#dmca takedown request

[the-mfing-sauce]

I'm trying really hard to take this life seriously

[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…

[sofiaruelle]

idk if there's anything you can do about it but someone is using your chappell hot to go art on teepublic & I thought you would want to know if u don't already :(

Nice. love this for me./s

uhhh anyways thank you for bringing this to my attention @hyuckieberry! I’m gonna try to figure out TeePublic’s DMCA takedown request. which is very frustrating since i am from the Philippines. and DMCA is very much bound to just the USA.

for now, if anyone sees this, PLEASE HELP ME REPORT the account.

If anyone is interested in buying the tshirt/design, please consider supporting me, its up on my Redbubble. the only place where i have uploaded the design.

Honestly, simply reblogging and liking this or the original post i made will help immensely.

[fireteam-survivor]

So, Amazon and Barnes and Noble have taken down the work.

Book Depository (despite being owned by Amazon) haven't responded yet, however, it is the holiday period, so I'll give them until after the holidays.

I am still waiting on a contact for the Dutch site.

MY FANFIC WAS STOLEN AND IS BEING SOLD WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

I am sure many are aware that someone is stealing work off of Ao3 and selling it as their own. The Dark Side of Light has been stolen and is being sold on Amazon, by Barnes and Noble and Book Depository. If you see my work anywhere else please let me know. I am currently in contact with Amazon and working on an email to send to other places my work has been published, I have all the proof I need to show the work is originally mine.

EDIT: I have sent out a total of 4 DMCA Takedown Notices and am waiting on a Dutch friend who is helping me as they posted my work on a Dutch site as well.

[rushingheadlong]

so is anyone else in the Queen fandom getting asks from blank blogs requesting your email so they can invoice you for "unlicensed image use" or are the spammers only getting creative in my inbox today 😂

[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!

[mekanikaltrifle]

'Vamily Spotlight': WoD Brand Team is Taking Art Without Permission

Recently, I was informed by a friend that some work of mine had shown up in the World of Darkness’ official ‘Vamily Spotlight’ section of their latest video. In this they talk about the gameplay reveal of Bloodlines 2 and generally drum up hype for it, which is largely what you expect from company channels when they’ve a new product out. 

There’s a problem with this: I was never informed, or asked. No consent was given to use that work, or any others.

Through some excellent efforts by friends I also found that my work was in two other videos, with the earliest being well over a year ago-- totalling three, and they were up on both Twitch and YouTube.

Now, you’ll note that I’m a professional artist with two separate art degrees and well over a decade and a half of training. I’ve also a basic understanding of copyright and fair use. 

The Vamily Spotlights are little to do with the review and news section of the video and therefore do not really have bearing on the main point of the video. To this end, I’d assume they’re there as a draw to viewers, maybe to see if their or their friends’ work has turned up in these official videos. And nominally that’s a valid tactic for engagement, if you have permission to use these pieces of work.

They do not however have permission, and certainly not from me. 

As of writing, (5th of February 2024) I’ve issued a DMCA request for all three of the videos my work shows up in on both Twitch and YouTube, and takedowns are pending but I would urge people in the WoD tag here on Tumblr to check the available videos for themselves, if they are as concerned as I am. The screenshots of art in the videos they use to spotlight seem to come from Tumblr, as well as whole TikTok videos and other social media posts. If this makes the rounds elsewhere, do check your stuff wherever you are, WoD fans. 

As the videos are also present on the Twitch VOD platform, this means they are actively charging money using our work without permission. I am unsure if their YouTube channel is monetised.

If they use your work for their spotlights, they are making advertisements and revenue off of your work without any reimbursement or prior consent. 

I don’t know if other artists were asked, but I definitely wasn’t, and by now we all know the issues with ‘exposure’ and how that does not keep artists fed or housed. 

