do-a-reference-properly

[do-a-reference-properly]

Dear Authors,

We come with the latest news about the stories re-posted on fanfics.me (we abbreviate it as FFM).

1. The German hosting company does not work with the FFM site anymore. Thanks to all the authors who submitted the takedown requests for their reposted stories.

2. The new hosting company is Russian. Since https://website.informer.com still displays outdated information, we used cutestat.com that shows the last info update time and allows to manually update the info about the site. 

We found the new hosting provider by using hostingchecker.com and cross-checked that the new IP on cutestat matches IP here.

New hosting provider is called 'Selectel' (you can check it) and you can contact them at abuse@selectel.ru. The host company accepts claims in English as well. The samples of our takedown requests can be found in our previous tumblr post here. A few of Russian authors sent their takedown request to the mentioned email yesterday. Only one of them received the answer today saying that they are going to investigate this problem.

3. The good news is that the FFM’s owner wrote in his private blog yesterday night that he deleted all full texts of the re-posted stories. Thus, only the title, summary, author's name and the URL for original site are published on the FFM now. He insists on keeping this information, although this still counts as spamindexing and is against author’s wishes. 

By his claims made on April 2018 on his personal blog (don’t forget about AdBlock!  and remove spaces in the URL https://fan   fics.me/message311601), he re-posted about 7.5 thousands stories from AO3, 42 thousands from fanfiction.net, 153 thousands from ficbook.net and so on. In total, by April 2018 281 thousands of stories were copied from fan archives. We still think that this is a clear example of spamindexing, because if you do the google search by the title of your re-posted story, then you often found out that the first URL in the search results is FFM, not the AO3/fanfiction.net or other archive with original post. To be honest, we do not know how to resolve this problem. 

The bad news is that he mentioned in his blog that he might return the title, summary, author's name with the AO3 URL for all deleted works. So, keep an eye on that possibility.

But to cut his money making method we suggest you to fill in the complaints to the Google and Yandex advertising networks used by FFM. It does not help to delete your stories summaries from that site, but it deletes the link to a FFM’s page containing your story/its summary from Google/Yandex search. This prevents getting the revenue from your fan works. Here is the link with the instruction on how to do it. 

Here is Google’s policy regarding copyright infringement on publisher sites; here is the direct link to the DMCA takedown request form for the Adsense program.

Here is the instruction about how to do it for Yandex

You can help even if you aren’t an author by filing a spam indexing report to Google. This can be done by anyone (you needn’t to be the author). Here is the instruction how to do it:

Go here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreportform?hl=en 

Put in the name of the website (one webpage per report) or the page (almost every page starting from fanfics.me/ftf has copied content) that has the copied content.

Write in additional details. For example: 

If you had your works re-posted: This is a spamdexing mirror site to https://archiveofourown.org/ and has stolen my profiles and intellectual property. 

If you hadn’t: you can just write that this site copies content from such sites as [insert web archive name].

Click “I am not a robot” and then “Report webspam” Report more by clicking the link on: Go back to the webspam report form.

We were told that our personal comments to the AO3’ authors might be considered by some people as a scam, not like a help. We apologize if it looked like a scam. But we hope that by posting comments in AO3 we helped at least a few of you.

To summarise, let us say, that the situation looks ambivalent: 

the matter is partially resolved for now, i.e. the full texts of the re-posted stories are removed from the FFM (as the owner claims). You still can submit the takedown request to the new host company, but we do not know how well they work. Additionally, we suggest you to fill in the complaints to the Google and Yandex advertising networks

judging by FFM’s owner previous behaviour we cannot be sure whether he will keep true to his word this time and won't make the texts available for reading and download again in the future

We will be posting some general information based on our experience with this case about methods of taking down works accompanied by complaint letters examples for the future. It seems like a good idea.

If the situation changes, we will come back with the new information here.

[do-a-reference-properly]

FINALLY some good news

UPD. 01 Oct. 2019 Seems like the German hosting provider kicked him out thanks to all the complaints they have received from all of you! If you try going to the site from https://website.informer.com/fanfics.me, you will not be able to do so (maybe the info on website informer will get updated later, because right now Hetzner is still listed there as the hosting provider). The site is now hosted by a Russian hosting provider, which is very interesting, since he is still violating Russian laws. We are now investigating new hosting provider and will write when we have enough information.

Dear Authors, 

We have good news for you! 

