#dmca copyright

[lexdmca]

YouTube copyright: How to avoid YouTube copyright claims

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cleantech has an enshittification problem

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

EVs won't save the planet. Ultimately, the material bill for billions of individual vehicles and the unavoidable geometry of more cars-more traffic-more roads-greater distances-more cars dictate that the future of our cities and planet requires public transit – lots of it.

But no matter how much public transit we install, there's always going to be some personal vehicles on the road, and not just bikes, ebikes and scooters. Between deliveries, accessibility, and stubbornly low-density regions, there's going to be a lot of cars, vans and trucks on the road for the foreseeable future, and these should be electric.

Beyond that irreducible minimum of personal vehicles, there's the fact that individuals can't install their own public transit system; in places that lack the political will or means to create working transit, EVs are a way for people to significantly reduce their personal emissions.

In policy circles, EV adoption is treated as a logistical and financial issue, so governments have focused on making EVs affordable and increasing the density of charging stations. As an EV owner, I can affirm that affordability and logistics were important concerns when we were shopping for a car.

But there's a third EV problem that is almost entirely off policy radar: enshittification.

An EV is a rolling computer in a fancy case with a squishy person inside of it. While this can sound scary, there are lots of cool implications for this. For example, your EV could download your local power company's tariff schedule and preferentially charge itself when the rates are lowest; they could also coordinate with the utility to reduce charging when loads are peaking. You can start them with your phone. Your repair technician can run extensive remote diagnostics on them and help you solve many problems from the road. New features can be delivered over the air.

That's just for starters, but there's so much more in the future. After all, the signal virtue of a digital computer is its flexibility. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing complete, universal, Von Neumann machine, which can run every valid program. If a feature is computationally tractable – from automated parallel parking to advanced collision prevention – it can run on a car.

The problem is that this digital flexibility presents a moral hazard to EV manufacturers. EVs are designed to make any kind of unauthorized, owner-selected modification into an IP rights violation ("IP" in this case is "any law that lets me control the conduct of my customers or competitors"):

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

EVs are also designed so that the manufacturer can unilaterally exert control over them or alter their operation. EVs – even more than conventional vehicles – are designed to be remotely killswitched in order to help manufacturers and dealers pressure people into paying their car notes on time:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Manufacturers can reach into your car and change how much of your battery you can access:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

They can lock your car and have it send its location to a repo man, then greet him by blinking its lights, honking its horn, and pulling out of its parking space:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

And of course, they can detect when you've asked independent mechanic to service your car and then punish you by degrading its functionality:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2024/06/26/two-of-eight-claims-in-tesla-anti-trust-lawsuit-will-move-forward/

This is "twiddling" – unilaterally and irreversibly altering the functionality of a product or service, secure in the knowledge that IP law will prevent anyone from twiddling back by restoring the gadget to a preferred configuration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

The thing is, for an EV, twiddling is the best case scenario. As bad as it is for the company that made your EV to change how it works whenever they feel like picking your pocket, that's infinitely preferable to the manufacturer going bankrupt and bricking your car.

That's what just happened to owners of Fisker EVs, cars that cost $40-70k. Cars are long-term purchases. An EV should last 12-20 years, or even longer if you pay to swap the battery pack. Fisker was founded in 2016 and shipped its first Ocean SUV in 2023. The company is now bankrupt:

https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chapter-11-official/

Fisker called its vehicles "software-based cars" and they weren't kidding. Without continuous software updates and server access, those Fisker Ocean SUVs are turning into bricks. What's more, the company designed the car from the ground up to make any kind of independent service and support into a felony, by wrapping the whole thing in overlapping layers of IP. That means that no one can step in with a module that jailbreaks the Fisker and drops in an alternative firmware that will keep the fleet rolling.

This is the third EV risk – not just finance, not just charger infrastructure, but the possibility that any whizzy, cool new EV company will go bust and brick your $70k cleantech investment, irreversibly transforming your car into 5,500 lb worth of e-waste.

