News
Unauthorized Fanfiction Use

Good news! Update on the situation - check your titles on the site, they may have removed them. (Mine are gone.)


 

The website ebooks-tree.com has somehow made a lot of fanfic works available for download from their site without author permission. (And they're charging, so adding insult to injury.)

If you have ever published a story (particularly on AO3, as that seems to be where the bulk have been culled from) please go to the ebooks-tree-com site and do a search for the name under which you posted the story.

Here's a link to fyeahcopyright on tumblr, with updated info on what you need to file a DMCA (copyright infringement) complaint. (Don't let ebooks-tree's website scare you, they word it as obscurely as possible so it seems intimidating. fyeahcopyright has done a great job of making it much more clear and straightforward.)

Here's the info on how to submit a DMCA complaint (copied almost verbatim from fyeahcopyright on Tumblr.)


Submit all the info via http://www.ebooks-tree.com/info.php?contacts with DMCA Complaint in the subject

Your Name and/or Pseudonym as an e-signature (or the name of the person you’ve authorized to submit this request, with a slash before it and after it):
Link(s) to the unauthorized works (link to the pdf, the mobi and the page hosting all of it): 
Link(s) to an authorized version of your work (whether on AO3, tumblr, LJ or somewhere else): 
An email address of the submitter (include it again even if it’s in the header): 
This statement: I have good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
This statement: The information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

You may wish to submit the same content to Google via this page, or to BING via this pageADDED 4/14/15: You can also send it to Cloudflare, which hosts (we think?) ebooks-tree's site.

Alternative wording from Tumblr user besinaao3:

(according to OTW, AO3 and fuckyeahcopyright, “as a matter of law you do not need to include the legal name of the copyright claimant/the fanfic writer, but  you should include the pseudonym that the fic was posted under if you don’t want to include a legal name or address.”)

My name is [name] and I am the author and owner of the following works:
-        “Of Hunters and Wolves” by “Quicklikelight”
-        “In the Woods” by “Quicklikelight”
-        “This is a Gift” by “AnneinColor” Fill in appropriate titles/author names

These are my intellectual property. I do not give you or anyone else permission to offer these works for download, and I did not consent for them to be available on your website. I am requesting that you remove them immediately. I can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail].
This information is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, I am authorized to act on my own behalf as the owner of this material.

Signed,
[Name]



--subversivegrrl on April 13, 2015 6:07pm 16 Comments
Comments

Wow okay this is disturbing... off I go to check!

- Equuleus86 on April 13, 2015 6:32pm

Okay so they want you to create a 'free' account but ask for credit card details... Incidentally I did find my name but can't view anything until I pay... which I'm not doing. But yeah I'm interested to know further so I'm gonna keep digging.

- Equuleus86 on April 13, 2015 6:33pm

You don't have to sign up to search for stories.

- subversivegrrl on April 13, 2015 6:57pm

thanks for the heads up subs! i would literally never have known about this 

- Stephtron312 on April 13, 2015 7:09pm

Well crap.  Mine says there are 15 files in my name available on their website in PDF for down load & 41 reviews of them!  It doesn't say which stories are there, but when I typed in one on the titles that I have posted only on fanfiction.net, it comes up as a downloadable PDF as well. Any help you guys can give on what to do about this will be welcome.

- darylsdiva1 on April 13, 2015 7:46pm

Well, okey dokey, then - I just tried to go to the ebooks website and it's down.

Routing resolution error What happened?

You've requested a page on a website (www.ebooks-tree.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. CloudFlare is currently not routing the requested domain (www.ebooks-tree.com). There are two potential causes of this:

  • Most likely: a CloudFlare administrator flagged the site to be routed around CloudFlare at the DNS level. The DNS change may not have propagated yet or the site owner may have hard wired DNS to statically point at CloudFlare.
  • Less likely: a CloudFlare administrator flagged the site for abuse or terms of service violations and the new DNS routing information has not yet fully propagated.
- subversivegrrl on April 13, 2015 8:12pm

I was in the middle of doing a search for which of my fics were on there & it went down--I was putting my pen name & titles in the Search box & crashed after I found 9 of them...

- darylsdiva1 on April 13, 2015 8:16pm

I've been searching for a few people off the top of my head, and it seems many of us have the same info?? ("17 related files", "8 related books", "downloads: 612", "user reviews (41)" ...i don't have a clue if any of this is real, but some people do have specific fic titles as downloadable PDFs. 

the site didn't go down at all as I searched around...

Thanks so much for the info, subs!! There's no way I would have known about this otherwise : )

- sweettooth7 on April 13, 2015 8:33pm

I got several specific titles, but maybe if you have more than just a few it only lists a quantity?

The site's back up again, or at least it was a few minutes ago. I don't know how much more time I can put into this tonight, but I'll keep things updated as we learn more.

- subversivegrrl on April 13, 2015 8:37pm

I've been searching for a few people off the top of my head, and it seems many of us have the same info?? ("17 related files", "8 related books", "downloads: 612", "user reviews (41)" ...i don't have a clue if any of this is real, but some people do have specific fic titles as downloadable PDFs. 

the site didn't go down at all as I searched around...

Thanks so much for the info, subs!! There's no way I would have known about this otherwise : )

- sweettooth7 on April 13, 2015 8:45pm

There is a chance your name will show up on their site, but it may have a (0) next to it - that means they haven't taken any of your stories. It would look like this:

If they were hosting your work, the search result would look like this (using my search on subversivegrrl's name results here):

- Fairies Masquerade on April 13, 2015 8:57pm

For what it's worth, darlings, I think the list of "41 reviews" is just hogwash to get you to sign up. Just tell them to stop stealing your stuff.

- Lena Carr on April 14, 2015 9:02am

I don't post on AO3, so seems like none of mine are on this ebooks site. Good luck to those of you affected - so crazy!

- sweettooth7 on April 14, 2015 9:31am

I don't post on AO3, only here and on ff.net, so it's there too.

Thanks mods for all your help to combat this.

- darylsdiva1 on April 14, 2015 11:02am

Just wanted ot say, it's Moniker who is hosting ebook-trees, and when you contact them, they send you an email like this:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Moniker.com.

Please be aware that this domain name is registered by a customer of Moniker Online Services. Moniker.com is not the owner or the host of this domain.

If you believe the registrant has violated your rights with this registration, you need to obtain an appropriate finding by a court of competent jurisdiction or file a UDRP complaint against the registrant. The domain owner can be contacted by using the address listed in the publicly available whois which can be located at:

https://www.moniker.com/whoisdomain.jsp

As a courtesy, we have also provided links to the tools that will help you locate the correct host to contact.

http://www.domain-tools.com can be used to perform an nslookup. This will show you the IP address of the host for this domain. Use the 'DNS lookup' and note the IPs used for the zone record.

You can then use the IP whois on http://www.arin.net (top right) to locate the network hosting those IPs.

Sincerely,

Moniker Legal Department

 

 

Summary: Not our problem, move along...

 

However writing to ebooks tree did the trick for me, so thank you ladies for helping us get our stuff back!

- on April 15, 2015 7:57am

That's hilarious. No, you don't have to have a court finding to lodge a DMCA complaint.

- subversivegrrl on April 15, 2015 10:44am