#dmca takedown request

[johnnymartyr]

Taking Down a Scraper Site for 35mmc and How You Can Fight Image Theft

by Johnny Martyr After many years of readership, I finally made my inaugural post on the internet’s largest film photography blog site, 35mmc. While in communication with owner Hamish Gill, he lamented about having found a what is known as a scraper site that was carbon-copying nearly 100% of the content from 35mmmc. All author links were being stripped from articles with their words and photos…

[furui-kikai]

Friends, mutuals, and followers.

This is what I have to deal with, and this is also a childish callout post to a stalker who just doesn’t understand what Leave Me Alone means. Hanging around my blog for nearly 30 min going through my vent post is not exactly the definition of Leave Me Alone.

I have this cool system that tracks hits from people coming to my page, and not only that it also (sometimes) show how long they stay on the page.

But that’s not what’s important. It’s the obsession, the harassment especially to innocent bystanders and thanks to my friends notifying me, the hate posts.

Yes, Erza-Farron those artists messaged me about you bullying them and then using my changed username to try to get my attention even though I blocked your sorry ass.

My friend was kind enough to translate, and here’s proof that obv you didn’t draw it. And now thanks to the DMCA take down you have my address and info which you wouldn’t want to draw attention to the authorities

Nevermind you tried before, but with the wrong address. I really don’t want to involved the Feds or the DGSE since they have bigger fish to fry, but I can give them a simple task to do to distract them from actual atrocities in the world.

They better be just words.

You leave my family alone, or there will be hell to pay.

[attempted--eloquence]

have you seen this post? if your fic’s url link on ao3 ends in numbers between 1-63,200,000, please archive lock your stories to prevent a future scraping :(

https://www.tumblr.com/bribun96/781658745144049664/ao3-has-been-scraped-once-again?source=share

Sighhh. yes I have seen it😞 (and the second round of scraping that just happened) despaired over it, come to terms w it, etc. etc. I think all but 2 of my fics rn fall into that category, so. I’ll probably pull the trigger on locking my works at some point soon but rn I’m just gonna roll around and suffer in my helplessness a little bit longer 🥲

[yanderedrabbles]

Yandere YouTuber

Short drabble request for @labodabi

I see him as a commentary YouTuber. Always on podcasts talking about the latest fashion or TV sensation. A good looking guy, always perfectly groomed and styled. Falls into that soft boy category - fluffy hair, lots of sweaters, a rescue cat that's always in the video out-takes. Approachable, comforting.

You interact for the first time when you make a video response to one of his controversial takes. You're no established youtuber, your channel doesn't even have any videos before you post about him. You don't add any fancy graphics or music. Just you and your slightly busted ring light, ranting at him for totally misrepresenting your interest.

But people are totally into it. You're passionate. You're funny. You're a breath of fresh air compared to the over produced, over budgeted videos that crowd the homepage.

He invites you on his podcast. Secretly, he expects you to back down. Be camera shy. You're just a no name with a phone camera and he's a guy who gets a million views within a day of uploading. It's got to be intimidating, right?

Nope. You're just the same in person as you were in your video. Not scared to challenge his opinions, not afraid of the lights and team of editors. When the video finally goes out, people eat it up.

User17899: OMG THE CHEMISTRY

sakura blossom: theyre so cute together im putting money on a hard launch in a week or two

YouTube Daddy 69420: he's so into them. just look at his eyes

And with such a great response, it's only natural that you get invited on again. That you start featuring in his full length videos. That he starts tagging you in every Instagram post.

You have no intention of being an influencer. But damn if the money isn't good. If the PR packages aren't sweet.

You move to the same city as him. Let him teach you the ins and outs of the biz. And he eats it up. Takes every opportunity to be your 'internet big brother.'

Yeah, right. Some sick big brother he is, going home and jerking it to pictures of you together. Shooting all over his screen just so it lands on your face. A real great guy.

It's only when you start build your own following that the toxicity really comes out. He wants you reliant on him, on his fame. Having your own channel blow up is just annoying. It gives you too much leverage - you don't need him for views anymore, you can walk away whenever you want. He can't stand it.

That's when he starts being sneaky about things. Starts hitting your videos with copyright infringement and DMCA takedowns the second you go live. Starts contesting your monetisation. Starts using bots to mass report your posts. All anonymously of course. Or through a shell company. Hey, he's been in this biz too long to make a rookie mistake.

And when you're at your wits end, when rent is due and you're broke from trying to get your videos back up, that's when he steps in. Says you guys can collab and he'll give you more than half of the sponsorship money.

Smiles all sweet and charming when he leans in and says, "There's lots of ways to pay me back, so don't worry about it."

You naive thing. He was never going to ask for money in return. No, what he wants is much harder to come by and all the sweeter for it. You think just 'cause he seems like a good guy that he's nice all the way through? That wearing nail polish and doing mud masks on cam makes him any less of a man? Any less hungry? No way baby.