And Paradox Interactive, having artists, they should know that you do not take for free from any of us-- at any level of influence or professionalism. The WoD community is not a free for all for companies to pick and choose free art to use like a bowl of cute little multicoloured sweets, it’s a bunch of creative, inspired and crafty people who come together across any edition of the many worlds in the setting to create as is our fair right to do so. Without being taken for granted, and without being cynically harvested for ‘content’. How vampiric. 

Additionally I would like to note that all of my World of Darkness fanworks are based on legacy books; Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition, Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition and Hunter: the Reckoning First Edition most often, though there are appearances from others. You’ll note that not one of these books is the territory of Paradox Interactive or their World of Darkness brand management team-- looks to me like they’ve simply trawled the tag without reading what they’re looking at, which means they certainly didn’t take the time to ask permission to use these works. Not only were these actions tantamount to theft, it was also not even their fanart to begin with. And once again, they’d have known this had they contacted me at all, which they did not. It’s a failure on their part on several levels and not only do I want the videos taken down, I think the community is sorely owed an apology for this frivolous theft of art under the banner of ‘community content’. I didn’t opt in to having my work taken, and it should not have been assumed that it was okay to take my work just because it’s using a tag they also use!

I want everyone to know I have had zero benefit from their use of my work-- no money, no notes and no dialogue. This does not help artists. This does not help the community.

I’m willing to talk about this should anyone want to ask, but this is a gross abuse of artists and creatives’ rights for the sole purpose of gain by the World of Darkness brand team, and I expected better. I know I personally deserve an apology for this at the very least, as well as the WoD team to commit to actually contacting artists and sourcing permission in future-- and to set up an opt-in or out system for whether people want to be featured. I know I don’t, and I never asked to be. My work’s lovely, and they’re right to have said so. But it’s not for Paradox, and it’s not for Outstar or any of the other Brand team.  

It’s for me, and people here on Tumblr who like it. 

I’m disappointed, in PDX and in the WoD Brand team, because they should know far better than this. 

[olderthannetfic]

This morning, I used tumblr's "insert gif" function in the new post editor, and now I'm irritated.

I've made and posted gifs on tumblr for over a decade, and it's always been something where I knew people are going to save them, repost them, try to steal them, and so on. I figured this out pretty early and I always add watermarks. No sweat.

Recently, I was adding some gifs to a post, and I saw one of my own gifs in the selection list. I added it to my post to see it, because it was one of my favourites. Then I noticed the username in the credit, "GIF by username", was some random person that was obviously not me. This gif was created by me, it even had my watermark in the bottom corner. I checked some other gifs and found more like this, all with different usernames.

After some googlefu, I discovered that if someone saves and reposts a gif, tumblr will somehow detect them as being the creator, instead of the person who originally posted it.

I vaguely remembered a form to report problems like this. But there's no form to request re-attribution at all. Tumblr only provides a DMCA takedown request page, which requires you to be the original owner of the copyrighted source material. In other words, you actually need to own the companies whose content you used, and you also have to put in your phone number and personal info.

Welp.

So now, there are dozens of my gifs in the gif search, with burned-in watermarks of my own username on them, but with some random schmuck's name listed in the "GIF by (name)" once someone adds it into their post. And there's no way to re-attribute it. It's not a big deal because they're just gifs, and I did add watermarks precisely because I knew they would get spread around without proper credit (whether unintentionally or not). But having a systemic, automated attribution problem is a new low for tumblr.

Really, the bar is now in hell.

--

[mish-anthropy]

IMPORTANT: Stolen AO3 works being reposted w/o consent, allegedly by AI scraper website

Hi everyone, This is a really urgent notice - there is a reported AI scraper bot/site going around scraping work from AO3. I don't know for certain if it is for AI specifically, but it is definitely reuploading AO3 authors' work without consent.

This is the website/platform in question: https://rivd.net/ Below the fold, I'll give some more info, as well as explain how to protect your work on AO3 for the time being.

A friend found 12 of their My Hero Academia fics uploaded to the site. If you have written for that fandom, please check whether your work has been stolen by this platform. Several people have demanded that their work be removed, but whoever runs the site just responds with instructions for a DMCA takedown request, which is hugely invasive regarding private information and honestly makes it look a bit like an identity theft scam.