Following the advice of the AO3 Legal Team (which has been prepared for a similar case with other site some time ago and published here), several Russian authors were able to remove from fanfics.me their works (initially posted on fan-works archives other than AO3) as well as ANY information about them (i.e. the title, the author, the summary and so on). 

So now that we have confirmed that it is indeed a working method, and taking into the account this useful article “What Can Fans Do if Their Fanworks Actually Are Hosted Elsewhere” (https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/2692) at AO3, we strongly advise all the authors to send takedown requests for all your re-posted stories to the fanfics.me hosting provider.

We stress that this useful solution is general and works for all abused authors regardless where they publish the works (AO3, fanfiction.net or any other site). The authors do not need to put any tags to protect their works. You just need to report your author’s rights violation at the host site and request to delete your works from fanfics.me (we’ll call this site FFM for brevity’s sake) as well as any information about them.

You can report your author’s rights violation to the host by filling in the form at https://abuse.hetzner.com/issues/new?lang=en . Choose “Copyright violation” in the Category drop-down menu. Additionally, you need to insert 88.99.63.41 in the Source (you may check that the numbers are correct  here https://website.informer.com/fanfics.me ). 

Next, in the Description field lay out your request to delete the stories that have been taken without your permission to FFM (either present all links to your stories appeared at FFM, or provide the link to the page on fanfics.me accumulating the list of all your works which you can access by clicking on author’s nickname in the work’s summary). 

Add the proof that you are indeed the author of the stolen works. For that, you may give the link to your original profiles at the sites where your stolen stories were originally published by you. 

Submit the request.

The host will send the request to the owner of the FFM and return his answer to you. Please, insist on deleting all your stories and even any information about them (title, author’s nickname, summary etc.) about them from that site.

You will probably get engaged in conversation with FFM’s owner via the host company (the host will forward your complaint to him and then will forward you his answers), he’ll lie about FFM functionality and compare it with Google and Dropbox and other services claiming that FFM is totally innocent. Be insistent! At some moment we got tired of this pointless exchange and asked the hosting company to stop all conversations with FFM’s owner and just resolve the complaint.

It worked! Moreover, every piece of information was deleted!

Please, help us to stop the spamindexing and the theft of your works! Report a takedown request for all your stories to the site that hosts the FFM! This is the only way to deal with such sites and the most useful solution to stop them! Please, help us to share this information! Spread the word!

P.S.: For your convenience, we provide our series of letters sent to the host site under the cut. You may use them as the examples. Please note that English is not our native language and we are sorry for any possible mistakes. Feel free to modify the text to match your needs.

Step 1. To submit your author’s rights violation, you need to follow the link and fill in the form. 

URL: https://abuse.hetzner.com/issues/new?lang=en 

Subject: Author rights violation.

Category: copyright violations

Source: 88.99.63.41 (you may check here)

Description: You need to request the site that hosts FFM to delete your stories copied to fanfics.me without your permission as well as to delete any information about your works (the title, summary and so on) from that site. We have an example of such letter, which you can use entirely or in part or modify to your convenience.

EXAMPLE: 

Dear Sir/Madam,  

The site fanfics.me, which you host, has re-posted and published my works without any permission and even my knowledge. As the author of the works listed below, I inform you about my author’s rights abuse by the mentioned site and I request you to delete them as well as any information about my works (the title, author’s name, summary and so on). I do not want to have any relation to that site, because the owner turns out to earn money by other people’s intellectual property through ads on his site. 

This site not only violated my rights to the texts, but also has violated the fanwork’s canon materials author’s copyright by monetizing fanworks that I create for free and do not get any benefits from and neither I intend to get any.  

This is illegal by both Russian and International laws.  Here is the page containing all my works to be removed/taken down from fanfics.me:

1. The link to your works on FFM or to your “profile” on FFM:

NB! You might have separate FFM “profiles” for ao3, fanfiction.net, etc, check that you attaching all the works from every site 

2. Here is the proof that I am the author of the stolen works:  (Any reference to your author’s account on the sites, from which your works have been taken. Alternatively, any screenshots of your author’s accounts.)

Thank you for your assistance.  

Regards, 

Step 2. 

After a while, the host site forward you the letter from the owner of fanfics.me where he says that all full text of your stories have been deleted from his site, meanwhile their summaries (the title, summary and so on) are still there because this is a free information. However, we stress that he has created a catalogue of all these thousands taken-for-free works and earns money on other people’s intellectual property via the ads on his site. This is a clear example of spamindexing. 

