I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.
IN SHORT
Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.
When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using
his dyslexia;
his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and
a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,
as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.
When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there.
THE TAKEAWAYS
1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain;
2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and
3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again.
THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)
Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):
This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)
I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:
Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.
I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice.
I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.
After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.
While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:
And then I went to bed.
By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:
@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.
That response came only an hour or so later:
Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.
I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.
A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)
A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.
Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.
Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :
Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):
which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)
... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)
After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether.
It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:
And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.
That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:
They were completed works;
They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and
They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.
If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!
I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.
I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.
Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***
That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.
Sooo—
We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them.
This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:
Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.
Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.
THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):
*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that.
**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation.
***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.
Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.
Requested, #10. “Promise me you’ll stay.” (Prompt from here.)
Author note: THIS GOT AWAY FROM ME!!! It just took on a life of its own. It’s long. Smut. Fluff. Angst-y? (I hit it all, y’all.) Thank you wine/tequila, thank you. Here’s to hoping it’s good!
To the person who requested this and only requested it as fluffy: I’m so sorry. I hope you can still get behind what I’ve created here? I mean, it has fluff in it….??
Special thanks to @running-ropes for encouragment/review/support & @chasingeverybreakingwave for visual inspiration.
He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus. But he talks like a gentlemen, like you imagined when you were young….
The first time you’d shared a bed with Kenny Omega was because you’d had too much sake thanks to Tama Tonga.
Kenny had taken it upon himself to make sure you’d made it back to your hotel room, and you’d essentially latched on to him, not allowing him to leave. Your limbs had secured him in a way that would make an octopus or python jealous. When you’d woken up the following morning, he’d been on top of the covers you’d been under, a separate blanket over himself.
You’d been able to laugh off the experience, thanking him for looking out for you, and he seemed unaffected overall by the ordeal.
The second time you shared a bed with Kenny Omega was due to sheer bad circumstance.
You’d both been in California for PWG. The booking was set for the rooms, with you sharing with Chuck Taylor, who was somewhat of a little brother to you. What you didn’t know was he had planned to film his DVD series with Trent in said room. In a desperate attempt for sleep and to get away from the chaos, you’d gone to Kenny’s room. He was one of the few people you trusted and knew wouldn’t be a part of the shenanigans set up by Chuck.
That morning, you’d woken up with your limbs tangled together with his. You certainly hadn’t fallen asleep that way, you were sure of it. You’d managed to slide out of the bed and make a quiet getaway, your jet-lagged companion staying asleep, much to your gratitude. Kenny had said nothing about it to you when you saw him later that day at the venue. And you definitely hadn’t brought it up.
The third time you’d shared a bed with Kenny Omega was because you had asked it of him.
The way his hands felt as they glided down from your ribs to your hips, before moving back up the same path, taking your shirt with them…it was a feeling you knew you’d never be able to forget.
He was so light in his touch, yet so confident. Hot, yet distant. Your skin developed bumps as he left his hands gently against your ribs, just below your bra, his nails biting into your skin just ever so slightly.
Some things never changed.
The last time he’d been this close to you, this intimate, was about five months ago. That had been the last night you’d spent together. And the next day you’d told him you were ending the relationship, in no uncertain terms, and walked out of his house.
I am sorry to everyone who tagged me in some tag game and I never responded. I saw it and thought “aww they thought of me” and proceeded to forget about it right after
writing fanfiction is just. i’m being so creative and original. i’m plagiarizing everyone by accident. i’m a genius. i’m cringe. i’m too angsty. i’m too cheesy. this is not in character. it doesn’t matter that it’s not in character because these are my characters now. i love my hobby. this is the worst possible use of my time. i’m seeking validation. i’m projecting my own personal problems onto this story and i’m barely hiding it. i know so many words and i’m using all of them wrong. im on tumblr posting about it instead of writing it.
“Oh ya know, just the night before my wedding, no worries over here, nope, none at all,” Bryan stated, causing her to giggle and roll her eyes.
