#ScraperBots

[bambiraptor9blog]

AO3 Story Access Change

This planet seriously irritates me sometimes...

Due to AI and other content scraping (which I dealt with on the furry art/writing site SoFurry years ago; I knew this bs was gonna spread to other public author websites, it was only a matter of time!), I've put my AO3 stories on lockdown--only registered AO3 users can read my stuff.

I will probably share my fan works here in part then link to AO3, or I will share them to my WordPress blog account.

This debacle of scraping, in my personal experience, began within the furry fandom almost a decade ago now, when I was still on SoFurry, FurRag, and other such sites that catered to online writers.

The attitude of many readers then was the same as the attitude is now: "If it's online, it's mine! Yoink!" People love to copy-paste your work without credit, download entire files, even revive dead pages to read your hard earned writing work for free. Several furries tried to drag my username through the virtual mud when I forced a takedown of the scraperbot site. I had to personally track down the user on SoFurry and threaten them with US copyright law (outlined below the cut) to get them to comply. I also raised hell on the forum, to some action, but no avail. Many furries hated me for fighting for my work.

Suffice it to say, I left the furry fandom due to this bs...it was the last straw for me. I was infuriated and I still am. My original novel, 'Iara's Crossing,' was on a mirror site without my permission. Since then I've put my novel (and I will be putting my entire comic series too) on file with the US Copyright Office. I've put all my sequel content behind a paywall as well.

My art, my stories, my permission, my heart is mine. What goes around, comes around, and thieves who profit off of AI will get their karma, one way or another.

Be warned: Out there be monsters hiding behind screens. And it pisses me off so much to read this is happening AGAIN nearly a decade later. Not surprising. Just disappointing.

Here is an excellent summary of how copyright works from the user SoTiredofThis on HuggingFace's forum (below the cut)-if you're an author you need to read this post thoroughly!

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SoTiredofThis: Copyright goes into effect the minute something tangible is created; a story, written down, a drawing, created, whether digitally or on paper or canvas. It doesn't matter where, it just needs to exist, in a tangible form. So ideas that you have in your head or not protected, because you can't prove that you had the idea first, but as soon as you write it down? Bam. copyrighted. You don't need to buy any licence, register with any company, copyright exists for all creative works that, at one point in time, have been... created. Anything you write down, you own copyright on. But here's the tricky thing with copyright: copyright can't be used on anything intangible. An author can complain about someone using similar tropes all they want, but as long as the characters and writing are different, they can't do anything. Because copyright exists only on the tangible work. It becomes copyright infringement once lines are directly taken from the work in another work, and/or (and here we go into the "gray area" that's fanfic) the same characters are used. Specifically names. 50 Shades of Grey is famously a former fanfic; all the author had to do technically to make it okay again is change the names Edward and Bella. But because the story itself was unique, Meyer couldn't really do anything about it.

Now, of course I've brought up the bigger point: fanfic uses material created by others, namely characters and IP, which can be copyrighted. However, the US has a very specific doctrine called "fair use". Fair use is anyone's ability to use a copyrighted material without having to first get permission from the copyright owner. Fair use is decided on four factors: the purpose (whether it's for commercialization, aka to profit from the work, or for personal use) and character of the work (it has to be transformative, aka it can't be a 1 on 1 recreation but has to bring something new to the work), nature of the copyrighted work (you can't copy the text, but ideas etc. cant be copyrighted as per above), the amount and the effect on the work's value. For fanfic, these are some key factors: as long as fanfic is not profitted of, it's not commercial. Authors don't make anything at all, they're not profitting of of someone else's works. Furthermore, most fanfic is transformative; it plays with the storyline, with the characters and brings something new to the already existing piece of media. And lastly, the effect on the work's value. Fanfic does not diminish the work's value in any meaningful way, and thus I'd like to argue that it falls under fair use. And is not copyright infringement (for fair use it usually goes on a case-to-case basis anyways and is not super clear cut, but I think most fanfic does meet these criteria).

However, just because it's fair use doesn't mean that it can just be uploaded or distributed by anyone. Like I said above, copyright goes into effect the minute something tangible is created. Like, I don't know, uploading a piece of writing to a site. There now rests copyright on these specific works. Actually, that copyright went into effect the minute someone started writing it. And given that uploading millions of stories created by others without their permission isn't exactly transformative, since it's a 1 on 1 copy, I would argue that that's not exactly an example of fair use but very much one of copyright infringement.

And to the person saying texts have been used in datasets for ages and ages: you're right. I know. I have multiple degrees in literature speficically, and creating data sets is in fact something scholars do. However, because that's for academic purposes, it falls within the realm of fair use because they do it for purposes of scholarly criticism. They are transformative and bring something new to the text. A GenAI-bot? Yeah no, that just plainly steals an reuses works and words by others. They're not acting as if they own the texts, and not distributing it for the public (also part of copyright; the protection against the work being copied and distributed without permission. Usually, the datasets they use for research are not made available. Only their findings)

If publishers don't want any of their books scraped and mined by AI because it's an infringement of copyright, why would fanfic be any different?

I wanna say source: just trust me, bro, but I don't think that will help in convincing you that this is downright just bad behaviour and that your arguments about fanfic in and of itself being copyright infringement are wrong, so have some actual sources (aside from me dealing with copyright on a day-to-day basis)(and idk maybe if not you, I can at least convince anyone else reading this):

On what is copyrighted and what isn't: https://www.copyrighted.com/blog/copyright-infringement-act and https://www.copyrighted.com/blog/copyright-infringement#what-is-copyright-infringement (fun fact! did you know unpublished works are also copyrighted? it literally only has to exist)

On fair use: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Copyright-Act-of-1790 and https://websites.umass.edu/copyright/fair-use/fair-use-explained/

And, maybe a fun read, on specifically fanfic as fair use and the legality of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction

[fwa18kremser-blog]

Bots are automated software, designed by human programmers to do tasks on the web. Bots have been around since the beginning of the Internet. As a recent New York Times article says, bots are getting smarter and easier to create. As bots become more convincing, users and researchers need to be careful what we are being convinced of. Tech Policy Lab, University of Washington Further informations: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/good-bots-vs-bad-bots