Please, be persistent in your author’s request and insist on deleting any information about your stories from FFM. You can write to the host that its customer has taken thousands of works from both Russian and international sites without the authors’ permission. This is a clear violation of the authors’ rights. The full texts of works in the most cases are available on FFM for reading and downloading. Hence, you request to remove any information about you and your works from FFM. You may also refer to the AO3 Legal Team Article about fanworks and copyright cited at the beginning of this post.

Step 3. 

You might receive a new email from the owner of fanfics.me site forwarded to you by the host site. There, he again insists that his site is legal and works like Dropbox or Google search for fan works. The FFM’s owner  is really stubborn person. So, please, remind him and the host site that in contrast to Dropbox and other services, FFM earns money on other people’s intellectual property via the ads on his site by using spamindexing technique. 

Alternatively, at this stage you may stop writing letters to the FFM owner, because it is really useless and time-consuming. Instead, address your last claim letter to the host site, because this is the last authority that takes the final decision and has the responsibility for their own words regarding their customers policy mentioned in the art. 6.2 of the Terms and Conditions. We have an example of your last letter to the host. You may use it in part or entirely. It is up to you.

EXAMPLE: 

Dear Sir/Madam, I think that we need to stop this discussion with your customer, because I am tired of his lies and his refusal to delete any information about my works from his site. Don’t bother sending his replies to me. I now write to you for the last time.

I stress again that your customer has taken thousands of works from both Russian and international sites without the authors’ permission. The full texts are available at his site for reading and downloading. Besides, he has created a catalogue of all these stolen works and earns money on other people’s intellectual property via the ads on his site.  

I stress that your customer has been doing this for years and you can find thousands of victims of his actions, see the following links and the comments under them 

1. https://do-a-reference-properly.tumblr.com/post/187557754659%E2%80%A6   

2. https://tikatu.tumblr.com/post/138928027993/all-fanfictionne%E2%80%A6  

As an author I have my rights to control the use of my works.  

You host  fanfics.me and you do nothing in this situation. It seems that the rules specified in your  own terms and conditions about violating the rights of third parties or otherwise violating the law (6.2.) mean nothing. 

7.5 thousands of stories have been taken without the authors permission from archiveofourown.org and about 40 thousands are stolen from fanfiction.net as of the 1th April 2018 and according to the FFM’s owner words and we can only imagine how big the numbers are now. This is the exact translation of the words of your customer.

Regards,

Finally, if you receive the letter from the host site saying that the links have been deleted, then it means that everything is in order, i.e. any information about you as the author and about your works have been deleted from that site by the host. You can check if it’s true.

We regret that this happened to you and hope that this advice will help you to stop the theft of your works. 

You can also  contact the Organization for Transformative Works’ Legal team at legal@transformativeworks.org for their advice, as they would know more about legal standing.

[do-a-reference-properly]

FFM’s update and it is not good news

Hello! You might have noticed some changes on that site.

FFM’s owner made a really surprising thing for everyone. Yesterday he updated his blog (don’t forget Ads Block!) https://fanfics.me/message403002. For now his site doesn't allow to see your work without registration. Users still can read and download your story for, as Refery calls it, “personal use" (the term that in Refery’s opinion makes his site legal).  Please PM or send us asks and we'll send you login and password to acces FFM.

After you searched for a fic and clicked on its name you will be taken to a page that looks like this.

For now you can still find your works by searching for them.

But:

1. Refery still receives money from ads and even makes more due to additional pages users need to view.

2. He still keeps your stories on his server.

3. Changes were done only for ficbook.net and ao3. Everyone can see that your works from fanfiction.net, fictionpress.com, fanfiktion.de and other web-archives and so on are on FFM. At the same time the FFM's owner won't allow such "copying for personal use" of any works posted on his own main fanfiction site. 

4. The authors lose any semblance of control over their works and Refery won’t delete them from FFM, because in his opinion the works are being downloaded for “personal use” and thus such copying doesn’t infringe any rights.

We’d like to remind you all that last time around when Refery for a while stopped copying works from AO3 and works from Russian fanfiction archive site ficbook with agreed "Ask the author first" tag, we made а mistake believing him, as we already said in the first post. But when the dust settled a bit he started copying again. 