And when it's time to pay up and he's pushing you to your knees, fingers practically ripping his belt buckle loose, you think he's going to stop just because you ask him to? When he has you exactly where he wants you? No matter how polite he is on the surface, he's still just a man.

[tacky-tramp]

An open letter to the Organization for Transformative Works' legal team:

Dear @transformativeworks Legal,

I am requesting that you take action on Speechify/WordStream's wholesale theft of non-commercial fanworks for commercial purposes.

As you are probably aware, Speechify, an app that uses AI voices to turn user-supplied text into audiobooks, has created a spinoff app called WordStream. WordStream has scraped many, many works of fanfiction from AO3, and has published AI-generated audiobooks of these fics. They charge users for access to these audiobooks, under a subscription model. Not only has this company, run by Cliff Weitzman, violated AO3 users' copyrights, it has done so for profit.

I understand that only authors themselves can file DMCA takedown notices when their fics are stolen. However, there are steps the OTW can take on this matter:

1. Notify all AO3 users via email that their work may have been stolen, and give them next steps. This is what companies are required to do in the event of a data breach, and that's effectively what this is.

2. Publish a blog post about WordStream's theft, and promote it on social media.

3. Send a letter to Speechify, educating them about fanfiction and copyright. Explain that fanfiction is *not* in the public domain, and therefore the users whose work they've stolen have legal recourse against them. Demand they take down all fanfiction they have stolen.

4. Reach out through your networks in tech and publishing to raise awareness of this and marshall support for a campaign to pressure Speechify to remove all fanfiction they posted without author permission.

I am a former OTW volunteer, and I would be happy to assist with any of this!

Thanks,

tacky_tramp

[erika-xero]

!ATTENTION FELLOW CRITICAL ROLE FANS!

This person is selling tons of stolen artworks on their Redbubble, including my Mollymauk piece which was featured in one of the Critical Role episodes.

I singhandedly had to file DMCA takedown requests for 83!!!! OF THE LISTING FEATURING THE SINGLE ONE OF MY ARTWORKS

Please, spread awareness among fellow artists, tag the ones who's art you recognized! Let's bury this acc under a huge pile of DMCA takedown requests!

[yourbookcouldbegayer]

PSA: Your AO3 work might have been scraped for a GenAI dataset

(PLEASE NOTE: At this time, access to the dataset has been disabled. You can file a DMCA takedown request if your work is included in the scraped data to campaign for full deletion, but at this time it is considered unnecessary.)

This is intended as a general notification for all the writers following this blog who post on AO3.

Approximately 12.6 million public works were scraped from AO3 and several other published-work sites, including PaperDemon, which has regular updates on the situation as well as resources. Here is the link to their updates.

Affected AO3 users are those whose work IDs were public-facing (that is to say, not locked to registered AO3 users only), and whose work IDs are between 1 and 63,200,000.

Your work ID is the number in your work's site URL, like so:

This work has an ID only in the 61-million range, and so was scraped for the dataset.

If you wish to lock your works to be visible to logged-in users only, you can do so through Works > Edit Works > All > Edit > Only show to registered users.

[fanfictionlibrary01]

AO3 Data Scraped for AI Training Dataset

What is happening, and what you can do. Check for potential edits with additions at the end of the post!

What is happening? What do we know?

A user going by "nyuuzyou" on the HuggingFace platform uploaded a dataset a few days ago - containing scraped content from AO3. HuggingFace is a very popular platform and widely used for sharing machine learning and AI models/datasets. The scraped dataset includes fics, fanart, and other fanworks - all taken without permission and intended for use in training gen AI models. You can find more information in this Reddit post.

This dataset is one of several compiled from various websites—at least seven in total. While two datasets have been removed, the AO3 one was only disabled on HuggingFace. This means that it’s not downloadable at the moment but still visible. It may also return if takedown efforts end up being challenged/reversed by that user.

Key Details

Scope: On AO3, all content with work IDs between 1 and 63,200,000 has been targeted. The work ID is the number at the end of a work's URL — for example, in https://archiveofourown.org/works/12345678, 12345678 is the work ID. You can find it by simply opening the work and checking the URL in your browser’s address bar. So, if your work falls in that range and is publicly accessible (i.e., not locked and open to everyone, including guests), it’s mostly likely included in the dataset. This dataset is currently disabled on HuggingFace, but that doesn't mean it's gone. It's only a temporary takedown as of now.

Takedown notices have been issued, but this user has also uploaded the dataset to other sites after backlash and partial removal.

There are talks in the discussion forums of potentially moving this dataset to Telegram, torrents, and/or other private channels.

HuggingFace AO3 dataset page

Other distributed sites listed here (as per a Reddit comment)

Currently deleted from ModelScope

What can you do?