This confers a huge advantage onto the big automakers like VW, Kia, Ford, etc. Tesla gets a pass, too, because it achieved critical mass before people started to wise up to the risk of twiddling and bricking. If you're making a serious investment in a product you expect to use for 20 years, are you really gonna buy it from a two-year old startup with six months' capital in the bank?

The incumbency advantage here means that the big automakers won't have any reason to sink a lot of money into R&D, because they won't have to worry about hungry startups with cool new ideas eating their lunches. They can maintain the cozy cartel that has seen cars stagnate for decades, with the majority of "innovation" taking the form of shitty, extractive and ill-starred ideas like touchscreen controls and an accelerator pedal that you have to rent by the month:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

Put that way, it's clear that this isn't an EV problem, it's a cleantech problem. Cleantech has all the problems of EVs: it requires a large capital expenditure, it will be "smart," and it is expected to last for decades. That's rooftop solar, heat-pumps, smart thermostat sensor arrays, and home storage batteries.

And just as with EVs, policymakers have focused on infrastructure and affordability without paying any attention to the enshittification risks. Your rooftop solar will likely be controlled via a Solaredge box – a terrible technology that stops working if it can't reach the internet for a protracted period (that's right, your home solar stops working if the grid fails!).

I found this out the hard way during the covid lockdowns, when Solaredge terminated its 3G cellular contract and notified me that I would have to replace the modem in my system or it would stop working. This was at the height of the supply-chain crisis and there was a long waiting list for any replacement modems, with wifi cards (that used your home internet rather than a cellular connection) completely sold out for most of a year.

There are good reasons to connect rooftop solar arrays to the internet – it's not just so that Solaredge can enshittify my service. Solar arrays that coordinate with the grid can make it much easier and safer to manage a grid that was designed for centralized power production and is being retrofitted for distributed generation, one roof at a time.

But when the imperatives of extraction and efficiency go to war, extraction always wins. After all, the Solaredge system is already in place and solar installers are largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, the reasons that a homeowner might want to directly control and monitor their system via local controls that don't roundtrip through the cloud.

Somewhere in the hindbrain of any prospective solar purchaser is the experience with bricked and enshittified "smart" gadgets, and the knowledge that anything they buy from a cool startup with lots of great ideas for improving production, monitoring, and/or costs poses the risk of having your 20 year investment bricked after just a few years – and, thanks to the extractive imperative, no one will be able to step in and restore your ex-solar array to good working order.

I make the majority of my living from books, which means that my pay is very "lumpy" – I get large sums when I publish a book and very little in between. For many years, I've used these payments to make big purchases, rather than financing them over long periods where I can't predict my income. We've used my book payments to put in solar, then an induction stove, then a battery. We used one to buy out the lease on our EV. And just a month ago, we used the money from my upcoming Enshittification book to put in a heat pump (with enough left over to pay for a pair of long-overdue cataract surgeries, scheduled for the fall).

When we started shopping for heat pumps, it was clear that this was a very exciting sector. First of all, heat pumps are kind of magic, so efficient and effective it's almost surreal. But beyond the basic tech – which has been around since the late 1940s – there is a vast ferment of cool digital features coming from exciting and innovative startups.

By nature, I'm the kid of person who likes these digital features. I started out as a computer programmer, and while I haven't written production code since the previous millennium, I've been in and around the tech industry for my whole adult life. But when it came time to buy a heat-pump – an investment that I expected to last for 20 years or more – there was no way I was going to buy one of these cool new digitally enhanced pumps, no matter how much the reviewers loved them. Sure, they'd work well, but it's precisely because I'm so knowledgeable about high tech that I could see that they would fail very, very badly.

You may think EVs are bullshit, and they are – though there will always be room for some personal vehicles, and it's better for people in transit deserts to drive EVs than gas-guzzlers. You may think rooftop solar is a dead-end and be all-in on utility scale solar (I think we need both, especially given the grid-disrupting extreme climate events on our horizon). But there's still a wide range of cleantech – induction tops, heat pumps, smart thermostats – that are capital intensive, have a long duty cycle, and have good reasons to be digitized and networked.

