#R nosleep stories license#

They established another subreddit, r/SleeplessWatchdogs, which features a blacklist of all Reddit users known to have purloined writings from r/nosleep and other Reddit author forums and used them elsewhere without permission.Īnd then, in March, realizing that they were dealing with a “culture of free” that would lead to continued abuses by the pirates (a culture nurtured by the world’s biggest internet companies and their advocates, by the way) – r/nosleep took their most drastic step yet.

Yes, even non-monetized uses require your permission… Yes, even on Reddit.”īut that was only the beginning of r/nosleep’s pro-copyright vengeance. That means no one has the legal right to use, adapt, reproduce, or host your content-for free, or commercial use-without your permission. “You are the legal owner of your content from the moment it’s published… and that includes publishing to an online site like Reddit. “There is a HUGE misunderstanding about free-to-read content,” states the introductory post on r/NoSleepWritersGuild, which reads like a very satisfying pro-copyright blog in its own right.

#R nosleep stories license#

They established another subreddit, r/NoSleepWritersGuild, devoted to helping their authors license and sell their stories, and educating them about their legal rights when stories were being stolen. Understandably concerned by the rampant pilfering of their work, r/nosleep moderators fought back. On many occasions, these thieves would profit from the stolen tales, narrating them in videos posted to YouTube, and collecting advertising revenue. Contributors to r/nosleep willingly offered their gut-wrenching works without expectation of payment, but that didn’t stop a faction of the forum’s subscriber base from taking many of the stories and using them without permission anyway. Online piracy is a monster looking to devour all creative content, even when posted for free.

We speak, with dread in our hearts, of PIRACY! Yes, with nothing more than words on a screen, these authors could summon scares like magicians do rabbits, and yet they themselves were haunted… by a fiend that torments all creatives on the internet. Its authors had a gift for the spine-tingling detail you just can’t shake – they were so good, in fact, they would never dream of starting a story with a cliché like, “It was a dark and stormy night.” The horror story-themed Reddit forum (known as a “subreddit”) had built a massive following by curating some of the scariest tales on the internet. It was a dark and stormy night when the online forum r/nosleep closed its doors to the general public.