Signal Boost: Site scraping fics from AO3 to sell them

[sharpiefan]

Pretty much copied from isis' post here. Posted here because this is a community of fanfic writers who may be affected and may not know about this.

A site called http://www.ebooks-tree.com is scraping fic from AO3 and (apparently?) selling it.

Some information on how to file a DMCA take-down notice. You can also complain to ebooks-tree's webhost, CloudFlare, whose complaints/DMCA page is available here. (Note: You do not need to list your legal name, although Cloudflare do ask for a street address, so some people may not be comfortable with this.)

The AO3 are aware and OTW are discussing what to do.

The best way to discover if your stuff is there is to use their search-box for your pseuds; there is no logical format or layout to how they have arranged works. I have discovered two of my works copied.

I am absolutely furious that works I have put up in good faith as non-profit-making fanworks should be stolen and exploited by other people, and have already followed the guidelines to issue DMCA take-down notices.

Comments

[linaewen]

Doggone it, they have one of mine, too, a short one shot. Guess I'll be filing a complaint, as well! I heard about this earlier via Ao3 on Twitter, but must have searched wrong because I didn't find anything of mine at the time. It's very upsetting for us who have had works stolen -- in addition, I am an admin of a fanfic archive that is transferring all the works housed there to an archive at Ao3 before shutting down, and this could be a problem for stories that don't have accessible authors who can file complaints. Hopefully, Ao3 will be able to figure out how to combat this without curtailing access to proper users of the site.

[the_rck]

Well, I haven't yet filed a complaint, and the stories they took from me seem to be gone now. I'm hoping that they've just generally taken down all the stuff from AO3.

Though apparently they hit other archives, too, and some private websites.

[linaewen]

Aha! My story doesn't show up in the search anymore, so that is at least promising. I hadn't gotten around to filing a complaint yet either. I'll keep my eye on this, though -- thanks for all the updates!