Should the dataset return again and you see that your work was affected: file your own DMCA or copyright takedown notice. The uploader, in their own words, "has not agreed to take down the entire repo. At this time, the scraper has agreed with taking down art from the person who owns the copyright. That means each of you will need to request a takedown."

Instructions and a sample CSV template to list your work IDs for removal are provided in this guide. You can find more details in this announcement by PaperDemon.

Lock your works! It would limit visibility to registered users only, and is a very good step to prevent scraping or unauthorized use. To lock all your works on AO3, go to “My Works,” click “Edit Works,” and select all. Then click “Edit” and check the box labeled “Only show to registered users.” Scroll down and click “Update All Works” to apply the change.

⚠️ | Final Notes:

This user has so far shown no signs of stopping and is continuing to redistribute the data across multiple sites, even after numerous takedown requests (read more here). So, we can only recommend to be cautious and beware, lock your works, feel free to make use of takedown notices if you're unfortunately affected, and spread the word to fellow creators.

Follow up on this and get the latest updated in the Fanfic Communities Network (FCN) Discord Server!

If you have more information regarding this - e.g. if works from other sites are affected too - please reach out to us in the FCN!!

Edit (2025-04-26):

The user who has scraped the works has, upon request by another person, posted a way to convert ao3 json to markdown:

https://huggingface.co/datasets/nyuuzyou/archiveofourown/discussions/170

https://gist.github.com/nyuuzyou/b2f83669ad80a22e435728245ebcdf9f

This shows us that nyuuzyou continues to show no signs of taking down the scraped works.

Edit (2025-04-28):

A user warned that even archive-locked AO3 fics were included in a scraped dataset (most likely taken while the scraper was logged in, before they were banned or switched to public-only access). Some public works were missed as well:

https://huggingface.co/datasets/nyuuzyou/archiveofourown/discussions/213#680fcdb76d9e022324a70cf1

Edit (2025-05-03):

Hey everybody, this is a bit late, but the AO3 dataset has been permanently removed from HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/nyuuzyou/archiveofourown. While this unfortunately doesn’t prevent it from being shared elsewhere (like torrents) nor does it guarantee any deletion of past downloads and whatnot, having it taken down from a major platform like HF is still a significant step forward. (There is more info about other sites on PaperDemon.)

So please don’t be disheartened—every action counts, and this shows that pushing back and filing DMCAs and copyright notices as appropriate does make a difference. We’ll certainly keep an eye out for more info and post updates here, but thank you again to everyone who helped report, spread the word, or supported the effort. Keep reading, keep writing. ♥️

[josephthesnailshow]

No, I actually mean it. Do NOT use my work like this ever, especially with a political and violent message like that. Burnt Luigi was created to be just as a fun creepypasta/ARG character.

I don't use Facebook, nor do I want to use it; please ask the original posters to take this down. I have no tolerance for my work to be used like this.

Please don't use my work like this….

[tinypandacakes]

Just had to submit a DMCA takedown request to get a pdf of trapper keeper removed from scribd. Someone downloaded it and uploaded it there. It sucks because I was required to submit personally identifying info to get it removed. Luckily the site responded quickly and immediately removed it, but it still feels icky to have to do that

I don’t care if people download pdfs for their personal use or e-readers etc but please please please do not repost my fics elsewhere :(

[deposedefenddeny]

An entity claiming to be United Healthcare is sending bogus copyright claims to internet platforms to get Luigi Mangione fan art taken off the internet, according to the print-on-demand merch retailer TeePublic. An independent journalist was hit with a copyright takedown demand over an image of Luigi Mangione and his family she posted on Bluesky, and other DMCA takedown requests posted to an open database and viewed by 404 Media show copyright claims trying to get “Deny, Defend, Depose” and Luigi Mangione-related merch taken off the internet, though it is unclear who is filing them.

404 Media on Dec 19, 11:24 a.m. ET

[ceilidho]

just curious - how do c.ai bots work? does someone feed your fic into the AI and it "creates" a character?

I don't support it (if a fic author says no it means no!) I'm just confused abt what it does/ how it plagiarizes

I’m not 100% sure how it works since I don’t use it but this is one of the bots using my work

And my fic:

So I’m not sure what else the bot creator has to fill out or add other than the initial prompt (which is what the above is) but I’m ASSUMING they took more than just that initial blurb since you presumably can interact more with the bot.

And c.ai is making it unbelievably difficult for me to get it taken down without providing my home address and phone number for a DMCA takedown report, which I would never do. And they’re likely doing it because they know their platform is 90% stolen content so they make it extremely difficult in order to ensure people can’t just request that stolen content be removed.

[blackkatmagic]

hello! i was just informed that a fanfic of mine was scraped off of AO3 and I'm currently going through the process of getting it removed from the audiobook/reading site it was posted on. I've been looking through this site for other authors, and unfortunately found like 10 from you.

here's the reddit post that talks about it, and includes the site that's posted the fics: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1hkrb47/netflix_of_audiobooks_scrapes_thousands_of/

I'm really sorry this happened, and may this site get dumped on with a ton of DMCA claims.

Hilariously, they yanked every single one of my fics they'd stolen in the 20 minutes between me starting the DMCA takedown request and me hitting submit. Fucking cowards.

[walkawaytall]

How to Request a DMCA Takedown re: Word-Stream.com

(I, WalkAwayTall, am merely a messenger; this info was copied directly from this post on r/AO3 and posted here with permission from its author, @fuegopi. Use it as you see fit.)

----------

The relevant statute, FYI is 17 U.S.C. § 512 (c)(3)(A), available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

OPTION 1: MAKE A REPORT TO CLOUDFLARE

https://abuse.cloudflare.com/

Step 1: Select “Copyright Infringement & DMCA Violations”

Step 2: Fill Out the Form

(some notes below)

Your Full Name: I understand many fanfic authors prefer anonymity. However, your report/complaint may be taken more seriously if you use both your name and your pseud. For example, I would write, [MY NAME] (“FuegoPI” on AO3).

Holder’s Full Name: Again, that is you, the author.

Contact Information Fields: The DMCA only requires that, you provide “Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party” — An email address should be sufficient.

Infringing URLS: List the URL of every work you have made that is available on the offending website.

Describe the Original Work: I would list the names of your stories, the word counts, and give AO3 links.

For example: A Fanfic Story (200k Words), originally posted and available at [LINK].

You MUST check the box that says 512(f) acknowledgment, “Good faith belief, Authority to act” and you MUST provide a digital signature or your report will not be accepted.

OPTION 2: MAKE A REPORT TO GODADDY

OPTION 1: Fill out the form at https://supportcenter.godaddy.com/AbuseReport (you may not wish to do this because of the information requested; if so, I recommend sending a letter).

Step 1: Select “Make a Claim”

Step 2: Select Claim Type, “Copyright Infringement”

Step 3: Are you the Copyright Owner or an authorized representative? Select “yes.”

Step 4: Please enter the domain name associated with the website you are complaining about – Fill in “https://word-stream.com/”

Step 5: https://supportcenter.godaddy.com/ipclaims/copyright/infringement If you want to fill this out.

OPTION 2: The form is probably not for everyone, because it requires address information that the DMCA does not strictly require. As a result, I made a template letter for y’all. I recommend attaching to an email.

copyrightclaims@godaddy.com

[ai-art-thieves]

Fun fact: If you or anyone you know may be affected by art theft of any kind, including the manipulation of an image via AI, edits via photoshop, cropped out or replaced signature, or other such uses of your art that you do not approve or want (as the creator), please submit (or have the artist submit) a DMCA take down request to tumblr and they will 100% remove it. :)

Do not submit takedown requests on behalf of other people or lie and claim you're the creator if you're not, obviously.

All you need is:

A link to the re-uploaded stolen art on tumblr.

A link to your source image/original post of it. No matter where it was posted (reddit, tumblr, shitter/x, ect), as long as it was before the date of the re-uploader and you can 100% for sure say you are indeed the creator of it, it is your right to have it removed.

www.tumblr.com/dmca

You do not need a lawyer or an attorney or anything for any of this, your personal information will not be shared with anyone outside of their team that handles it.

Stand up for yourself, don't let your art be stolen and used without your permission!

⬆️

[opal-apparition]

25APR2025 AO3 Data Scrape on Hugging Face

There is a new A03 Datascrape on HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Chat-Error/archiveofourown-newest The "archiveofourown-newest" dataset contains approximately 14,806,149 works, while Archive of Our Own publicly listed a total of approximately 14,880,000 works as of April 23, 2025. If your works preceed that date, it's likely they are in this dataset. I submitted a DCMA takedown to HuggingFace at dmca@huggingface.co , and if you have bandwidth I recommend you do the same. You can also report the dataset by clicking the three dots and posting a dispute, however you'll likely find the poster unhelpful. Do BOTH. Should you not know what to say, there are plentiful DCMA takedown templates online, or you can copy mine.

Note that the people that posted the dataset are not the actual agents to act on the DCMA, HuggingFace is, and they're likely to try to circumvent whatever it is you post by saying:

Hello, Thank you for identifying the relevant works. Please note that you must include valid contact information, including name, address, email address, and telephone number if possible. Once this is done, we may process your request. Sincerely, Anonymous

Funny and notable that they chose to sign this "Anonymous."

Edit: In case it's not abundantly clear, do not give these random thieves your personal info! GO THROUGH HUGGINGFACE. 2nd Edit: as of 6PM EST, the data set has been taken down!

3rd Edit: as of 27APr2025... They uploaded it as a different dataset