Take home storage batteries: your utility can push its rate card to your battery every time they change their prices, and your battery can use that information to decide when to let your house tap into the grid, and when to switch over to powering your home with the solar you've stored up during the day. This is a very old and proven pattern in tech: the old Fidonet BBS network used a version of this, with each BBS timing its calls to other nodes to coincide with the cheapest long-distance rates, so that messages for distant systems could be passed on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

Cleantech is a very dynamic sector, even if its triumphs are largely unheralded. There's a quiet revolution underway in generation, storage and transmission of renewable power, and a complimentary revolution in power-consumption in vehicles and homes:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

But cleantech is too important to leave to the incumbents, who are addicted to enshittification and planned obsolescence. These giant, financialized firms lack the discipline and culture to make products that have the features – and cost savings – to make them appealing to the very wide range of buyers who must transition as soon as possible, for the sake of the very planet.

It's not enough for our policymakers to focus on financing and infrastructure barriers to cleantech adoption. We also need a policy-level response to enshittification.

Ideally, every cleantech device would be designed so that it was impossible to enshittify – which would also make it impossible to brick:

Based on free software (best), or with source code escrowed with a trustee who must release the code if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

All patents in a royalty-free patent-pool (best); or in a trust that will release them into a royalty-free pool if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

No parts-pairing or other DRM permitted (best); or with parts-pairing utilities available to all parties on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best);

All diagnostic and error codes in the public domain, with all codes in the clear within the device (best); or with decoding utilities available on demand to all comers on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best).

There's an obvious business objection to this: it will reduce investment in innovative cleantech because investors will perceive these restrictions as limits on the expected profits of their portfolio companies. It's true: these measures are designed to prevent rent-extraction and other enshittificatory practices by cleantech companies, and to the extent that investors are counting on enshittification rents, this might prevent them from investing.

But that has to be balanced against the way that a general prohibition on enshittificatory practices will inspire consumer confidence in innovative and novel cleantech products, because buyers will know that their investments will be protected over the whole expected lifespan of the product, even if the startup goes bust (nearly every startup goes bust). These measures mean that a company with a cool product will have a much larger customer-base to sell to. Those additional sales more than offset the loss of expected revenue from cheating and screwing your customers by twiddling them to death.

There's also an obvious legal objection to this: creating these policies will require a huge amount of action from Congress and the executive branch, a whole whack of new rules and laws to make them happen, and each will attract court-challenges.

That's also true, though it shouldn't stop us from trying to get legal reforms. As a matter of public policy, it's terrible and fucked up that companies can enshittify the things we buy and leave us with no remedy.

However, we don't have to wait for legal reform to make this work. We can take a shortcut with procurement – the things governments buy with public money. The feds, the states and localities buy a lot of cleantech: for public facilities, for public housing, for public use. Prudent public policy dictates that governments should refuse to buy any tech unless it is designed to be enshittification-resistant.

This is an old and honorable tradition in policymaking. Lincoln insisted that the rifles he bought for the Union Army come with interoperable tooling and ammo, for obvious reasons. No one wants to be the Commander in Chief who shows up on the battlefield and says, "Sorry, boys, war's postponed, our sole supplier decided to stop making ammunition."

By creating a market for enshittification-proof cleantech, governments can ensure that the public always has the option of buying an EV that can't be bricked even if the maker goes bust, a heat-pump whose digital features can be replaced or maintained by a third party of your choosing, a solar controller that coordinates with the grid in ways that serve their owners – not the manufacturers' shareholders.

We're going to have to change a lot to survive the coming years. Sure, there's a lot of scary ways that things can go wrong, but there's plenty about our world that should change, and plenty of ways those changes could be for the better. It's not enough for policymakers to focus on ensuring that we can afford to buy whatever badly thought-through, extractive tech the biggest companies want to foist on us – we also need a focus on making cleantech fit for purpose, truly smart, reliable and resilient.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

Image: 臺灣古寫真上色 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raid_on_Kagi_City_1945.jpg

Grendelkhan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ground_mounted_solar_panels.gk.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[catchymemes]

[alex-a-roman]

It’s finally time for me to make this post.

