(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’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:
IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.
1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.
2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.
3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”
4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”
5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.
TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.
Reblog this to keep other users aware. Suicide isn’t a joke, and neither is someone’s life. If you didn’t know this, someone else may not, either. Pass it on.
why on earth doesn’t this have more notes
I actually had to do this once. She lived.
if you scroll past this on your dash you are absolutely heartless.
Reblog this!! This can save somebody’s life!
reblog.
help.
do not scroll down.
I SWEAR TO GOD IF ANYONE SCROLLS PAST THIS WITHOUT REBLOGGING I WILL LITTERALLY FIND THEM AND GIVE THEM A LECTURE
may I just update this?
see the little thing that says help?
Don’t ever scroll past this post. FUCKING NEVER SCROLL PAST!!!
🌸🌸🌸
Anyone know where it is on mobile ???
You report the user, choose “something else”, scroll down and choose “suicide or self harm”
DO NOT SCROLL DOWN
REBLOG TO LITERALLY SAVE A LIVE
PLEASE REBLOG
Please don’t scroll past this post, you could save someone’s life.
Holy shit, okay so this is hard to say because I don’t want 200 people going “what? you were going to? no you weren’t, you just want attention” but tonight I felt like shit, like utter shit and no one answered their phones and no one replied to my messages and just it got hard to be alone.. while scrolling down my feed I saw this and I just sat here for a good ten minutes deciding that.. you know what.. this is.. i can’t kill myself tonight.. so even if it doesn’t really go with your blog theme, I think you should really reblog it, because you could just save some messed up kid like me. Thank you, to the person I reblogged this off, you’ve saved my life and you don’t even know me. xxx if anyone ever wants to talk or some shit, and just no ones answering? well.. I have an askbox if you want it. I love you all pretties. xx
~
There will never be a day when I won’t reblog this if I see it on my dash. It might just save someone’s life. I’m here for everyone, doesn’t matter if you follow me or not. If you need someone to talk to I will be there for you.
I got an anonymous message the day after I reblogged this saying that just because they read this from my page, they decided not to take their life. I want everyone to know. This stuff is real. It happens everyday. And i’m damn proud to say that i’m happy to save that persons life. If anyone needs to talk to someone. I’m here as well. No matter what race, culture, age, i’m here. And you can talk to me anonymously if you’d like
just in case :)
i’m reblogging because i’m someone who needed this, and i want others to see it too.
The other night I was feeling really horrible and started thinking about killing myself and I saw a post just like this one and calmed down a little :/ reblogging these posts is really important and could save someone’s life
If you see this please RE-BLOG Each RE-BLOG can save a life!
If you are experiencing a medical emergency, are in danger, or are feeling suicidal, call 911 immediately.
Suicide Hotline: 800-784-2433 Immediate Medical Assistance: 911 Crisis Call Center: 800-273-8255 or text ANSWER to 839863 Crisis Text Line (U.S. only): Text HELLO to 741741 Youthspace Text Line (across Canada): Text 778-783-0177 from 6 p.m. to midnight daily.
Suicide
National Suicide Hotline 800-SUICIDE (784-2433) 800-442-HOPE (4673) Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week http://www.hopeline.com
This is such an important and genuinely terrifying post. I could completely go off on the rise of anti-science, but for now I’ll just add: it isn’t just boomers that get deceived. This is a warning to all of us.
Pay ATTENTION to what you are being told. If you think you cannot be deceived, you leave yourself open to deception. Question, doubt, research research research. Learn about your personal biases, dig up any subconscious cognitive dissonance. Keep an eye on your mind.
this is 100% why i never fucked with that “normcore” nonsense and why i’m still extremely self-conscious about what i wear and how my clothes fit, even after my weight loss. wearing “normal” clothes only becomes “fashion” when it’s on skinny attractive people and once it’s on a fat person it’s suddenly the trappings of the tacky and the unwashed poors. fuck out of here. you can make anything look good.
So they go around the world bombing and killing people and then expect us to feel sorry for them?? Nah son, you deserve it.
me if i ever find out any of my neighbors are veterans
Hmmm. I mean, just because the army as an institution is flawed and damaging doesn’t mean everyone in it is a terrible person. To paint every single veteran with the same brush is reductive and to make light of the debilitating mental disorders many have just seems wrong. Like yes, fuck the military as an institution completely 100%, but blaming disabled ex-front-line infantry maybe isn’t the best direction for our anger, perhaps.
A lot of veterans are poor people who were intentionally targeted by scouting programs coming to their schools starting at age 13, and most of them are worse off coming back than they were to start with… let’s be courteous to folks with PTSD
Don’t be an ableist fuckface. Intentionally triggering someone is disgusting.
I thought people on this godforsaken website at least understood this one basic principal, but apparently not, so let me make it crystal clear:
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BE SELECTIVELY PROGRESSIVE
You can hate Ann Coulter. But if you suggest that she deserves to be raped, you are a misogynist.
You can hate Woody Allen. But if you say he’s part of a Jewish conspiracy or joke about putting him in an oven, you are an antisemite.