As you can see from the current events, he just returned the copying function when everything seemed clear on the coast. Basically, he can cancel these changes at any time. ​​​​

He is still rapidly changing the site so that everything looks legit on the outside.

About changes:

The owner still keeps your works on his server and just hides them behind a new page. So what’s the idea?

• One more page means more ads.

• Unregistered visitors cannot access them anymore (you will not be able to check your works)

• Registered user has to click “load” the work “for his personal use” using the link - Load button, and if the work is posted on AO3 without “Don’t copy to another site” tag, a user will be able to read and download it. If the tag is there, but user “loaded” it before, they will still be able to read it before they hit the “close” button. A user that is trying to “load” the tagged work will just get a message that the author has forbidden reposting their work. The reason we use apostrophes in “load” is because fanfics.me only checks if the tag is there on ao3. 

Obviously there is no point in keeping thousands of “for personal use” copies for a single fic. So it just means that stolen works are hidden and stored in FFMs database. We tested and confirmed this theory on our own fics posted on russian fiction archive called ficbook

To summarize, at the moment (11 September 18:25 MSK): 

1. Any unregistered/registered user can enter the link to a specific fic into an input form on FFM and as a result they will get a page with short information on the fic (title, author, summary, pairings, rating, source)  - a so called “card”. Even for the stories with the tag this information will be displayed on FFM without notification or consent of the author. 

2. If your story has the tag “Don’t copy to another site”, then only the card will be displayed on FFM, not the work itself .

3. If your story does not have any protection in terms of this AO3 tag “Don’t copy to another site”, then the registered users can read it on the FFM and download without your knowledge.

4. If you just recently put the tag “Don’t copy to another site”, and the user tries to update the fic on FFM or closes the tab with the work, he will not be able to read it at FFM.

5. Finally, the summary of each work brought to the FFM site contains the size of the file and the Last update date at the original (i.e. AO3 and others) site - which also indicates that FFM downloads your works.

Please note that you still can’t protect your works posted on archives other than ao3 or ficbook (there are no tags that you could add to forbid the copying; any notices that reposts are not allowed are just ignored). Moreover, Refery said on his public blog that he will be copying works from fanfiction.net since “this site is dead anyway”.

Based on this investigation, our conclusion is that all stolen works seem to be located at the FFM server and Refery lies and your story is initially downloaded from the original source (AO3 or other site) no matter if the tags are still there. After that the site checks the tags on AO3 and checks if the user is registered, and then it hides/shows fics using this algorithm. Afterwards site just updates your fic - seemingly with random timing - after checking for any changes.

So, when Refery thinks he can get away with it - which can happen at any time -  he will just open stolen works for any and all visitors again anyway.

[do-a-reference-properly]

How to file an abuse complaint to Yandex Advertising Network

Hi, guys!

Recent FFM update doesn't change the fact that the site mass-copies content from other sites, so here you are!

We are still writing a post about the update, though it is getting late in our time zone.

We also made a guide on how to file an abuse complaint to Yandex Advertising Network.

You can send it by filling in this form.

Here is how the complain page looks in Russian and how you change it to English. 

You need to fill in your name, e-mail, and the message (uploading files is optional). 

The proposed message text is below under the cut

Please feel free to PM or send us asks if you need any help.

Dear Tech Support Team,

Terms of participation in Yandex Advertising Network partnership program listed here https://yandex.ru/support/partner2/efficiency/site-quality.html?lang=en and here https://yandex.ru/support/webmaster/yandex-indexing/webmaster-advice.html?lang=en establish criteria for website evaluation and main principles and recommendations in regards to website activity. Furthermore, it is stated that following them will "have your site indexed and ranked better. Any cheating techniques may result in your site getting a lower ranking or being excluded from the search results". Yandex states: "All methods used to generate artificial or fraudulent ad clicks or impressions are categorically prohibited."

Yandex also lists criteria due to which website  quality rating may be set low:

Website contains text that is automatically generated or doesn't make sense.

Website copies information from other resources without creating original content or services.

Website publishes various links exclusively for the purpose of deceiving search engines and “artificially inflating” your site's relevance.

Website contains links that are not actual recommendations of the author to visit the linked resource.

Yandex considers techniques described in this section as fraudulent, as they artificially influence a site's Yandex ranking or ad impressions.

Yandex also states:

We avoid indexing or giving high rankings to:

Sites that copy or rewrite information from other resources instead of creating original content.

