#ebook-tree

[whatwearewillbe]

I’m glad my Louis/Flynn Breaking Bad fic is no longer on ebook-tree. I’m left wondering about the bot that picked out that one story of mine. It (the robot) went with its heart - over show popularity, kudos, comments, or hits. It probably said, in a robot voice, “gosh darn it. I just love awkward teen boys holding hands.” 

[colepaldi-in-the-tardis]

ebook-tree.com stealing ffs - what I did

Okay, I just set all my RPFs on AO3 on “only registered users can read”. That was not funny, because I needed to do it one by one. 

rebeldrferguson did the same and it’s true what they say. 

After I just did this, and wasted 20 mins of my life because of these ebook-tree-fuckers, I checked my nickname and the word “colepaldi” on the site again as I did in the morning. Everything is gone. I don’t know why and if it has something to do with my setting it on “private”. In the morning I could find around 8 fics of mine. Anyone else made this discovery?

For the moment I leave it that way, so you’ll need to register on Ao3 to read my fics, I keep them up on tumblr, but they are not up to date. 

Personally I think this side is not about to sell books or whatever, but more about collecting credit card infos, because you need to give this to them when you want to register.

Okay, that’s it for the moment.

CPitT

[thebetaservice]

Ebooks-Tree.com and copyright infringement

Some of you will have heard that there’s a website that’s putting pdfs/mobis of works taken from Archive Of Our Own (and other places such as WattPad and UrBookLibrary 100% via bots. These seem to be the people who caused AO3 to go wonky a while ago.  Is my fic on there? We at TBS advise any of you who post to AO3 to double check that your work isn’t being stolen and put up on this site, if you go to ebooks-tree.com and put in your AO3 username into the search bar it should show you any works they have. If there’s just one blue link towards the bottom middle of the page, then, regardless of the title, they don’t have diddly squat.  To read any fic from here you are required to sign up and give them money. DO NOT DO THIS.

So, how do we get these off Ebooks-Tree? Their DMCA page is confusing and full of legalese, but people who eat legalese for breakfast have said it is not impossible to get your fics taken down. telling ebooks-tree to take down your content: Click on the link above and using the template below, (helpfully provided by besinaao3) make a complaint with the subject header DMCA Complaint (otherwise they won’t pay attention) Ao3 and efyeahcopywrite strongly suggest you don’t use your legal name or any proper email address, but include your pen name and an email address that they cannot glean personal information from you. My name is [name] and I am the author and owner of the following works: -        “Of Hunters and Wolves” by “Quicklikelight” -        “In the Woods” by “Quicklikelight” -        “This is a Gift” by “AnneinColor” These are my intellectual property. I do not give you or anyone else permission to offer these works for download, and I did not consent for them to be available on your website. I am requesting that you remove them immediately. I can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail]. This information is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, I am authorized to act on my own behalf as the owner of this material.Signed, [Name]

You can also try the DMCA bits of Google or Bing to really hammer home the point, if you search for the fic on either of those platforms and the Ebook-Tree version shows up.  So far, responses have not been forthcoming, but Ebooks-Tree do say that it could take up to a week. However there’s been no reassurance that this will mean an immediate withdrawal of the DMCA non-compliant stuff, but I’ll let you know when the first wave of responses come flooding in. So far, the more people make a complaint, the more we’re likely to get a result on this matter, but watch this space. If you want to read up more about this issue try here and here. Good luck, and let us know if any of you were unlucky enough to have your fic up there and how you get on. -TBS

[lostunderthemountain]

So...

I’m locked down all of my big fics even though i suspect it’s already too late but all of the prompts from Tumblr are still unlocked, just incase anyone wants to read them there and not on my blog.

I’m sorry I had to do this but I don’t want to risk anything.

[colepaldi-in-the-tardis]

Ebooks-Tree.com stealing Fanfiction

So after rebeldrferguson posted about their fics getting stolen I looked into it and was first not alarmed, because I thought it’s for free, but obviously they seem to sell the fics, they steal. 

They have indeed some of my fics too from AO3 and I can’t see for how much they sell this stuff or anything because for register you need to give them a credit card number and I am not willing to do this. And I advice you not to give them yours!!!

It seems this is usual practice for this side and it just goes round on tumblr, also on FB and on twitter. I am not sure if I am gonna do something, because I am not sure if I have the nerv, but I probably will.

Here is a link to another post about this with what you can do, when your fics are stolen too.

Also I think of setting my AO3 on “only registered users can read” - but I am not sure if this will stop someone from stealing because you can register quickly. 