Since my 1st year here on Tumblr, every couple of months I find my own poetry copied word for word and signed under a different name. Those people don’t seem to shy away from interacting with my blog at the same time, which is how I usually find out.

At first I ignored them because I thought it wasn’t a big deal. I was expecting this to happen from time to time, but this year, it happened 3 or 4 times, all different people.

I can’t lie, it’s not pleasant to see your own work, often about deeply personal and sensitive topics signed under a different name, by someone who doesn’t have a clue what you’ve been through.

This happened again today!

I won’t mention the blog, it’s still active and it’s definitely ran by a real person. I just want to know why??? You’re not gaining anything from this. I know you’re not making money writing poetry because I’m not making money writing poetry. So what is the point? The ones you steal from are real people with real memories, emotions and life experiences that you’re trying to claim as your own. What you’re doing is messed up and I’m sure you’re aware.

[saturngalore]

it’s kinda wild that we gotta have “undergroud” sites and apps just to download early access and permanent access cc now 😭 like isn’t that ridiculous ???? this aint even illegal shit but some expensive ass pixels 😭😭😭😭

[spacefrog1984]

Lily Orchard: Piracy is OK! Fair use is not!

Lily, since you blocked this alt, I guess I have to post my response here.

Lily, I get it, who has sympathy for big greedy companies? I don't, most people don't. But you dodged the question, so I restated it in this ask (the one you blocked me for):

I guess I'll give you some credit here. It looks like you realized where I was going with this question (honestly, it doesn't take much intelligence to see through it, so don't pat yourself on the back too much).

Lily, I assume that your answer wouldn't change, that it would still be fine for you to pirate media produced by a smaller outlet. And this would lead you into a paradoxical stance: while on the one hand you feel justified in stealing media from small creators but you object to your own content being used in other peoples' work under fair use. That's what you did, you falsely DMCA struck the videos of Anthony Gramuglia and SaiScribbles for using some of your content (which didn't even need to be pirated since it's freely available on YouTube and was protected by the doctrine of fair use since their videos were transformative).

This says that you believe anything you consider "stealing" from you is unallowable, but simultaneously, you can have a clear conscious when outright stealing media from others for your own enjoyment or for making profit.

Maybe I'm wrong and you actually believe that pirating media from smaller creators is unethical. But if that's the case, then why not say that? You'd diffuse this whole line of questioning and not add to your horrendous number of hypocrisies. So that leads to only one conclusion, you avoided answering my question and blocked me because you indeed believe it's ethical to steal form others but if you so much as suspect someone is stealing from you, you're ready to throw down the hammer and destroy the channels of people you think have wronged you.

But if I am wrong, then respond to this post, tell me what you think. Clear your name. Show us that you're not as big of a hypocrite as we think you are. I'll send a link to this post as an anon-ask, so I know you'll see it. I'm waiting.

[idsb]

I am sooooooo dangerously close to actually genuinely lawyering up and suing TikTok lol

[macmanx]

La Sirena just so happens to also be the name of one of DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc’s clients—La Sirena 69, an adult content creator notably not involved in the Star Trek fandom. In one recent copyright claim, the monitoring service targeted over 90 Tumblr posts that matched a keyword search of “la sirena.” But instead of alerting our team to La Sirena 69’s allegedly infringed content, the company reported a wide array of @mappinglasirena's original posts—like a short essay about a new La Sirena booklet, an article analysis of the starship’s design, and even the blog owner’s thoughts on the fourth trailer for Picard season two. None of these reported links from mappinglasirena.tumblr.com contained infringing content from La Sirena 69—instead, they focus on La Sirena, the starship. As you probably expect, we rejected this complaint.

A peek behind the curtain at [tumblr] keeping you safe from DMCA trolls.

[netscapenavigator-official]

My conspiracy for why Nintendo is currently going batshit with it’s DMCA takedown requests is because they’re about to pull a Wii U again, with the Switch 2, and they’re preemptively trying to penny pinch because they know sales are gonna either flop or fall off a cliff very quickly after launch.

