Violations Warnings for Fen who Have taken down / disassociated their ID from past Workworks
A less ranty (or so I've tried) and more simple notification from my last post... that can be C&P / Link to this / whatever....
follow up post here: alchemia.dreamwidth.org/308124.html
Over the years many fen have had reasons to remove their fanwork from online, or to seperate their identities (even their fannish ones) from that work.... maybe they are embarassed by their old work, maybe the law in their country (or one they moved to) considers some of their work (eg: chan) to be illegal and they fear for an Ex finding it out and using it to have their children or job or even freedom taken away, maybe they want to file off the serial numbers to turn it into pro-fic...
Pre-AO3 (and even after AO3) many fen had their own websites, and/or used small fandom pairing specific ones, and they may have protected the site from being archived into, for example, 'the Way Back Machine' (Archive.Org) by having a simple Robots.txt excluding them. Recently, Archive.org (and I have since learned several other 'archive' sites such as Archive.is and Webcite) have decided to ignore these Robots.txts. I was horrified to find that tens of thousands of pages from several domains I own were suddenly public on these websites.... not just all our fanfics in entirity, but tons of personal, professional, hobby related and original-creative works- and all of this fannish, personal, professional and hobby material, despite having their own domains, linked together, thus making it easy to "out" me if someone wanted to (not that I've much of anything to loose. (The reason is how they are hosted. http://my-fannish-site.com goes to my fannish work and http://www.my-pro-site.com goes to my business site, but one of them is a main account, and the others can be accessed as subdomains, even though, no one ever really accesses them that way - in itherwords, you could see my fannish work by going to http://my-fannish-site.my-pro-site.com, and then, you know that the author whose stories are on http://my-fannish-site.com is likely the person who has their CV and business address and contact etc posted at http://my-pro-site.com , or at least, somehow connected to them.
As for Webcite, I understand its purpose, but even forFanlore, there is NO REASON to use Webcite to archive EVERYSINGLE STORY on our website (probably as many words or more than all of HP series canon itself) just to provide a refrence that our site and / or a story we wrote exists. That like copying the entire Harry Potter series and uploading it to use as a refrence in Wikipedia, that JKR wrote the Harry Potter series. That isn't even a sloppy citation- it's theft and copyright fraud (debate what you want about copyrighting fanwork,my pro site, my hobby site, my personal photographs, my artwork etc is without a question, copyrighted- and by law- it need not say so, but I make sure it does anyway, to avoid misunderstandings.
So if the archival sites have violated your robots.txts / TOS, better check that no one has misused Webcite, Arhcive.org. Archive,is, etc to copy all the work you may have had reason to take down, or removed old versions that had your name on them. Fortunately, Webcite recognises archival of an entire site and of certain types of creative or personal work doesn't belong in their archive and you can request it to be taken down if someone has misused their service as a way to keep copies of all their fav fanworks against the creators' wishes. Other archival sites are less honest- some are located in contries that pay little attention to international copyright laws or have no agreed to recognise them, which is exactly why they picked hosting companies in those places to run their archival software. Others, could care less if you write a perfectly sound take down request as long as the violator replies- even if they reply with complete nonsense.
Please Alert your friends/reading list about this insensitive and illegal violation of personal space/wishes and legal copyright, so that if they took their work down, and wanted it to stay down, they can take action to remove it, at least from those sites that are respectable and honest.
I was expecting The Archive.Org to be backlogged and slow with this, but I am rather pleased to say that if you send a Take Down Request to them, they are not that slow. It was just a few days before I got a reply and the reply says that all pages should be removed from the public within 24 hrs. ALthough I am pleased this was addressed promptly, I am still pissed that they did this in the first place.... if they felt Robots.txt didn't work for archives, they should have created and agreed to follow an 'archive.txt' and then provided a transitory time (say a year) for website owners to all find out if not through them, then word of mouth about this and how to impliment it.. In comments on DreamWidth, I've included a copy of my Take Down notice to Archive.Org with personal info removed, to help anyone who isn't familiar with how to fill them out.
As for those that act as if they are above all laws, if you have experience with this or similar situations that could be of help, please let me know! Bugland and I have been terribly ill, and helping care for my very ill, elderly grandmother; even if we had the energy, going to court requires money, so those who are poor and/or ill are basically easy targets for having their copyrighted work stoen by archives and individuals and even organisations that lack basic ethics.