Some AO3 users have complained on the site itself, and you can see the admins just responded with a DMCA request form. I also just tried to get into the "Fanfiction" category on the site, and got 404ed? The site is very janky/broken, which makes it look even more suspect. Thus far I don't think the BG3 fandom's works have been affected, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. The best way to prevent your works from being scraped right now is to lock down your viewers/readers to only registered AO3 users.

How to lock down your works on AO3 to prevent scraping/theft

The best way to do this is to lock down your works so that they can only be accessed/read by registered AO3 users. I just want to say upfront - this is not absolutely foolproof. If a registered user is going around doing the scraping, this method won't do much to stop anyone. But at the very least your work will have some basic protection from scrapers that pull publicly available works.

Fortunately, AO3 provides the option to edit all your works at once, so it makes it much easier to lock them all down, and then 'unlock' them later.

When using desktop, navigate to your AO3 profile dashboard. At the top right (below your AO3 username), you will see the button to "Edit Works".

From there you'll head to the "Edit Multiple Works" page, and on that page select the box to choose "All" works. You might need to do this for each fandom you have written for. Then click through on the "Edit" button.

On the next page, scroll down until you reach the "Privacy" section, and under the "Visibility" subsection, make sure to select "Only show to registered users". To 'unlock' your works again later, you follow these same steps, but instead select the "Show to all" option.

Hopefully this will help in the interim while this particular platform is doing this, but unfortunately with AI scraping being a reality now, any work that is publicly accessible is at risk of being stolen or scraped. I really hope this information is helpful in this particular instance though.

- Mish

[furyreblogs]

Art Theft/Repost Warning

A user reposted artwork of Fenris from Dragon Age onto Tumblr, which they had pulled from Pinterest. And is now threatening retaliatory reposts for everyone who calls them out for reposting work that doesn't belong to them. This post can be found here. I did my best to locate and credit the original artists in my reblogged post.

After several other users commented about the reposting without permission or credits, the reposter is now threatening to upload more artwork each time someone comments about the unacceptable behavior.

You can see this post threatening retaliation for those who comment to credit the artist here. Artists, particularly those who have drawn Fenris from Dragon Age II, should monitor this user in case their work is posted and report them for Copyright Infringement—Submit a DMCA takedown request. They're also actively trying to hide and remove replies on their posts.

If you recognize an artist that has been stolen from, please inform the artist directly so that they can submit a report.

[audioroleplayconfessions]

re the post about Scythe, it's not new behavior. This is pretty mild for him since it is in response to character.ai and that genuinely sucks. It did read as holding the series over fans' heads, but I get being unmotivated. Glad to hear he had more success with a DMCA takedown request, that's a better option.

Also recent were complaining other VAs like Siren "jumped on the no Ai chat character stealing band wagon now? 😅 guess it didn't matter when I said it 🤷‍♂️" for also pushing back on character.ai as if being anti-AI is his 'bandwagon', and saying he was "Actually a little offended" when his cyberpunk video didn't get as many views as he wanted, leading to several people I saw trying to artificially inflate the viewcount for a month after. - just looked this up, turns out he'd made several community posts at the time saying he'd trash the series if it didn't get 10k views in the first month. A commenter said "We failed to protect this audio, folks!" to which Scythe replied "Yeeeah ya did".

I could say more but I probably shouldn't, I don't want or enjoy drama, but there's so much about this guy that just gets swept under him calling himself problematic and manchild that I guess people take it as a character. I'll just say, there was a post a few days ago about how VAs respond to feedback, and Escaped made a great followup reblog on it. Scythe could do with reading it. I've seen the way he responds to feedback.

I hope he improves.

.

[phoenixyfriend]

IDK if I've mentioned this but in addition to that year-long plagiarism fiasco, I also recently had to submit a DMCA takedown request to youtube because a content farm had an AI read out an 80k fic of mine with zero permission.