After seeing what Microsoft and Sony are doing, the Steam Deck and other portable gaming machines come to market, they realized that their plans for the “Switch 2” weren’t gonna cut it, and now they’re panicking. They’re trying to do whatever it takes to keep their name relevant and penny pinch enough so they can hopefully cruise through the Switch 2 era without collapsing and get whatever the next-next console is gonna be, out, before too much damage occurs.

[magichats]

Man it really is a shame that as of this date (July 5th, 2023) that Cookie's Bustle is all but scrapped off the web at large.

There's only two videos discussing it directly (and that more about the take downs and not directly the game itself), with everything else turning up no results.

I know some people on twitter were thinking that it was for some sort of relaunch, but at this point I really don't think it's some sort of modern reboot.

This is really a bummer for game preservation. Also a bummer as a person who just likes weird obscure games.

[lexdmca]

Bloggers Beware: Safeguarding Your Intellectual Property from Plagiarism

In the vast digital landscape of the internet, bloggers stand as creators, crafting content that engages, informs, and entertains audiences worldwide. Every word written, every image curated, and every idea shared represents an investment of time, effort, and creativity. However, with the proliferation of online content, the risk of plagiarism looms large, posing a threat to the integrity and ownership of your work. As a blogger, safeguarding your content against plagiarism is essential to preserve your intellectual property rights and maintain the authenticity of your voice.

Here are some invaluable tips to help you protect your content from plagiarism:

Understand Copyright Basics :- Before delving into strategies for protecting your content, it’s crucial to have a solid understanding of copyright law. Copyright grants you exclusive rights to your original creations, including blog posts, articles, photographs, and videos, giving you the authority to control how your work is used, reproduced, and distributed. Familiarize yourself with the duration of copyright protection, fair use guidelines, and the process of copyright registration to empower yourself as a content creator.

Create Unique and Original Content :- The foundation of protecting your content from plagiarism begins with creating unique and original work. Develop your distinct voice, style, and perspective to set your blog apart from others in your niche. Conduct thorough research to ensure that your ideas and insights are original, avoiding the temptation to replicate or paraphrase content from other sources. By prioritizing authenticity and creativity, you establish a strong defense against plagiarism accusations and establish yourself as a reputable authority in your field.

Use Plagiarism Detection Tools :- In the digital age, technology offers invaluable resources to help you identify instances of plagiarism and unauthorized use of your content. Utilize plagiarism detection tools such as Copyscape, Grammarly, and Turnitin to scan your blog posts and detect any duplicated or copied content across the web. Regularly running these checks can alert you to potential instances of plagiarism, allowing you to take prompt action to address the issue and protect your intellectual property rights.

Implement Copyright Notices and Watermarks :- Incorporating copyright notices and watermarks into your blog content serves as a visible deterrent against plagiarism and unauthorized usage. Place copyright notices at the bottom of your blog posts, asserting your ownership of the content and specifying the terms of use for readers. Additionally, consider watermarking your images and graphics with your blog’s logo or branding elements to prevent them from being misappropriated or used without permission.

Monitor and Enforce Your Rights :- Vigilance is key when it comes to protecting your content from plagiarism. Regularly monitor your blog posts, social media platforms, and other online channels for any instances of unauthorized use or duplication. If you discover that your content has been plagiarized, take swift action to enforce your rights. Send a cease-and-desist letter to the infringing party, demanding the removal of the plagiarized content and seeking compensation for damages incurred. In cases of severe infringement, consider seeking legal counsel to pursue legal remedies and uphold your rights as a content creator.

Monitor and Enforce Your Rights :- Vigilance is key when it comes to protecting your content from plagiarism. Regularly monitor your blog posts, social media platforms, and other online channels for any instances of unauthorized use or duplication. If you discover that your content has been plagiarized, take swift action to enforce your rights. 

Send a cease-and-desist letter to the infringing party, demanding the removal of the plagiarized content and seeking compensation for damages incurred. In cases of severe infringement, consider seeking legal counsel to pursue legal remedies and uphold your rights as a content creator.