ADDITIONALLY, everyone in fandom who cares about where their work ends up (Or might end up in the future) should be aware that FANLORE, which claims to be about, by and for fen, is disrespecting fen, by using these illegal archives on their wiki. For example, TELANU left Snarry fandom and removed her 'Tea Series' from online. THe Fanlore page states she removed her work from online at the very top, and then in the info box right next to it, it links to Archived links that have copied her entire site! Demonstratingly, they don't care what her wishes were, just that they can still access her work, in full, without knowing if it humiliates her, endangers her/her family, or dashes hopes for turn it into profic, without any care to if a violation of such magnitude might cause someone emotional orpsychological trauma.. There is no excuse for ignorance when the fan's wishes are spelled out and Fanlore and its editors are all well aware of it! (I have since spoken to someone who knew Telanu and said that she was OK with people sharing the fics... Now, I understand people share fic by email or in locked communities - but if someone removed their fic from a public archive, why would anyone think it was OK to re-upload it another public archive? Even if Telanu was okay with this, the Fanlore page should provide a clear quotation from Telanu or those that knew her, about whether or not reposting her fics, and under what conditions, are Okay with her. Otherwise, it appears that Fanlore is simply giving Telanu the finger and doing what they want, against her wishes. It also sets up a precedent that FanLore is supportive of their volunteers violating other fen's expressed wishes (as posed in fic headers, on their blog/journal profiles, or website pages) that prohibit copying or archival of their work. Specifically, they set up a precedent that volunteers use archives, such as those hosted in countries that ignore international copyright law, rather than using FanLore's own servers, or at least the WayBackMachine which respects Take Down Requests- thus putting fen in an emotionally hurtful, and possibly even a dangerous position, where they are unable to remove the material that was illegally copied
In my case, I had it written, on the Splash page and on the index page of all the stories/artwork the TOS ever since Intertexius first opened in 2003 that NO MATERIAL WAS TO BE ARCHIVED ANYWHERE and that if we died or otherwise became unable to maintain the site, someone we trusted had instructions on how to either maintain the site and/or where and how to archive it- furthermore, we are easy to contact if someone really felt something deserved archival or they wanted to use it in a presentation etc (And respectful academics HAVE done so, and I almost always agree to terms we are both happy with). It wasn't even just screen caps of the splash page, or an index of the stories to show what existed on the site and on what dates- They archives they used made ILLEGALcopies of EVERY SINGLE PAGE- every single story in entirety, all the artwork created both by us and our fans- as well as all of the ORIGINAL non-fan artwork and photography that was stored on the server.... EVERYTHING. Sure, some of it technically is JKR's but its mixed up with a lot of original stuff (eg: Bernice the wandering rock) and those things do belong to us and fall under OUR copyright.
For all their own faults, as an editor on wikipedia since practically forever, I have to say that overall, people on wikipedia have treated me better than those on Fanlore- for example, when I myself uploaded my own original photos for use in an article, the other editors working on that article double checked with me that I understood and was OK with the GNU/CC terms given through wikipedia because my website prohibitted copying/archival. THey looked out for my best interests as a TEAMMEMBER instead of just responding YAY STUFF, *TAKE IT* and then goes to my website and takes the rest of it without permission- related to the article or not-, because, why not. When I worked on Wikipedia, I always felt like part of a TEAM that CARED about its members... at Fanlore I felt like i was trying to find a team in an amorpheous blob of a hungry monster that didn't care who/what it sucked in and hurt; it is just out to grow and profit at fen's expense/safety.
The burden of staying SAFE should not be dumped on the Fen's shoulders! Fanlore's very description of purpose and ethics claim that they understand the sensitive nature of fen's ID and connection of that with their work. Fanlore should be PRO-ACTIVELY following as default, a policy that RESPECTS the fen their wiki is about...
DO NOT USE or LINK TO ARCHIVES THAT IGNORE ROBOTS.TXTs or COPYRIGHT LAW!
DO NOT ARCHIVE MATERIAL IF THE SITE HAS A 'DO NOT ARCHIVE' TERMS OF SERVICE. ...