You can hate Michael Vick. But you call for him to be lynched or call him the N-word, you are an anti-black racist.
You can hate Caitlyn Jenner. But if you misgender her, or make comments about her genitalia, you are a transphobe.
And you can hate the military. But if you deliberately try to trigger veterans with PTSD, you are an ableist piece of shit.
You do no get to pick and choose which people to treat fairly when it comes to acknowledging and combatting prejudice.
Not liking a person is not a free pass to disregard anti-prejudicial words and actions. Either you respect marginalized peoples as a whole (even if you don’t like an individual), or you don’t respect them at all. There is no middle ground.
If anyone really like, agrees with harassing veterans with PTSD or anything similar, unfollow me right the fuck now. I don’t want you following me.
You don’t have to like the military, it’s massively fucked up but y'all needs understand that most people in the military are victims of propaganda and are usually poor or part of a minority who are taken advantage of in order to join.
^^^ All of these comments tbh
Mhmm
They offered the ASVAB at my HIGH SCHOOL. They CAME INTO MY SCHOOL and said “If you guys take the military aptitude test, you get free donuts and you miss the first half of the day.” They brought in hot dogs.
They brought food to a place where half of us were in poverty if not more, and they said, all you have to do is take a little test and you’ll get a snack, you don’t have to come in to school on time (an extra full hour of sleep that morning!). So we did. By the hundreds.
My younger brother, a year behind me in school, scored “the highest we’ve ever seen in the whole damn state, son,” and for the next. Three. Fucking. Years. They harassed him. He got phone calls from every goddamn branch of the military. People would show up at our house at random, trying to recruit him. They’d tell him horror stories about how much better it is to enlist than be drafted (as if there’d been a draft in our lifetime!). They called our Mom at work. They sent recruiters to talk to our stepfather, who’d been in the Army, to try to get a handle on my brother’s weak points.
THREE FUCKING YEARS OF THIS.
My brother is the second child of six. My brother was thirteen by the time he had his own pillow for the first time. My brother was hungry all the time, dizzy from hunger some days–and oh, sidenote, my mother, stepfather and father are all abusive assholes who’d as soon hit you as look at you.
Guess what year my brother graduated?
If you guessed “May, 2002,” or “almost immediately after 9/11,” ding ding ding ding!
The ONLY REASON my brother didn’t join the military, in the end, is that his girlfriend at the time said “If you enlist, I will never speak to you again.” Her dad was a military man, and he was also an abusive shithead, so in her head the two were inextricable. But if she’d said “go for it?” Or if she hadn’t said anything at all?
Something like half of the males in my fucking graduating class enlisted.
It was better than starving.
And a great number of those are dead now.
I hate the US military industry. I’m disgusted by the things our military does. But by god I don’t blame our veterans for what was done to them.
Rich people don’t enlist.
The ones who join the military are the ones who are hopeful that for once they’ll know that they’re getting a meal, not just today but tomorrow too.
Every damn point of the thread.
The soldiers are, by and large, as much a victim as anyone else.
Hate war but respect the poor soldiers fucked up by it
THIS.
I’m from a military family. My ancestors were
members of the military in Germany in the 19th century, and when they
finally immigrated to the United States around the turn of the century, a
lot of the men went into the US Army, because it was tradition in my
family. It still is. At least one guy from every section of my family
has been in the military.
The ONLY FUCKING REASON I said “No”
to the military early in life was because I could see the effects of it
in the people around me. Both of my parents work at the VA in my
hometown. I spent more time in a hospital as a young child than most
people who don’t have health issues will in their first 30 years of
life. And you know what I saw?
The effects of war. I saw veterans
suffering from PTSD every day, yet they always put on a smile for me
and tried to sugarcoat when I asked about the military because I was an 8
year old. At age 8, I was being steered away from the military by a
bunch of people who had been victims of the US military, yet I still
didn’t know how bad it could get.
And then my mom got
transferred to the mental health ward of the VA, and I got my first look
at what war really did to you. At age 12, I swore to myself that I
would never go into the military, no matter what they offered me. I
wasn’t going to be like the people I grew up around. Oh, they were
lovely, kind individuals for the most part, but they’d warned me to not
make their mistakes, and I agreed that I wouldn’t.
Oh yeah, I
got recruitment officers. I was a band kid from a military family, of
course I got just about every branch trying to convince me to join them.
I said no every time.
I had to say no to a guaranteed
paycheck that would allow me to play clarinet. I had to look a Marine
officer dead in the eyes and tell him I’d rather risk not having the
money for food than join the military. All because I grew up seeing what
could happen to me if I had joined.
So really, be
anti-war. Be anti-military. No one is saying you all can’t. But do NOT
be a dick to veterans. There is so much at work here, and sometimes,
you’re desperate, and the military has their ways of trying to convince
you that they’re the best choice.
Hawkeye said it best. “War
is war and hell is hell, but of the two, war is a lot worse.” Don’t be a
dick. If someone has PTSD, don’t fucking set it off. Simple. It doesn’t
matter if they’re a veteran or a survivor of abuse. If someone has
PTSD, DO NOT SET THEM OFF.