Warning: someone is fishing in LJ waters...

[dreamflower]

I got this warning through fanficrants. Apparently a website has cropped up that is trawling through LJ, looking for anything tagged fanfic, and then reposting it WITHOUT PERMISSION.

Here is a link: http://www.donotlink.com/framed?561309

The link diverts you from the original. It takes you to a separate page that will not show up on search engines, in order to defeat the thief's purpose of attracting search engines. (The site is full of advertising.) But as you can see, a lot of people have been complaining.

I don't know if any of my friends may have been victimized, but there's a Complaint Page, which you can go to and make him take your stuff down.

I don't have time right now to see if he's lifted any of my stories, but I will be checking as soon as I can.

(And I'm using my fanfic tag so if he steals this entry he won't be getting any real fanfic, LOL!)

Comments

[shirebound]

Thank you so much. How appalling! I just edited my tags to delete the words 'fic' and 'stories'.

[dreamflower]

That's one good way to beat them!

[ramblin_rosie]

Not sure if my comment on the complaint page actually went through, but I made it in Russian--machine translation, sure, but maybe it'll get the point across!

[dreamflower]

I hope so too!

I hated that they tried to use "Creative Commons" as their excuse! I have a Creative Commons notice giving blanket permission to use my stuff for creative purposes, such as a remix or using my OCs--but NOT to repost! There are different levels of CC!

[ink-gypsy.livejournal.com]

Guess it's time to make my journal friends only, much as I hate to do it.

Although whoever it is can easily go to AO3 and do their poaching there.

[dreamflower]

Exactly. I checked and they don't seem to have any of mine, thank goodness.

[maglor-20.livejournal.com]

This is awful. May I signal boost this, if you don't mind?

[dreamflower]

Yes, feel free!

[maglor-20.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

Abuse contact information located!

[ramblin_rosie]

Ran a WHOIS search, and while the domain owner seems to be trying to cover his/her tracks, I did locate some useful information. abuse@reg.ru is the abuse reporting address for the company that registered the domain, and to file an abuse report with the company that's hiding his/her contact info, go to http://www.privacyprotect.org/#report_abuse.

Re: Abuse contact information located!

[dreamflower]

I'm going to pass this on to the folks at the fanficrants thread!

Thank you!

Re: Abuse contact information located!

[asia27.livejournal.com]

May I pass this info to another writer who posted about this situation? They got her for 97 of her stories!

Re: Abuse contact information located!

[ramblin_rosie]

YOW! Absolutely, do pass it on.

Re: Abuse contact information located!

[asia27.livejournal.com]

Thank you;

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

gosh, how appalling! :( People are weird. Anyway, I don't think any of mine are tagged "fan fic" but still, it's very bizarre that people do that kind of thing..*shakes head*

[dreamflower]

From what I understand, it's a method of attracting hits to the website, which supports advertising. By doing that, anytime someone uses "fanfic" in a search engine, it will help it pop up higher in the search.

In other words, it's a method of spamming, done for money.

[ysilme]

Good grief, how ghastly. But I'm not sure I'm understanding right what leads where and so on. Could you perhaps give me the link to your information source on fanficrants or so? I looked but didn't find anything right away.

[dreamflower]

fanficrants is, I think, a locked comm. It was a post made this afternoon. If you join the comm, I think you'll be able to see it.

[ysilme]

Belated thanks! *hugs*

[febobe.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up! I don't find myself there, but who knows?

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

What a rude person. I found at least one of my stories there, so I left a complaint and hopefully they'll comply. This person has no concept of fandom etiquette.

Thank goodness LJ now has the option of globally changing tags. I'd hate to have to go through every last story I've posted to my site. :P

[dreamflower]

From what others have found it seems to be a 'bot. But whoever set it loose obviously doesn't even care about etiquette!

Glad you were able to get them to take down your story.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

Well, they haven't taken it down yet but they did add my LJ to their exceptions list. Hopefully the story will soon be deleted.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm so confused. Who is doing this? I got a comment saying it was fanfic_journal, but they're also talking about it and directed me here. What is going on?

[dreamflower]

Apparently someone has set up a website, "Fanfic journal", and using a 'bot, is collecting entries tagged "fanfic" from LiveJournal. Then they post it in the hopes of collecting hits and raising the profile on search engines in order to attract more advertisements.

I first found out about it at fanficrants and posted a warning. A lot of people are reposting my warning (with my permission), which is why the link to my LJ keeps coming up. But if you clink the link I show in my post, it will take you to the site, but bypassing the search engines so that it won't be of any use to the thief.

[asia27.livejournal.com]

Two TW writers posted this also. As a reader, I don't appreciate this. It isn't fair to the writers of those fics (not that the thief cares about such)...

[ladydragon76.livejournal.com]

Oh you lovely person! Do you mind if I let people know about this link of yours? I've been just linking the site itself and didn't know something like this was possible.

[dreamflower]

Of course I don't mind, but the credit goes to someone else who commented at fanficrants. I just passed it along as a public service!

[ladydragon76.livejournal.com]

I am running through the victims on the site right now, is it too much trouble to ask for a link to that entry on ffr? If you're busy, no worries at all, I'll go digging for the entry once I'm done with this page. I've seen one entry by Bears--- uh, darn.. Bear something. Was that the post?

[ladydragon76.livejournal.com]

LOL, it's that entry isn't it?

[dreamflower]

Yes, the one by beer_good_foamy

http://fanficrants.livejournal.com/11555599.html#comments

[ladydragon76.livejournal.com]

Perfect! Thank you so much.

[littlemissnovel.livejournal.com]

How does this website still exist?