Sites that copy or rewrite information from other resources by using a low-quality automatic translation into another language instead of creating original content.

Auto-generated (meaningless) text.

Sites with directories (of articles, software, businesses, and so on), if they are just content aggregators and don't create their own texts and descriptions or provide a unique service.

Sites that include external links exclusively for deceiving search engines and “inflating” relevancy, when these links are not actually the author's recommendation to visit a resource.

Site pages with search results.

Taking into account the principles listed, there are several restriction to be applied by Yandex which include but are not limited to: removing site's pages from search results, lowering them in search result rankings.

Having said that, I would like to inform you that site www.fanfics.me, which participates in Yandex Advertising Network partnership program and hosts ads as a partner:

- mass copies texts from sites such as: www.ficbook.net, www.fanfiction.net, www.archiveofourown.org, www.fictionpress.com, samlib.ru and possibly www.snapetales.com, proza.ru, fanfiktion.de, galtara.ru, kertianslib.ru and probably from other web-archives. This site also had copied in the past commercial texts from litnet.com and author.today.

Moreover, copies are done without authors' permission.

- site has made a catalog out of copied works, and the site is  also a content aggregator, which is confirmed by site owner's messages multiple times - https://fanfics.me/message326581, https://fanfics.me/message398151, https://fanfics.me/message397620 (link to the pages safed to the Wayback Machine in case the original post will be deleted https://web.archive.org/web/20190303223830/https://fanfics.me/message326581, https://web.archive.org/web/20190910200527/https://fanfics.me/message398151, https://web.archive.org/web/20190910201623/https://fanfics.me/message397620);

- site uses copied works and uses their links to deceive search engines and “inflate” relevancy, and these links are not actually the author's recommendation to visit a resource. As a result, on search results the original source comes up lower than the page on www.fanfics.me with copied text.

Also, I would like to add, that the site owner made known his plans (https://fanfics.me/message400827 and link to this page safed to the Wayback Machine in case the original post will be deleted​​​​​​​https://web.archive.org/web/20190910200458/https://fanfics.me/message400827) about making a machine translation of copied content (which I mentioned above) to Russian language, which also violates principles stated by Yandex. Please take actions regarding this situation. 

Finally, I would like to bring your attention that there were letters sent to Yandex support regarding site's illegal activity: published novels (Harry Potter, The Hobbit and The Vorkosigan Saga) were displayed on this site for everyone to read and download.

P.S. A lot of unhappy users have already sent notifications about this situation to Google.

[do-a-reference-properly]

About FFM’s hosting

We found out who hosts this site through website.informer.com Now, on this hoster’s website https://www.hetzner.com/rechtliches/agb/ it is clearly stated:

6.2 The client undertakes not to publish content that may violate the rights of third parties or otherwise violate the law. The placement of erotic, pornographic, extremist material or material not deemed in good taste is not permitted. We are entitled to block access to the account of any customer who violates this.

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[do-a-reference-properly]

Our new volunteer  https://withheartfulloflove.tumblr.com

If you want to delete from FFM your work that was stolen from AO3

You can still PM or Ask us or contact our volunteers after you put the tag.

List of volunteers (may change):

https://cmon-billy.tumblr.com/ https://anonenot.tumblr.com/ https://lost-in-fics-translation.tumblr.com/

Instruction for doing it on your own (link to imgur):

HERE

If you see that this Login-Password pair no longer works, PM or Ask us, we will give you another.

[do-a-reference-properly]

Some new information about PSA, now with cuts (no horrifyingly long posts on your dash)

We deeply apologize for accidentally deleting the previous blog. We are fairly new to tumblr and don’t have full grasp on its user interface.

Sorry for not reblogging (cause we don’t think you would appreciate continuous long posts)

Here the original link of a post from reblogger 

https://norakwami.tumblr.com/post/187594458256 

Okay, kids, buckle up, because I’m going to tell you exactly how to handle this problem.

Читать дальше

[do-a-reference-properly]

AO3′s users alert! Unauthorised fanworks copying

26/09/2019. Important update on this mess: we found a way to delete fanworks via take down request to the hosting provider. Please check it here https://do-a-reference-properly.tumblr.com/post/187926459079/finally-some-good-news

Dear AO3 users,

We would like to bring your attention to an ugly situation with unauthorized copying of works posted on AO3.

