@goodgrammaritan / goodgrammaritan.tumblr.com
how much fun are we having in this timeline folks?
Time to download and run all your works through Nightshade before posting them anywhere. Poison the data sets.
Reminder to artists, webglaze is also developed by the same ppl as nightshade, and it's very useful too!
GLAZE ALL YOUR ARTS BEFORE YOU POST THEM ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET
(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:
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:
First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.
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.
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!
UPDATE: Plush Books still exists on Amazon and on Goodreads under the pseudonym "J.D. Geraghty" where the fanfics are also listed. They also have a list of cookbooks that are without a doubt AI written (the descriptions for the books are repetitive nonsense so god forbid what exists inside).
From what I can see on Amazon, most of the stolen fanfics have become "Unavailable." This entity likely operates under more than one name, so it isn't safe to assume crisis averted. Numerous bad actors are posting AI written works to Amazon, which just means plagiarism slurry with a side of potential danger (like the autogenerated mushroom identification books).
oh ffs. shared.
Nice to see that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's "Writer Beware" team spreading the word!
Add this to existing worries about artificial intelligence wholesale consuming everything and regurgitating "generative content."
This could affect any fiction online - not just fanfic but other work posted on your website, Patreon, or wherever.
Many most uses of large language models are dubious. This one has no redeeming value whatsoever.
This is an absolute nightmare...
This is literally just a misinformation machine, and the worst part is that won’t even be the point for most of the sites using it. They’ll be generating junk articles full of inaccuracies that are SEO optimized so they’ll clog every search, and it will be for no other reason than to generate clicks and bring in that add revenue. Google is ALREADY basically useless and i can’t imagine how much worse this will make it. AND they’re stealing from actual journalists to do it!!
this reply kills me 😭
*You see this meme? I made that meme myself
Hello Mr Gaiman, I just read a reblog you put regarding sending fanfiction/ideas to the universe's authors (like sending you Good Omens fanfiction for example) and I have a question, it's probably a dumb question with an obvious answer but if I don't ask it won't go away.
So if you ever read the good omens fanfiction I'm writing you wouldn't be able to put whatever I put there but what if I explicitly stated (like in the summary) that it could be used? Would it still create legal problems? Like with payment and stuff?
I'm not going to read your fan fiction so I will never know if you gave me permission.
And if you're wondering why I have a blanket rule not to, I'd point you to this article. On something that's happening right now.
(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:
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:
First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.
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.
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!
“The Grapes of Wrath was written because Steinbeck stole the notes of a hardworking Dust Bowl-era journalist named Sanora Babb, who was trying to write her own book. When she finally had a chance to pitch it, she found that the market was overpowered by a successful book—based entirely on her notes. When Steinbeck saw the things in person that he later wrote about, he couldn’t stand to look at it for more than a day. Babb spent much of her career working with and chronicling impoverished farmers. Her book wasn’t published until the year before she died. In 2004. She would be a household name if not for the theft.”
—
Fuck you, Steinbeck. (via theangelofbucephalon)
Steinbeck based his book on reports made by Sanora Babb (leaked to him by her boss, Tom Collins, to whom Grapes of Wrath is dedicated). Sanora Babb was planning to write her own book, but Steinbeck published before she did. Babb was told that the market could not bear another on the same subject. Her book, ‘Whose Names are Unknown’, was finally published in 2004. I haven’t read either book yet, but am now definitely going to be reading ‘Whose Names are Unknown’ soon. Babb’s novel is described as showing how by re-creating rudimentary democratic practices the refugees restructure their lives as a unified community, resisting violent discrimination. In ‘Whose Names are Unknown’, we hear the whole powerful story from the point of view of a woman who had actual experience with both the origin and the destination of the migrants.
Sanora Babb was a member of the US Communist Party in the 1930s and 40s, dropped out of the party due to the authoritarian structure and in-fighting.
(via jinerviet)
(via corvus-cornix)
HOLY SHIT
(via cearbhal)
so that’s fitzgerald, and now steinbeck outed as thieves, who stole the intellectual property of women to write their “masterpieces”. i’m sure there are many more examples of male theft from women in the literary domain, probably as many thefts as in the sciences. men are pathetic, talentless pieces of shit.
(via angrysapphist)