Personally I have no problem, when it would be free, but as they seem to take money for it... 

Than I just checked over some pages, where you can find out SINCE WHEN the side exists, it seems it is new. I got April 2015. And because tumblr just comes up with it, it seems, it’s a new side. All sounds very shady.

Alright, we’ll see what will happen. 

CpitT

Update: Check out this link rebeldrferguson has provided me with x. Its again how you can make them remove your stuff, and it seems to be a bot that simply grabs your ffs and hosts them on the named site. 

I tag this with whouffaldi and doctor who for raising awareness. 

[otterandterrier]

Update from AO3 regarding fic theft

Like I said, I contacted AO3 earlier besides Ebooks-tree about the fic theft, since two of my fics are on that site. This was my message:

Hi. I have checked the FAQ and I understand why our work is available for download. However, I just found out two of my fanfiction works that I've posted here to have been downloaded and resubmited for its download as .mobi WITHOUT MY CONSENT OR KNOWLEDGE here: http://www.ebooks-tree.com/search.php?q=otterandterrier I've downloaded one of them and it's been undoubtedly taken from AO3. I have contacted the site, but now I am contacting you. If you intend us to trust your archive with our works, I think some steps should be taken. Again, I understand why download can't be disabled, and that even if it was, there would be other ways to download the work, but this easy way of taking an author's work leads to dishonest companies taking advantage of us all and making profit with it. I have no way to take down my work from that site now if they refuse to do so. Please consider making download optional because, honestly, at the moment I'm considering taking down all my works from the site before they come for the rest of my fanfiction.

I just got a message back from AO3, so here it is:

Hi, Thanks for contacting us. This is not an issue that Abuse itself can help with, though our tech teams and Legal committee are aware of the matter. They will be updating both Tumblr and our news page as they have more information. One way to help prevent your works on AO3 from being scraped and added to other sites is to restrict your works so only logged-in users can view them. This, however, won't stop everyone; dedicated thieves might simply create their own AO3 accounts. It also won't stop them from stealing from other sites you may have posted on - from the looks of it Ebooks Tree has been stealing from a variety of popular sites, not just AO3. We do encourage users to contact Ebooks Tree directly via their DMCA page: http://www.ebooks-tree.com/info.php?dmca. If you have any other questions concerning Terms of Service violations on AO3, please let us know. Matty AO3 Abuse

In short, at the moment they don’t have a good solution to prevent sites from stealing our work besides what I’d already found out (restricting our fics to registered users), but it’s good to know that they are aware of this problem and (hopefully) trying to do something about it. Keep an eye on those spaces!

[nothorse]

writing, harvesting and ebook-tree

I know I’m probably the exception, but I can’t really be bothered about the ebook-tree stuff. Beyond my assumption that it is a fly-by-night site which will be gone in a matter of days, I have a larger issue here, or rather don’t have.

I don’t get “intellectual property” at all. I don’t get the concept, I actually think it’s somewhat harmful to mankind in general.

For me personally it is completely irrelevant. I sometimes write and if the result is in any way readable, I’ll post it on a variety of sites. Occasionally I get a nice comment/review or Kudos and that’s a nice egoboo. Beyond that I’m not really interested. I may check the stats every few months when I’m terribly bored, but that’s the extent of my interaction with my writing beyond, you know, writing it.

I know that others feel differently and that’s absolutely fine. If you have a more invested relationship with your work, you should proabbly feel protective. (And it probably means you’re a better or at least more active writer.)

Nothing of the above excuses the ebook-tree.com people by the way. Those are definitely scum and will in all probability be eliminated quickly.

[nothorserecs]

Sorry in advance, but this isn't related to your fic recs. However - I thought you might want to know that a site called ebooks-tree (the one AO3 is posting about) has a page hosting at least five of your works from AO3 . If you know already, I apologise :) Angelholme.

I didn’t know. I’ll have to take a look. Thanks for the heads-up.

Generally, I don’t care if somebody reposts my stuff, I’m pretty much a copyright anarchist and thus probably won’t bother to send a takedown notice. I would be miffed if they’d charge for access. But they don’t seem to do that at least for the .mobi files, those download immediately. The PDFs seem to be behind an interstitial ad, which I will never see, because I redirect all known adserver dnsnames to 0.0.0.0

I do wonder about the choices. I’m neither prolific nor ae my AO3 fics known or linked and recced -- at least as far as I know (I have a few recs to the LJ version of my fics). Maybe they go by Kudo count or some such? I’ll have to look at my stats.