Engage with a Creative Commons License :- Consider licensing your blog content under a Creative Commons license to clearly communicate the permissions and restrictions associated with your work. Creative Commons offers a range of licenses that allow you to specify how others can use, share, and modify your content while retaining certain rights. By choosing a Creative Commons license that aligns with your preferences, you can facilitate the legal and ethical sharing of your content while still maintaining control over its use and distribution.

Educate Your Audience about Copyright :- As a blogger, you have a unique opportunity to educate your audience about the importance of copyright protection and the ethical considerations surrounding content usage. Include a dedicated page on your blog outlining your copyright policy, fair use guidelines, and proper attribution practices. Encourage your readers to respect intellectual property rights and seek permission before reposting or repurposing your content. By fostering a culture of respect for copyright, you contribute to a more responsible and ethical online community.

Stay Informed and Adapt :- The landscape of online publishing and intellectual property is constantly evolving, with new challenges and opportunities emerging regularly. Stay informed about the latest developments in copyright law, digital rights management, and content protection strategies to adapt your approach accordingly.

Remain proactive in implementing new tools and techniques to safeguard your content from plagiarism and ensure that your rights as a content creator are upheld in an ever-changing digital environment.

In conclusion, as a blogger, your content is your intellectual property, representing the culmination of your creativity, expertise, and passion. Protecting your content from plagiarism is not only essential for preserving your rights as a creator but also for maintaining the integrity and credibility of your blog. By following these tips and adopting proactive measures to safeguard your content, you can mitigate the risks of plagiarism and empower yourself as a responsible and respected member of the online community. Remember, your words have power, and it’s up to you to ensure that they are shared and respected ethically and legally.

Blog Resource : https://lexdmca.com/casestudy/safeguarding-your-intellectual-property-from-plagiarism/

[animepopheart]

I want to put this out there for others who may be dealing with this firm or with something similar in hopes of helping you.

Tumblr removed one of my posts on @beneaththetangles​ and gave us a strike (three and you're out!) because a DMCA firm claimed we stole it...

The post that I wrote..featuring photos I took...posted on a website I own...based on an interview I conducted with a personal friend.

The firm's name is DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. They're located out of Canada, apparently. The "copyright holder" is Michael Hecl, though through searches, I've seen other names used in other claims.

Here’s a portion of the letter Tumblr sent when the claim went through:

DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. might be a scam or it might be a very poorly run company. Responses I’ve seen by them online indicate either could be true The company never reached out to me before submitting the claim and did not respond to repeated email requests I sent before I finally submitted a counter-claim to Tumblr.

Speaking of Tumblr, I don’t expect much to come out of my counter-claim. This site has denied me on four (!) previous occasions where I had received permission to post artwork but was reported as not having permission to do, even though I provided proof of my claim and followed all of Tumblr’s directions in doing so.

Just a reminder, I’m sure the people working at Tumblr are wonderful, but the firm is not on your side. They don’t support you, even though their marketing makes it seem as if they do. They are no better than Twitter, even though they’ve taken aim at that company as of late. In fact, Tumblr is similar to that platform when it comes to the issues they have, but with hypocrisy on top of it all (Look we’re selling a blue verification sticker haha we’re so clever! BUT PAY US FOR IT.).

I’ll repost this at some point with follow-up let you know how it resolves. DMCA Piracy Prevention has ten days to “initiate legal action directly against you for the alleged infringement” (way to scare off all the small artists and writers out there, yeesh!).

If you have similar problems with this company, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

[xinfinitegalaxiesx]

FANFIC WRITER RIGHTS: WHAT TO DO IF YOUR WORK HAS BEEN REPOSTED OR COPIED

So you were brave enough to not only write a fanfic, but you actually did it: You posted it on the World Wide Web! Go You!

Sharing your writing is such a brave and vulnerable act. You should be very proud.

