Theft from Archive Of Our Own

[thewayne]

One of the largest fanfic web sites was plundered. My wife has been complaining that they've been a bit unstable of late, turns out that someone had created a commercial web site and was stealing fanfic from AO3 and posting it on theirs. Apparently the site was a 'give use your credit card and it's an all you can eat buffet'.

And seven stories of my wife's are among what was plundered.

I'm sure AO3 could sue for stolen content and for causing server problems, but I'm sure it won't happen.

My wife's latest addiction is Supernatural, I think there's 11 or 12 seasons available, she's bought them all save one.

Comments

[moiraj.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry to hear of the theft of your wife's work. It probably would be too expensive and onerous to sue, and it's too likely it would end up in front of judges who would think the fanfiction itself is a theft of the work of the original creators. I don't think fanfiction violates anyone's rights, but too many others do.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

It might well be practical to at least shut them down with a DMCA notice - that's a reasonably lightweight and affordable action, as far as legal remedies go.

The roomie's been quite into Supernatural, but I don't tend to really watch all that much TV, with a few exceptions - I'll watch MasterChef within a couple days of airing, and MLP within a week or so. Catching up, it's basically Orange is the New Black, and Extant.

[silveradept]

If it is a tool they want to use, the DMCA takedown procedure would likely work in this case. There are also published author works available from that site, and so the big lawyers may already be coming out to play to get the place shut down.