🚨ATTENTION🚨
All Writers Published on Ao3:
This app, "Fanfic Pocket Archive Library", is lifting all public content from Ao3 and making it available through a service they profit from.
Your work has been stolen and is being used to make money for a third party.
^above are the ways in which the app makes money off of Ao3 content. The developer is called Simple Soft Alliance. Here's the app's Terms and Conditions.
Any fanfiction that can be accessed without a password on Ao3 is already available in this app. Yours, mine, every fan creator's. Whether this is illegal I do not know, but it is certainly unethical and needs to be fought. Ao3 is a site of unparalleled integrity and shows the utmost respect to creators, so this content grab is an even bigger slap in the face for that reason.
🚨Please flag/report this app in your app store. 🚨
🚩Google Playstore link
🚩Apple Store link (download app, then go to report it here )
Feel free to contact Ao3 as well to alert them to this issue. Let's take em down, folks. In the meantime, you can put your Ao3 in private mode to prevent any more data theft.
Please reblog and tag your writer friends. Signal boost this.
If the app developer wasn’t making money I wouldn’t care, but as it is all my fics are on this app and I’m NOT happy. Reported and also reported to Ao3
email someone got - reported on the twitter feed. looks like as authors we’ll have to individually report that our content is stolen on the app.
links
google: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905
apple: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/appstorenotices/#/contacts?lang=en
if you are a fanfic writer posting on ao3 and this app has your fics on there, IT IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.
so here’s what you can do. go to the google report form or the apple report form and say that it is copyright infringement. you’ll have to just show your ao3 profile link to prove it.
this is how i’m phrasing it, but please modify what you say so it doesn’t look like a mass complaint and ruin the legitimacy of the claim:
“I post my fanfiction works on www.archiveofourown.com, a platform that hosts transformative works. This app is reposting all of my writing content (at least 29 of my works) without my knowledge or consent. I did not give permission to the developer of this app to do so. Since I have copyrights to my own fanworks, as well do all writers that this app is reposting without their permission, I strongly urge the Apple Store to consider the legality of this app, which basically exists just to repost/copy all the works of fanfiction authors of archiveofourown.com.”
again, PHRASE IT IN YOUR OWN WAY but this is just an example of how to go about it, if the “explanation for complaint” seems intimidating to you.
i strongly urge every ao3 author to report this, and get this app down. otherwise, as AO3 suggests, we’ll have to issue DCMA Takedowns. those are a bitch to file. they take a lot of time and a lot of fees. hopefully, enough of us reporting this to apple/google will simply ban the app, and we can put this whole mess behind us.
FYI for all fic writers