​​It's so lovely to be able to share your work in a community forum and interact with readers who appreciate the free entertainment. However, unfortunately, some readers appreciate it a little too much and decide they're going to repost it without your consent.

RUDE!

I've seen instances where someone will take a fanfic and change the character names to another fandom, or just straight up wholesale copy a fic from one platform to another as if it were their own. This, and I cannot stress this enough, is jerk-like behavior.

Whether you're an author or not, you still might be wondering, "well what's so bad about this? After all it's a form of flattery and exposure." Some may even argue that because it's not technically "original" it's not plagiarism, blah blah blah.

But let me tell you, it's very bad, straight up rude, and very uncool! Here's why:

It takes away the protections offered by Archive of Our Own/The Organization for Transformative Works such as freedom from censorship and litigation. 

It removes the ability to tag properly and protect/warn readers

Editing/updating or removing your own work is not possible. It may be outdated or you may not wish for it to be in the world anymore, as is your right as the creator.

It can prevent authors from publishing their own work. If it already exists online, this can affect your copyright claims as an author.

Is my fanfic affected?

Start with Google Search Search your username/handle, your fic titles, and select lines/passages from your fic. Sample query: site:<site>.com "search term"

Plagiarism checker Paste a passage from your fic into https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker

Light Novel Paradise/GoodNovel The latest ridiculousness comes via a site known as lightnovelparadise.com (LNP) which  appears to have been abandoned. It has retooled as GoodNovel, both as a site and an app. It's functionally unusable, and has no support or contact information apart from banner ads redirecting you to the new app. There are many fandoms and likely thousands of works copy/pasted in here, so this is not just a one-fandom issue! 

Here are a few methods you can use to search LNP since the user interface is basically unusable and the search bar doesn't work. Mobile gives you a slightly better view if you want to scroll through the hundreds of works under each fandom. 

Google Query for Light Novel Paradise

site:lightnovelparadise.com "rey/ben solo" (enter your fandom, character or ship tag between quotes)

Reylo Fic Google Sheet

For ease of discovery, I've compiled a list of affected Reylo authors for ease of use & collective action, since that is my fandom. List was compiled from the Star Wars tag (691 works total).

Please comment or dm me if you find another Reylo fic not on this list and I will update. If you'd also like me to remove your info just let me know by commenting in the doc. The last thing I want to do is take more of your power away!

​ What can I do about it?

If you write fanfic that is transformative and it is reposted without your consent, you have a right to file a DMCA takedown.

​See section 7 of this helpful blog for more information including the definition of "transformative" and all the potential legal implications. 

​GoodNovel DMCA Takedown Request Instructions

contact@goodnovel.com

​Wattpad - Reporting Copyright Infringement

More Resources

https://www.transformativeworks.org/legal

​legal@transformativeworks.org

whois.com/whois - look up host/registrar for a site if there is no contact info

How to Keep Fanfiction Legal and Avoid Trouble with Lawyers

If you'd like to contribute more to this blog post, would like to support others who have been affected or have more resources to share, please comment below.

Please share this information with your fandom friends. This affects all of us and our ability to post our transformative works and enjoy it as readers - let's stick together on this!

[socialjusticefail]

This article reflect on the 25th anniversary of the DMCA and how safe harbors helped the online space. The other thing this article talks about is the stuff about how the DMCA prevents you from circumventing DRM and why that is very bad.

[patmax17]

Question about copyright and IP on creator sites like etsy or redbubble

My wife is considering selling her craft/artwork on etsy and/or redbubble. She mostly makes fan art, and we're wondering how the fan products sold on those (and other similar) sites aren't taken down for copyright infringement? If I want to sell a pokémon t-shirt on redbubble, or a plush on etsy, wouldn't that be copyright infringement because I'm making money off the pokémon IP?

I tried to google some information and everything seems to point at the fact that it would actually be a violation of the copyright. My guess is that it *is* copyright infringement, but it's simply tolerated by the IP copyright owners.

Can anyone help?

[supreme-leader-stoat]

You may or may not are, but just in case, iirc adblock is legal but circumventing adblock detection is not

How's that supposedly work?