Dear Authorship friends,

I started with a little bit of sarcasm. Well, here I am; I am an Authorship cheater. In this post I shall tell you why I did it, how I did it and what I'm going to do.

Wy I did it
I'm unemployed. I have a decent roof over my head, enough food to eat, even an internet connection, but when my bills are paid I'm monthly broke. Then I read about cryptocoins and how people from investing a few bucks became Bitcoin millionaires. That got me interested. So I'm only into cryptocurrency for a couple of weeks. Now since I don't have a lot of money to invest I got interested in bounty campains. Especially Authorship bounty campain seemed interesting. So I signed up. I don't have family or friends so I posted my link here and there on facebook and forums. The result was dissapointing. Nobody was signing up. At the same time I got that daily overview of people gathering thousands of ATS from referrals. That got me frustrated. I then decided to cheat the system 'a little'. My thought was that everybody would get paid and that I would simply get paid a little more. What would a few of extra ATS mean for a team of devs who would become millionaires with their fundraising? Thus was my thought.

How I did it
I made an Excel sheet on which I wrote about 40 fake names. For every name I made an email adress with providers that don't ask for your mobile number. I wrote the adress down. Then I made for every name a myetherweallet adress. The adress and private key I wrote down. Then I installed a VPN. Apparently one not many people use. For every account I changed the IP. The IP I wrote down to avoid using the same IP multiple times. Then I went to Authorship.com to sign up. The referral link and the link where I could see my balance I wrote down. In course of time I randomly used the generated referral links, or I registered directly.

Then the time came to harvest, so I thought. I had to fill in the form for every account. Of the 40-something accounts only 3 were not succesful. I think that for the first 3 accounts I used the Tor browser, those were filtered out. Then I waited for the tokens to arrive. But I received the infamous email where was stated that no further tokens would be issued and that instead we could get 3 free books. Okay, so now I could collect a small library. I didn't overreact. It was my own fault. Cheating doesn't pay off after all I thought. But then I noticed the fierce anger the email generated. People demanded their tokens. And soon enough Authorship decided to hand out tokens to everybody who had less than 4 similar IP's. Out of the 40 accounts I think 20 or so were succesful. I sent gas to the fake wallets. And from the wallets I transferred the ATS. Thus I collected 2275 ATS.

That however is not the end of my story. For the execution by Authorship turned out to be a failure. Some people received double the amount of tokens, while others proclaimed to have played the game honestly while not receiving any tokens. So instead of everybody receiving the ATS which they deserved from the millionaires, whereby I would receive a little bit more than I deserved, now I had received more than I deserved while others received less than they deserved. That doesn't feel right to me and like this I don't think I will ever enjoy my ATS tokens. Especially since the overal situation has outraged so many people.

Evaluation
Here I want to say that I do not feel responsible for the mess that has been created. My unfair play was directed towards a company which would raise millions and not against individuals who often probably don't have more money than me. The mess has been created because Authorship did not prepare and execute the bounty campaign properly.
What was good?
- The giving out of 75 ATS was generous. It created a lot of attention.
- They had the intention to filter out cheaters.
What was bad?
- The parameters for filtering out cheaters were not set properly from the start.
- During the campain the above parameters changed serveral times.
- They even went so far as to suddenly exclude a whole lot of fair players from receiving ATS. They broke the crucial agreement of the bounty campaign. Only heavy protests made them take back that decision.
What would be better?
- Lay down clear rules and parameters from the beginning.
- Stick to the laid down rules.
- Value all participating in the campaign. Also the little ones.

Regarding the people reacting to Authorship my views are as follows.

What was good?
- People didn't accept that Authorship would not hand out their fairly earned ATS. They made themselves being heard.
What was bad?
- People called names and even threatened individuals from Authorship. I find that not an acceptable form of protest.
What would be better?
- Be on fire but also be cool. And realize that the individuals behind Authorship are people with feelings too.

What I will do
So what will I do now? I feel sorry that many of you played a fair game and didn't receive your tokens while I cheated and did receive tokens. That is not as it should be. I doubted about what to do with my ATS now. I am not intending to keep my unfairly earned coins. First I thought to hand them out to a couple of fair players who did not receive their ATS. But since I don't know who is fair and who is not I thought to donate my ATS to charity. But what charity would accept ATS? Eventually I made the decision to return my ATS to Authorship. Authorship cheating on fair playing people is between Authorship and them and in the end does not concern me. My concern is the fact that I cheated on Authorship. Two wrongs don't make a right. And that Authorship cheated their rules doesn't make me right by having cheated the cheater, especially not before they broke their rules.

I appologize to all concerned about my unfair play. I will not do this again. I hope that the time I spent turned useless, the ether gas I paid for transfers, and the 75 ATS I earned honestly by signing up myself will suffice as a penance.

To those considering cheating: If you have low standard ethics; go ahead. If you have some ethical heart; forget about cheating; you'll eventually pay with your feelings of self dignity.

Kind regards to all,

An Authorship cheater