In otherwords, don't break the law, do not use another archival site to break the law for you, do not endanger fen, respect the people your wiki is built on! And don't lock/block people/pages for simply taking care of their safety first by removing those links and asking the page editors not to violate their copyright or website's Terms of Service, or the non-archival request in their fic header. Do NOT tell them to go dig through the site's verbose FAQs and info pages to try to figure out who to talk to, and worry about how long it will take to get the endangering material removed as they panic about "has my Ex / Boss / Pastor / Teacher or Parents (esp for those underage) / etc seen this yet?" For this victim (of copyright violation, of Terms of Service Violation and of Violation of the social Contract they Thought they had with Fandom), the clock is ticking, and they need to take the endangering links down ASAP... discussion can be done afterwards, in a respectful way. Blocking them, calling them an edit troll, keeping the material posted that hurts them (legally, emotionally or otherwise) is victim blaming bullshit... something that the generation of people (I no longer consider them Fen) taught me when I 'grew up' in Fandom in the early days of Livejournal. I expect behaviour like this from the sexist male programmers and corporations they claimed they wanted to get away from, and now they are gradually behaving the same way- like the pigs in Animal Farm that start to walk upright and wear clothes and send the old horse off to the knackers... The motto of Fanlore, AO3 and OTW should collectively be "All Fen are Equal, but some are more Equal than Others"
If you took your work down and find it is now public in Archive.org, archive.is, webcite or any other such archive, check Fanlore as well. When I did, my first response was of panic, and I don't even have to worry about an Ex keeping a "watch" on my page waiting for any "juicy" info to show up in their email that they could use to take away my children or pets. All I did was to remove links that were to illegal copies, and on the 'talk' page explained that these were illegal and that the links would soon be dead anyway as I was sending Take Down notices. I was treated like the criminal.... blocking me or my pages locked and being told to go talk to staff (not telling me WHO staff was, I was supposed to sort through their verbose pages in a state of panic, and struggling with dyslexia on the best of days). My protecting myself and my work was treated like this is some kind of petty text-edit war (Yes, my protecting my copyright and personal safety was labelled by Fanlore as a petty 'Counter-productive edit war....'! Even IGNORING this issue of respecting rights and safety, all I did was remove links that would, due to my Take Down Notices be dead within hours-IRONICALLY had I removed the links as soon as they rotted, it would simply be seen as 'clean up', but because I explained on the talk page that this was violating our rights/safety, It was used to attack me instead.).
I don't have the spoons for figuring out who at Fanlore to direct the issue to atm, and given the way people there with the powers to lock/block/etc treated me, I have NO TRUST and NO FAITH in an organisation that treats the people they are profitting off of as shit. What with my health, Bugland's health, my grandmother's health, local issues with our county violating ADA law, and now, dealing with a bunch of Archives in countries that ignore international copyright law and Fanlore taking advantage of that.... I really hate to think of the stress someone would be under if desperately trying to hide the chan they thought they took offline, and is now publically archived and made easy to find via fanlore, for fear of an Ex is 'watching' their Fanlore page, just waiting for some damning tidbit to be added that they can use to take their kids away.
If others try to deal with them, I'd be interested to know what if anything worked, who you had to contact, how you had to phrase things to get yourself protected, and/or if they came to their senses and changed their policies to respect fen and their needs. I hope to see change, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
ETA AUGUST 5:
I am quite sad about this, as I loved the open, sharing and gift-based fannish community I grew up in. I loved that we had a whole culture- such as WNGWJLEO, a gift-economy, the meta discussions that taught me more about feminism and racism and ableism and intersectionality. I loved the the general free-going do what you like atmosphere, except for the very few 'unofficial' but very well self-policed rules to help enable fellow fen to stay SAFE- such as with trigger warnings, and by not copying their work and reposting it elsewhere (although work would often be saved to one's computer and if the creator took their work down, fen would often still share it privately via snail mail or email... which was okay because they were keeping it private and out of the public eye, out of google, out of archives. But most especially, above all else, you do NOT 'out' a fan (link their fandom identity to their identity outside of fandom) ever ever ever (unless that fan has intentionally outed themselves, shouting it from the virtual rooftops. )
I even also love the idea of FanLore, and preserving Fannish cultural history. However, there is no excuse for their using the recent SNAFU with web archives suddenly ignoring Robots.Txt s, to expose material that fen may have taken down, so that FanLore can 'grow'. This 'growth' is done despite the sometimes very obvious requests and efforts of fen to remove or alter (eg: change their pen name or the age of characters in a fic so as not to run afoul of a changed/new law) . For some, FanLore's actions may be an emotionally traumatic violation. For some, it may even endanger their life and liberty.