“I knew you’d take the freak-out route.”
“It’s not a freak-out. Well, not in the like panic sense. Just a ‘holy crap, it’s happening’ kind of way, ya know?”
“Not scared, just excited.”
“Yea, that,” Bryan agreed. “It’s gonna be good, I already know that.”
“It’ll be the best damn hippie-crunchy-granola wedding of all time!” Reegan agreed with enthusiasm. He made a long-suffering scoff sound.
“Thanks,” he muttered, though she knew he was smiling.
“Anytime,” she grinned to herself.
“What about you? You alright?”
“Peachy keen, jelly bean,” Reegan replied. “I’m just enjoying a nice night, looking at the stars.”
“I was actually thinking about doing the same,” he laughed. “Figured it might help calm me down to maybe sleep.”
“You should come join me,” she stated. “Bring a blanket too. It’s kinda chilly in Arizona tonight.”
The moment of silence that followed her words was heavy, to say the least. She couldn’t help but hold her breath as she waited for him to process her words.
“…you’re here,” Bryan breathed out, and the emotion in his tone made tears come to her eyes. He sounded amazed, surprised, happy.
“Of course I’m here, pollo,” Reegan replied softly, blinking her watery eyes slowly to try to keep the tears in. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
“Where are you? Like, at the resort?”
“Yep,” she stated. “In the back, back. Like past the pool.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Bryan decided.
“OK. And I was serious about the blanket,” Reegan replied.
“Got it,” he agreed. And that was apparently his goodbye as she heard the phone call end. Reegan rolled her eyes to herself, not being surprised. Putting her phone back on the ground beside the bench next to the water bottle she’d brought, she looked back up at the stars.
Taking in a deep breath, Reegan attempted to settle her emotions, her heart. She knew it was going to be a heavy weekend. She had tried to prepare herself for it, but she knew really there was no preparing. She had to face many of her coworkers, friends, for the first time as a widow. She had to attend a wedding, a celebration of love and commitment, without the man she had done the same with so many years ago. And that wound of loss was still so very, very fresh. She was to witness one of her best friends, one of her husband’s best friends, get married without her husband by his side as had been the plan. She hoped that her presence wouldn’t put an even darker cloud over the celebration.
Reegan heard footsteps approaching, and found Bryan coming around the corner, a blanket from the hotel bed in his arms. He was in sweatpants and a hoodie himself, and once he saw her, a smile broke across his face.
“Annie,” he said, almost as if he had to confirm it was her in front of him. He threw the blanket down on the bench beside her, and she was barely standing before he had his arms around her. Reegan had to giggle, as he lifted her from her feet, her arms securely around his neck. “I am so happy you’re here.”
“Me too,” she replied. There were so many other things she wanted to say, but she found any words dying in her throat as she squeezed him tighter. His arms tightening around her kept the tears just a little more at bay.
“How did you pull this off?”
Her watery giggle was all the answer he apparently would get, as he put her back onto her feet, and stepped back enough to hold her by her arms.
“Seriously Ree, what the fuck? I really thought you wouldn’t be here,” Bryan stated, his eyes a strange combination of loving and hurt.
“I’m so sorry,” she sniveled, squeezing his forearms. Taking in a deep breath, she did her best to get her emotions back under control. Though the alcohol she’d had prior to this moment wasn’t making it any easier.
Are you angry/scared/worried about potentially losing Roe vs. Wade? Do you want to help?
A lot of people are REALLY WORRIED about the leaked Alito draft, and for good reason. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, many states will enact trigger laws that revoke the right to safe abortion access. But that doesn’t mean that safe abortions won’t be possible. They’ll just be harder to access.
Fortunately, we aren’t powerless. There are things we can do to help preserve the right to abortion and, if Roe falls, help people get the abortions they need.
Here are some actionable things you can do to help!
Donate to your local abortion fund.