A lot of works from AO3 have been copied to fanfics.me (we’ll call this site FFM for brevity’s sake) and are still being copied right now, either:

— automatically by a code specifically created by FFM’s owner for this purpose, or

— by unaware or unscrupulous FFM’s users via semi-automatic method (by inserting a link to a work from AO3 into a web-worm on FFM).

All works from AO3 — with a few exceptions (I’ll elaborate on this below) — can end up on FFM without authors even noticing. Even fanarts or podfics.

FFM doesn't comply with DMCA which means that such reposts endanger fanworks' creators in case the copyright holder demands to delete the fanwork.

Authors of the copied works do not have any control over them; if the work is edited it won’t be updated on FFM until someone manually updates it.

Additionally FFM’s owner makes money out of reposted free fanworks from numerous Google and Yandex ads on each and every FFM’s page by having people go to this site when searching for fics on Google etc. So we recommend using an Ads Blocker when visiting this site in order to prevent the owner from earning more. Ghostery or Adblock Plus work just fine, but you can use any other Ads Blocker that is convenient to you.

Oftentimes FFM even shows up before the original post with the work on Google search results.

The owner’s e-mail: refery@fanfics.ru.

The owner at AO3.

We are trying to bring AO3’s users attention to this situation and help authors with taking their works down from FFM.

 Briefly about the website and its owner

Let me start from the very beginning as it will bring into the light the nature of FFM and give a good example of its owner characteristic behavior.

At first, some person with nickname Refery created FFM as a web archive where authors — mostly from Harry Potter fandom — could publish their fanworks.

Time passed, the site grew and added some features (blogs, pre-moderation and etc.), and all was good and well up till the moment when Refery decided that it would be a great idea to copy to FFM fanworks published on other Russian fanfiction archives — among them from the biggest and most known site ficbook — without asking authors for permission. Even those works that had “Ask me before posting the story somewhere else” mentioned in its text or summary were copied.

For some time nobody noticed, but when finally and inevitably this came out the authors were outraged. It took a lot of time to finally persuade Refery to at least not to copy fanworks bearing a special tag “Уточнять у автора” (Ask the author first).

But after some time Refery — without giving any notice — violated his own promise and resumed copying to FFM fanworks that had the agreed upon tag. The authors complained again, so very reluctantly and after many painful discussions this feature was reinstalled.

So FFM has been notoriously known, mostly amongst Russian fandom, for claims on re-posting fanworks without the consent of the authors.

We're mentioning this situation just to give you a detailed portrait of a person we are dealing with here.

Not only fanworks are copied to this website, but original works, too. Even those which were already published. There were all 7 of Harry Potter novels (both original text and translation), The Hobbit: There and Back Again (translation) and Vorkosigan Saga (translation) available for everybody to read and download. They were taken down only recently due to the attention this whole situation had drawn, but nothing ever goes away once it’s posted online and you can access the proof via Internet Wayback machine. We know for a fact there are other books on FFM and some actions have been taken in this regard, but still it takes time to find published books on this site.

Recently Refery decided that Russian archives are not enough for him and started copying all fanworks into FFM without any permission from the authors from numerous sites, like AO3, fanfiction.net, fictionpress.com, fanfiktion.de and likely other web-archives.

Moreover, the authors of these works can not delete their works from FFM and/or manage them. The site is in Russian only and, hence, we strongly believe that non-Russian speaking authors even do not know that their works are reposted somewhere else.

As a Russian fan-community, we have tried to stop such activity of FFM many times; however, we have not been successful in achieving our goal completely. Our most recent achievement is that the FFM’s owner implemented the "Don't copy to another site" tag created specifically for AO3 (here is the link to FFM’s owner post on his personal blog regarding this tag. Please use Ads Blocker!). This tag should be added to each work presented on AO3 in case the author does not want their works to be copied to FFM.

We are of the opinion that no work should be taken without permission in the first place, but this tag is all we’ve got.

Please note that it seems that some time ago there was similar case of unauthorized copying with other site. Please check this link, they give useful advice.

How to prevent copying from AO3

If you check AO3 you may notice that "Don't copy to another site" tag has hugely emerged in the recent weeks, but mostly amongst Russian users and there is a good reason for this: the owner of FFM announced this tag only in Russian and only on his private blog, so naturally there is no way for non-Russian speaking AO3 users to know about this — albeit non-satisfactory — solution.

