Untitled

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
changelink
avaantares

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

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(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

  • Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.
  • Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.
  • In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.
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  • In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

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  • In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.
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  • Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

drwcn
speakswords

Alright this is rly sad but here goes. I started doing my once-in-awhile bot purge from my followers list. And. I used to be able to just quickly scan and see the bots. They were the ones with default icons and generator-sounding names like "noun-girl-827". And if you weren't sure, you could click on the blog and it would be immediately obvious it was a bot because there's either just bad porn click bait, or nothing there.

Well. This time I had to give up immediately because I got like ten followers down the list and was having immense trouble figuring out who's a bot and who's real. Never ever used to see this but like 5/10 of the first few followers I checked on had just totally empty blogs. It wasn't until I'd already blocked 2 - assuming bots bc empty blogs - that I thought to check if they had any likes. And bam! There it was. All of their user activity.

We have people on this website now who have never reblogged a single post.

Y'all, I'm sure you're sick of seeing "you have to reblog thing" but you literally have to reblog things. That is how this website works. You understand that, right? How do you think the post you hit "like" on got in front of you? It wasn't because you liked enough things and Tumblrs algorithm figured out what you like enough to hand it to you. It's because you followed someone, a human person, who reblogged that post. And it came from another person who also reblogged it.

You are killing this website by refusing to interact with it in the way that makes it better than the other websites you ran from to come here.

Anyway, I'm sure you're all nice people, but I'm not going to play the "bot or not" game if you have an empty blog I'm going to block you.

wonderful-emoji

PSA for newer users