FanLore, if you are reading, I ask that you earn back fen's trust (and just do the right thing both as researchers dealing with human subjects, and by the cultural mores of the Fandom you claim membership in) in the following ways:
- Do NOT use web-archives that do not obey robots.txt (or some future such thing like an archive.txt that they could develop).
- Do NOT link to an archive of anything if the archived/screen-capped-image is itself proof of a violation of the site's TOS, the fan's copyright, or the fan's wishes (eg: if the screen cap says "Do not archive"); Do not take ADVANTAGE of such violations; Ignore it. Better yet, SUPPORT fellow fen by reporting it to the fan whose was violated, click a 'report abuse' button if available on the archive site, but above all, DO NOT LINK to this copy in the FanLore wiki)
- If a fan clearly labelled their site / story / art to NOT BE ARCHIVED or copied, or they made a public announcement about taking their work offline and if another person puts links into FanLore that violates their wishes and/or rights, possibly endangering their safety, allow the fan who was victimised to remove the offending links with an explaination/reminder that such links shouldn't be included in FanLore. Do not treat the victim as the criminal simply for protecting their work or personal safety!
- Do NOT let the person who victimised them in the first place to lock the victimised fan out of editing by claiming that they are starting a petty edit-war. This is victim blaming. If a link puts a person in danger, they don't have time to figure out who to contact and hope their request is received and acted on before the threat of danger materialises. If they are traumatised by the violation they likewise are going to react to remove what hurts them ASAP. I'm not talking about situations where there was no way to know the person's wishes, copyright claims etc- if it was spelled out on the site's homepage, the top of the page(s), in the fic's header, or the take down was a big fandom anouncement that is even reported on the FanLore page- there should be no question about the inappropiateness of linking to copies of that work, and no question that the fan who was violated is simply acting to preserve their safety. Their right to do that should come FIRST. Talking to some fanlore rep can be done AFTER they have protected themseves
- When a fan sees material posted that violates their rights oreven puts them in danger, it is not unreasonable to expect them to panic. It is hard to find who to contact in such a state. EVERY PAGE should have a CLEAR LINK at the top and bottom for people to report such violations to (I was simply told to 'talk to someone', and I still have no clue who that someone was supposed to be, but moreon that below).
- Treat PERSONAL sites DIFFERENT from places like Livejournal or FanFiction.net etc where a sudden disappearance or migration can indeed lead to masssive link rot and loss of history.
- Restrict archiving to historically important discussions rather than just every entry that might appear on the person's journal, above and below that entry- entries which may have nothing to do with the historical fannish topic and may in fact reveal personal and sensitive topics that do not belong in the public eye (When places like Livejournal first began, it was an invite only community, and few people thought that their posts about personal health, their cat's death, their mother's illness, etc would end up being linked to on a featured wiki page. It was expected to be buried with time. Respect the culture and society that those posts were created in. Respect that personal, non-fannish posts, just because they happen to be 'captured' by a screen-scraper for an archival site, are NOT appropiate for Fanlore. Find an archive of the fannish post by itself, or crop the image to remore the non-fannish peronal entries and then use fanlore's servers to save this new archive of the post.
- Do not use Archival websites to archive this material- save screen caps to Fanlore so that if a person who was involved in the historical discussion requires that their identity not be revealed for safety, Fanlore can blot their name out of the image based screen cap, thus protecting those that need it, and allowing the rest of the people who don't mind, to have the historical discussion remain accessable.
- As for personal websites, especially with robots.txts & 'Dont archive' notifications as part of the site's Ters of Service, or in the Fic's Header... these are are quite different. We keep personal sites and robots.txts FOR the control we cannot get from megalithic sites like Facebook, Tumblr, FanFic.net, LiveJournal etc (sort of like why AO3 was started, to 'own the servers', and thus have control that was being denied to us elsewhere- this is something Fanlore should relate to). If you REALLY REALLY REALLY feel an entry on FanLore is incomplete without some archive or screencap of the fan's personal website, make an attempt to CONTACT the fan for permission. This is not just respectful, it is professional. If you can't reach them, and their website clearly forbids copying, or they made a public take down anouncement etc, then respect their virtual fannish identity's 'last will and testiment' so to say; DO NOT put yourselves above the law and/or fandom mores; don't violate their rights for your gain.