This is a financial commitment, obviously, but these funds are vital to helping people access abortions. There are different types of funds. Practical funds help with transportation, housing, and other practical needs. Clinical funds help with paying for the procedure. Both types of funds are necessary and helpful!
If you’re in a state with protected abortion access, see if there’s a practical fund in your state that you can donate to. These funds make it possible for people for other states to afford travel and lodging in your state. You might also want to consider donating to funds in states or regions that have trigger laws, like the Yellowhammer Abortion Fund, which helps people in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Deep South.
To find an abortion fund in your state, you can google “abortion fund + your state” or open up this google doc that’s a maintained list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T-aDTsZXnKhMcrDmtcD35aWs00gw5piocDhaFy5LKDY/preview?pru=AAABgKwRCFs*fZxkvUyYtHx7T4KXmRnOLA
There’s also https://abortionfunds.org/, but as of right now (2 May 2022, right after the SCOTUS leak happened), their website is down. Too much traffic!
Volunteer with a hotline.
As of writing this, a lot of abortion fund websites are completely overwhelmed. Lots of people are rightfully upset and looking for some way to help. Many of these funds have hotlines that you can help out directly from your own phone! Google “abortion fund + your state (or your region) + hotline” and see what comes up. These hotlines are going to be SWAMPED soon and many orgs are going to be onboarding volunteers very quickly to help deal with the onslaught.
Donate to grassroots causes.
I love Planned Parenthood as much as the next gal, but donating to them isn’t actually going to help as much right now as donating to an abortion fund. Smaller, grassroots networks are going to be more effective at allocating resources to the people who need it most. Independent clinics are also going to need substantial help. Independent clinics provide the majority of abortion care in the US, and many are the only clinics operating in hostile states. Check out https://keepourclinics.org/ if you’re interested in donating.
Make a list of resources.
There are a lot of people out there who aren’t going to have the time or energy or emotional bandwidth to deal with this dumpster fire. If you have the capacity to do so, then maintain a file somewhere with the following information:
- any abortion funds that serve your area with their contact info- email and phone and links
- any abortion hotlines in your area
- national care hotlines, ESPECIALLY RAINN because this is going to be really, really hard on survivors
-a list of crisis pregnancy centers in your area, clearly marked with their names, contact info, and primary links. Make sure that these are highlighted in a way that separates them from the actual abortion providers because these centers are highly predatory and manipulate people who are distressed and confused. If somebody has access to that list and know who’s operating in an area, it might help them avoid these places!
Have this file ready to go so that you can share it with people who are overwhelmed!
Help the safe havens.
Losing Roe feels inevitable at this point. It might not be, but the world is terrifying. However, some states are safe havens and will maintain abortion access, regardless of what SCOTUS eventually decides. Practical access funds in these states will need help because they will help people traveling from unsafe states to safe states. Refer to this map: https://reproductiverights.org/maps/what-if-roe-fell/
Look for funds in states that are blue or yellow. This means they have expanded access or protection if Roe falls. But be sure to hover over and look at the summary of the protection– for example, Florida has abortion protection, but they just passed a 15-week ban. That’s basically protection in name only!
If you’re not sure which practical fund you’d like to support, I highly suggest the Midwest Access Coalition. MAC is based in Chicago and helps people from all over the Midwest come to the city for reproductive healthcare. A lot of the Midwest is really hostile to abortion, so MAC can help a lot of people. But there are many, many others!
In the coming days and weeks, there will be more to do. There will be marches, protests, and other organized action. But right now, tonight, these are things you can look into doing.
i hate those posts that are like "what if your mother aborted you?" because it's LIKE. i value my mother as having her own agency above my existence simply because she came first. if she aborted me, id be fine with it because in the fucking hypothetical of un-existence & knowing, id rather her have access to safe abortion than having to carry & birth when she didn't want to like wtf kind of egotistical question is that. do u not value yr mother in the least. whatever joys you've gotten out of life aren't greater than yr mother's choice
