Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

Love not having a ”””fandom””” specific blog. Something new will just consume my mind and everyone has to accept it. My house

[ID: AO3 Tags Reading: It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, It's not arrogance if you really are just that good, it's not kidnapping if they're not really a kid, it's not attempted murder if they're not really OH WAIT OH F-]

Yeah, yeah, Ford dated the triangle. But now can we talk about how Ford is now openly loving and caring (at least through his notes and journals) and letting his family into his supernatural shenanigans WHILE these bunch of wacky buffoons still manage to let him have his personal space and spend hours in his room without being disturbed???

LIKE he's okay with them entering the room whenever they please when he's not there and even reading his journals and notes (cause he expresses himself better through his writing) and they're all SO welcoming when he comes upstairs after hours locked in his room having a silent meltdown???

Ford will show no reaction besides an awkward smile and just being there but will write about how his family is his universe and how he actually loves doing cute stuff with Mabel like dressing the same and I CAN'T-

Autistic old man has rediscovered unconditional love and respected boundaries. Ford is living the dream.

(tw: war)

Its been on my mind lately that if Stanley left home in the late 60's or early 70's he would have been eligible for the vietnam draft. And that maybe the first time he commited identify fraud was to evade the draft. One of his prison sentences may have even been due to this. The sentence for draft evasion was 5 years, and while we know his time imprisoned in Columbia was due to a heist, we're left in the dark about his other sentences.

Maybe at first, Stanley had intentions of getting his family the money honestly, but the draft threw a wrench into the whole thing and it spiraled him into a life of crime until the postcard came.

Meanwhile, Stanford was exempt because he was enrolled as a college student. University enrollment allowed deferment from the draft until schooling was complete. And if Ford was enrolled in PHD programs until after 1974, he would've never had to report.

I wonder, did Stanford ever watch the news, the riots, and think about his brother potentially being sent to die in a foreign country? Did he care?

Did Stan ever feel like a coward for not going to war? Did he wonder if his family would have thought of him as a hero - if more people would have attended his funeral - if he had died in vietnam instead?

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted