Stolen Work - Tumblr Posts

Attn authors on AO3! Just learned about this on a writing discord I’m in and thought I’d share.

A new website, https://rivd.net/, has cropped up and has been shown to have stolen/scraped works from Ao3, which are being scraped and uploaded at a rather impressive speed.

At this time, it isn't clear if site owners have wised up and have started taking the fics down, as the site requires an account and also the current *justified outrage* at this has led to an apparent overload on the site's servers, meaning they've basically shut down the search and privatized their fanfiction category.

The best way to protect your work if it has not already been scraped is by locking it to all logged out users. It’s unfortunate as guest comments and kudos are so precious to us authors, but it will protect your works from being scraped.

Further information can be found in this Reddit thread and the below screenshots: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1dvyvqm/ao3_fics_being_uploaded_to_rivd_by_a_bot/

NOTE: DO NOT USE RIVD's DMCA TAKEDOWN FORM. You SHOULD NOT be required to provide your *government ID* to protect your intellectual property. This is borderline a phishing scam. RIVD is hosted by Cloudflare, who have a system for reporting abuse on sites which use their services which can be found at the following site: https://www.cloudflare.com/trust-hub/reporting-abuse/.

Thank you @punemy-spotted for compiling all this info and helping get the word out.

Also keep in mind that copyright claims can only be made by the person being stolen from, so if you see a fic you know is stolen, and you can track the original author down, take a second to message them so they can take action.

Team work makes the dream work, people.

⚠️ ATTENTION WRITERS ⚠️

This person has been copying fanfiction and reposting it as their own. I was just alerted to the fact that they have reposted one of my fics from January. I have made a DMCA report.

Here are my receipts:

(their post on the left, my original post on the right.)

You can also easily find my original post in my master list to see that the date is not photoshopped.

If you are a fanfic writer, I urge you to search their page and find out if your work has been stolen. They have fics from multiple fandoms.

Even if you don’t post fics on here- they clearly got my fic from my AO3 since it includes the AO3 tags and summary. You can report it as copyright violation, as the DMCA protects intellectual property.

‼️ PLEASE REBLOG ‼️

Someone stole my work

Hii um more serious post than usual

Usually I would laugh it off or whatever but man I nearly spent seven hours working on this post and someone decided to steal the Haseul part and post it on wattpad without any credits (worst is that it doesn’t fit the oneshot book at all to me bc my format is different but no one would really notice I’m pretty sure)

Please go report them and message them if possible, I don’t want my work to be reposted without my permission especially if I’m not even credited for it, of course don’t harass them or send them death threats, that’s not the kind of behaviour I want to encourage but I want the chapter to be at least taken down and it’d be fun to get an apology idk☹️

Here’s the profile :

The story :

The part that was stolen from me :

I’m not going to screenshot the entire chapter but you know what I mean, this is exactly what I wrote last Sunday

But like wtf man, why are you stealing random works from people that spent a lot of time on them and take all the credit, if you can’t write then just say so and ask someone for tips☹️

Apparently they stole a bunch of other works as well so please report them thank you :)

Anyways hopefully it gets taken down, please help me and thank you so much to the person that told me, you’re literally a life saver I love you <3

Besides that annoying ass situation I woke up to, I hope you’re all doing well, please take care of yourselves <3

Okay also don’t mind some of the tags, i just need this post to reach as much people as possible sorry :/

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!

I want to post excerpts from the book that I’m writing on here so I can get opinions but I don’t want my writing or ideas to get stolen. Does anyone know how to keep that from happening? 😭