Thankfully, the DMCA request worked, though I'm not sure if it was because I hold the rights (I mean, it's fic) or because it was fanfiction and not covered under Naruto's transformative work copyright wiggle room since afaik they were in fact monetizing it.

[synf3ll]

i'm tired of seeing that yaelokre bullshit.

it's stupid to try to control what people write about your OCs. it's understandable to REQUEST that people don't draw NSFW of them, but demanding people report everyone who posts it is ridiculous.

if that dumbass wants to control content about their characters online, they should man up and go submit DMCA complaints and takedowns themself.

if you don't want people thinking "impure" thoughts about your art, then don't post it. you can complain all you want, but controlling people is taking it way too far.

[yukipri]

Wanted to make a quick apology.

There will be no Prime Override chapter update tonight.

Reasons are kinda depresso, so beneath cut. No need to read.

This week has been...rough. I wanted to bask in the satisfaction of having finished my May 4th art, but instead I've been spending every spare moment fighting art theft, some of the art that I'd literally just posted. I've filed numerous DMCA copyright takedown requests on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest (well over a hundred here). I know there are more out there. I am exhausted, and it's a second type of burn out, a worse kind, on top of the burn out of drawing.

I wanted to apologize because this means that instead of drawing or writing, I was copy-pasting links and explaining to various social media staff why thieves shouldn't be allowed to post my work. How "do not repost" is on my watermark on my art itself, how it's on all my socials bios, how it's in my FAQ. Instead of drawing or writing, I had to read the comments other folks were giving people who did not contribute a single second to my work.

I was aiming to get a new chapter of the Prime Override out tonight, but I could not even start.

So yeah. I'm sorry. The emotional toll aside, the very real fear-of-safety anxiety aside (since, y'know, filing DMCAs essentially means doxxing yourself to every thief), this also just took up all the time I would have otherwise spent on art and, it didn't happen.

I also wanted to say thank you.

Many times this week I felt like an absolute idiot, a complete and utter fool for bothering to feel motivated and excited about creating, for being excited to share it, when this is the result. Especially after the marathon effort I'd just gone through...it felt like punishment, in a way, for daring to think my work is worth anything. I will, can, and have left fandoms in the past for art theft, and part of me wondered if the time had come for me this time as well.

In those times, I scrolled mindlessly through the comments y'all have left me. Both on my art posts, in the tags and such on Tumblr, and just going through all my fics on AO3, just kinda reading all the kind words you folks have left me on my work blearily through my tears, to remind me why it's worth it, and it's not just people who want to hurt me out there.

The vast majority of you are so kind, so generous, have taken the time to look at my work and give a like, a reblog, a kudos, a retweet, or the greatest gift in the form of your thoughts and allowing me to feel that I've connected with you.

So thank you. I've had a rough week, but I'll get back up again. I'll try to get out the next chapter, the next art, as soon as I am able. Until then, please know that I appreciate you, and I hope that my future work can mean something to you too.

[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.

[winters-tales]

Hey fellow writers, serious time!

Huge thanks to @korblez for notifying me as I'm no longer on twitter!

If you write or have ever written fanfic then it's worth going over to Plush Books on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BMB1RG5J/about - and checking to see if one of your titles is there. At the moment, it looks like in excess of 500 written pieces have been scraped from Archive of Our Own and are being sold in ebook format, without the writers knowledge or consent.

Twitter thread detailing the issue and how you can file DMCA takedown requests if you do spot one of your works there:

If you have an account on AO3, LOCK IT DOWN. Only allowed verified users to read it, people with genuine accounts. Does this suck for people who don't have an account? Sure, but it's not hard to get one. Lock your account down to prevent this from happening. Put an authors note (just like back in the old LJ days eyyy) at the top of your fic stating you do not consent for it to be sold as an ebook.

And writers? I've seen an upsetting number of you saying you don't see what the big deal is about the AI artwork surge that's happening. Do you get it now?

Stand with visual artists. Say NO to AI!