the whole incident could have been damaging to my reputation in some manner. Which angers me.
However: I think that Amber was right when she said that I have to be open about the situation… for a multitude of reasons I cannot really verbalize yet. I’m just hoping that in doing such that I have not jeopardized my livelihood or my professional reputation in context of being a teacher/protector of children.
And, believe me – I will be thinking twice about the sources I use to publish my fiction from now on – as I truly believe that my choice of publishing platform for that story had a lot to do with how it got ganked in the first place. Note that stuff I write on WordPress, *LiveJournal, Vox, etc. never gets ganked – whereas, this Mom n’ Pop startup pay-per-post blogging platform (a company I was actually APPROACHED by and asked to blog there) was incapable of protecting my intellectual property from a more predatory company. LemmeFind is apparently known for associating spammish keywords with all their aggregated content and this type of situation has happened frequently (I’ve talked to a couple of people who had similar experiences.)
I still am processing the whole experiance. Between that and my chaotic personal life, this week has sucked rocks. I will write about this all in more detail at some point; but, now I just need a break.
Thanks again to everyone for their kind words and support: thank you, in particular to Brittany, who helped me clear this up definitively.
G’night blogosphere… I’m off to take a nap.
*And, god knows I’ve written a lot of childish, fucked up shit on LiveJournal over the years… go search “NNP” and see what you get… I wonder if that blog is still around… I read it about a year ago and it cracked me up think that I was ever that self-involved.
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