- Restrict archiving to historically important discussions rather than just every entry that might appear on the person's journal, above and below that entry- entries which may have nothing to do with the historical fannish topic and may in fact reveal personal and sensitive topics that do not belong in the public eye (When places like Livejournal first began, it was an invite only community, and few people thought that their posts about personal health, their cat's death, their mother's illness, etc would end up being linked to on a featured wiki page. It was expected to be buried with time. Respect the culture and society that those posts were created in. Respect that personal, non-fannish posts, just because they happen to be 'captured' by a screen-scraper for an archival site, are NOT appropiate for Fanlore. Find an archive of the fannish post by itself, or crop the image to remore the non-fannish peronal entries and then use fanlore's servers to save this new archive of the post.
I have had researchers, journalists, and authors contact me for permission to use work I created (both in and out of fandom), even when they could have taken the 'easy' route and claimed 'fair use' or simply felt it would be easier to settle a lawsuit if it came to it on copyrighted work. I have almost always agreed to have work used, sometimes with requirements to attribute (or NOT to attribute), that original art work be kept under a certain size, etc. Considering the unique issues that fen face, issues that can put them in danger, it is simply mindblowing to me, that another fan, knowing this fact, wouldn't make the slightest effort to learn the creator's wishes, and respect those wishes. Is sending off an email or private message on Livejournal or Dreamwidth etc so difficult? Heck, I was even active in editing entries where people posted links to illegal copies of my work; they didn't even need to track me down by livejournal or email... just ask me right there on the FanLore Talk page!!!
Instead, someone(s) couldn't spend a few seconds to simply ask me if I'd give special permision to FanLore, ignored my site's 'Don't Archive' TOS, and sent various robot.txt ignoring web-archives to spider my domains. As a result, the burden fell on me to spend what little free time I have had over many days, inbetween dealing with family medical crisises and hospitalisations, traking down illegal copies of our work (fannish and original) to send Take Down notices... and I'm still not done. On top of violating my rights, triggering and retraumatising me, making me anxious about even more serious implications for other fen, damaging my future chances of success at 'filing off the serial numbers' to create pro-fic, on top of all that, you also stold my spoons in the midst of a family crisis, all becuase you couldn't be bothered to :
1) have and follow policies that put fen's safety first and
2) that the person(s) who did the archiving and/or linking couldn't be bothered to spend half a minute to post to my FanLore talk page to ask if a screencap of a certain page or creative work could be added to the entry.
I can't begin to imagine how much it would take for me to forgive, let alone trust, FanLore and those behind it (including AO3 and OTW).
Just looking at the site makes me feel triggered and want to vomit. After some clonopin and hand holding from BugLand, I tried to figure out who I was supposed to contact there- ended up going in circles on lengthy text-fillled pages, and eventually gave up trying to make sense of it. I found exactly what I needed to get my stuff off Archive.Org in just a few minutes. FanLore- I got a headache to comlement the nausea and heart racing. I don't even think there is a point to trying.... if there is original work that is mixed on the page that has copyright, if a site has a clear 'no archiving' Terms of Service visible in the archived copy, if the fan publically announced they had to take their work down for some reason, and that is stated in the FanLore entry about the fan's work, yet they STILL violate the person's wishes/rights... Why the heck would I think that contacting some person or committee is going to do any good? They've already demonstrated they don't give a damn about fen, only their projects' 'growth'.
How can any Fan, in good conscience, support such a careless organisation, either through volunteering, or giving financial donations? I'd rather donate to get Voldemort for President. The only thing Fanlore Deserves is to be shunned by the fannish Community for going against the very values and ethics its creators promoted fandom to be about way back in those early days of LiveJournal, when this was all just a dream (and how I wish it stayed that way!)
- I hope that by sharing my experience and suggestions that other fen can keep an eye on Fanlore (just set up an account and click 'watch' on any page (as well as the TALK pages) for any fandoms, fellow fans, discussions, conventions, topics etc you might have even a remote connection to. Send Take Down notices to any archives that have copies of your work that you do not want archived. If Archives and/or Fanlore hasn't stolen your work yet, proactively password protect it, lock it as private/friends only, etc.
- I hope by sharing this, I can prevent some other fen from being victimised or endangered for the sake of a bloody refrence.
- If you support fen's right to safety and liberty, do not donate or contribute to wiki entries by archives or wikis that violate the rights and safety of fen.
- I hope that FanLore makes the changes I give above, and start to treat the fen they are so interested in, and their work, with respect.