There are no guaranties that the FFM’s owner won’t change the rules again as has already happened numerous times before (few examples we described above) and that works with this tag won’t be reposted in the future, but for now it’s the only quick and working solution besides making your works visible only to registered users, which is not ideal. 

This situation is highly unpleasant, but we ask you not to delete your works from AO3, because if the work is deleted from AO3 it will be nearly impossible to delete it from FFM: we won't be able to refresh it manually and remove the text.

Please note that adding this tag won’t work for texts that have already been copied. Only users who have accounts at FFM will be able to delete them. Each work needs to be deleted manually.

However, the Russian fandom — except for the owner of FFM — strongly condemns reposts without the consent of the author, so feel free to contact our volunteers (through DM or Ask on our tumblr page) providing the links to the works stolen from AO3, so we could delete them for you.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to cover all authors and works manually. So, we contacted AO3’ Technical Team with the aim to bring their attention to this situation and inform about it all AO3 users, and hope that AO3 team will find a general solution to resolve this problem, possibly, in collaboration with the AO3 lawyers.

We are trying to warn as many authors as possible and recently started spreading this information via comments on AO3; but considering the number of works copied to FFM informing all authors will take considerable time, and we can easily miss someone, especially since the copying is still in progress and new works from AO3 are appearing on FFM every day.

Please help us spread the word!

 We tried to make a comprehensive FAQ about this. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear!

FAQ

Q: Can I check if my work was copied to FFM?

A: Yes, you can.

FFM makes money on Google and Yandex ads, so we recommend turning on the Ads Blocker of your choice before visiting this site.

Please follow this link, insert the title of your work or your AO3/other web-archive nickname into the field containing the words "insert-title-nickname" and hit "Искать" (Search).

For works rated Mature or Explicit you will be able to see only the caption "Текст произведения доступен только зарегистрированным пользователям старше 18 лет" ("The text of the work is available only to registered users over 18 years old"), but FFM users are able to read and download the story.

Q: My work from AO3 was copied. How can I take it down?

A: First of all add the tag "Don't copy to another site" (without “ “) to the stories you want to be taken down.

Actually we would recommend adding this tag to all the works you don't want to be copied.

Contact one of our volunteers (through DM or Ask on our tumblr page) providing links to your works or send an e-mail with your deletion request directly to the FFM owner at refery@fanfics.ru or at AO3. 

There is a third option: to register on FFM and delete the work yourself by hitting the refresh button, but considering that the site is in Russian we do not think it will be very convenient to those who do not speak Russian language.

Q: I got the message that my work has been deleted. How can I check if it is true?

A: You can go to FFM, search for you work, click on its title and scroll down.

After the summary there is a field that should look like this for those fics that have been deleted.

Basically it says that the author of this particular work has forbidden its copying and that only the information on its title, author’s nickname, rating, pairings, summary and the link to original post on AO3 are available. 

For works that are still available on FFM this field looks like this (if the work is open for non-registered users).

Q: My work copied from AO3 was deleted, but FFM still shows some information on it. Can it be deleted?

A: Even though the text of the fic is not going to be on FFM anymore after it has been deleted, the fic's title, author's name, rating, pairings, summary and link to original post on AO3 will remain there.

The deletion of this leftover information can be done only by the site owner himself.

Some Russian authors tried to make him to delete it, but in most cases the FFM’s owner refused them mentioning that publication of such information is in line with fair use concept and doesn’t violate authors’ rights.

We are yet unsure how to delete this leftover information. In case you need it as well, try contacting the FFM owner at refery@fanfics.ru or at AO3. Maybe e-mails of a large number of authors will work, but unfortunately we can’t guarantee anything. In case you need it, we can provide Russian text for you to send by e-mail (please contact our volunteers through DM or Ask on our tumblr page).

Q: My work from fanfiction.net/fictionpress.com/fanfiktion.de/other web-archives was copied to FFM. How can I take it down?

A: Unfortunately, there is no possible way for us to delete from FFM the fanworks that are copied from web-archives other then AO3. Only FFM’s owner can delete these works, please try contacting him at refery@fanfics.ru or at AO3. In case you need it, we can provide Russian text for you to send by e-mail (please contact our volunteers through DM or Ask on our tumblr page).

Please do not delete your works from the web-archive it was stolen from, because if the work is deleted it will be nearly impossible to delete it from FFM.

Also it seems that some time ago there was similar case of unauthorized copying with other site. Please check this link, they give useful advice.