Gah! Or, Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me...

[rivkat]

Tzikeh pointed out this site, which is offering various fan fiction stories for sale (along with what I presume are other, nonfannish stories published on the web, but I'm just guessing there). Imagine my surprise to find a story of mine listed on the XF page. I'm almost amused that they picked that story rather than, say, one of MustangSally's standalones, which gives you considerably more bang for your -- uh, 30 pence, apparently.

Highlander, Star Wars, Star Trek: TNG and XF were the main fandoms I saw -- Highlander is not explicitly listed, but it's the main entry under "slash." There also was some X-Men in there randomly. As for the XF, the selection principle was mysterious at best, though there were some good ones in there that I actually remembered.

I'm going to write and demand the removal of my story. Who knows what will happen next. Any UK folks out there willing to help a girl out with UK notice-and-takedown procedures? (Or perhaps general principles for getting the offer to sell withdrawn, since it's not clear the story is actually online.)

Comments

[linzeestyle.livejournal.com]

:blink: Wow, I think that just broke my brain.

Hopefully you can get your story taken down - I'm not familiar with UK rules/regs on this sort of thing, but it seems like the entire archive would be suspect to removal, as they're selling material derivitive from copyrighted works, without permission of a) the creators and networks or b) the authors.

The sheer level of stupidity horrifies me sometimes, I swear.

Linzee

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

Ye Gods! That's...shocking.

With any luck, they'll take your story down as soon as you write them. But if not, perhaps you could contact the studio who created X-Files (Paramount? Fox?) and report this. I doubt they mind fanfic in general, but the fact that this site is SELLING fanfic without permission of the XF creators OR the fanfic authors, surely the XF people and their lawyers can put a stop to it.

How sleazy of them to sell other people's fic. Someone ought to shut that site down.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I think the general idea is to keep the studios out of it, since Fox lawyers are not known for making the fine distinctions we in the community tend to make between profit and nonprofit posting. We'll just have to see what happens next.

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

Fox lawyers are not known for making the fine distinctions we in the community tend to make between profit and nonprofit posting.

Hmm...very good point. We-ellll, perhaps you might just mention that fact when you write to the site owners. After all, I doubt they wish to tangle with the studio any more than you do, so a well-phrased threat might make removal of your story seem a fairly simple and reasonable request. ;-)

[cschick.livejournal.com]

Riv:

It appears they're hosted by Webmasters.com, a US-based company. Don't deal with the domain owner; go directly to the host.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Hunh -- how'd you find that out?

[cschick.livejournal.com]

I used whois to look up the domain. While the domain isn't registered via the host (it doesn't have to be), they're using webmasters.com domain/name servers.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS22.WEBMASTERS.COM 66.118.157.69
NS23.WEBMASTERS.COM 207.142.128.51

While they could be simply using name services at webmaster.com, it's a pretty good bet that they're hosted there (if they were just using name services, the setup would probably be different). Even if they're only using webmaster.com name services, webmasters.com can still take them off the web by refusing to serve the domain.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

The technical problem is that they're not hosting the files, but offering them for sale on CD-ROM, so the web hosting company may well be less willing to help out, but I may go that route too.

Thanks!

[cschick.livejournal.com]

Yeah. But there's a couple of different ways you might be able to attack this (I haven't had the time to track down their TOS but I might later).

Most of the non-adult web hosts not only forbid hosting adult material but listing adult material for sale. Whether or not they consider written material to be adult material (talk about a quagmire; we've had to get written statements from our commercial hosts stating that written material is not equal to adult material), he's listing it as adult material.

Many hosts will also forbid the listing for sale of infringing materials as well as the hosting of infringing materials.

I have a meeting in 18 minutes that I have to prepare for, but I'll check into this for you later.

[cschick.livejournal.com]

Here's what I found:

http://www.webmasters.com/policy.htm

Prohibited Use

Although we do not have content restrictions, all content must be obtained legally and used in a legal manner. Below are examples of what we consider to be illegal content, and therefore prohibited use of service:

...

2. Utilize the service to misappropriate or infringe the patents, copyrights, trademarks or other intellectual property rights of any third party;

You could make the argument that listing infringing material for sale is utilizing the service to infringe the copyrights of a third party.

Their other reference to copyright:

2. WEBMASTERS.COM's facilities may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution, or storage of any information, data or material in violation of United States or state regulation or law, or by the common law, is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, or any other statute. WEBMASTERS.COM reserves the right to remove such illegal material from its servers.

may or may not be helpful . . .

Having investigated a wee bit further: I'm pretty much convinced that they're hosted by webmasters.com (and not just using name services). The IP address of a1fl.com is within the webmasters.com IP block (in fact, it's just one number off from their primary name server; IP blocks are distributed in sets of eight).

Of course, the guy can simply move on--the web site has been at that address since May 2001, according to web.archive.org (although, I didn't want to go into the archive of the site from work so I don't know if the XF stuff has been there the full time) and he directly owns the domain. ICANN and/or bulkregister are probably not going to be willing to suspend the domain for this usage.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the additional information. I will contact Webmasters if I don't get a satisfactory response from the site directly.

[cschick.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

Given this, and the Buffy/Smallville/Dark Angel/etc author who was plagiarizing XF authors for four years and about a hundred fics and nobody noticed . . . I want to go pound my head against something nice and hard. It might feel better.

[meret.livejournal.com]

I'm just amazed at their gall. I'll link to this in my LJ too, to let more people know.

[suzvoy.livejournal.com]

Ack. I know absolutely nothing about UK take down procedure.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Dear Sirs

It has been brought to my attention that your archive at [ ] contains at [specific URL] a story entitled [ ] written by me [further background as appropriate]("the Work").

Your reproduction and dissemination of the Work on a for profit basis consitutes a breach of copyright contrary to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988; your dissemniation of it anonymously also constitutes a breach of my moral right to be named as its author.

Pursuant to the provisions of the CDPA the deliberate having in your possession for commercial purposes of works which you know to be infringing works is also a criminal offence.

I am aware that you may consider that the rules applying to fanfiction may not be the same as those applying to other fiction; however, it is settled law [and I'll give you the refs if you want once I get a chance to look them up] that an independent copyright is capable of arising and subsisting in a work in relation to which a third party may claim some rights. Further and for the avoidance of doubt, the Work was sdevised and developed by me on a basis which did not infringe applicable copyrights.

Those bases explictly assumed that the workl would never be distributed commercially.

Accordingly, your action in distributing this work also has the potential to infringe the copyright of [name TPTB].

Unless it is removed from your archive by [deadline] I reserve the right to take all such actions as are open to me in these circumstances.

Yours"

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

your dissemniation of it anonymously also constitutes a breach of my moral right to be named as its author.

Just out of curiosity, does publishing a work under a pseudonym effectively waive the right of attribution, assuming that it's then reproduced in the same form?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Not in the US, but then the right of attribution is extremely limited. My guess is no in moral rights countries too, but I'd have to look it up.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

*nods* I was thinking of moral rights countries like the UK.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

*Thank* you. It's a little different from the way the American ones I see are worded, but the gist is the same. I would -- for these purposes and general knowledge -- love to get the cites for the derivative copyright issue.

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

As for the XF, the selection principle was mysterious at best, though there were some good ones in there that I actually remembered.

I don't know about the XF, but it looks like the TNG stuff was a simple archive grab done some time in 1996.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

My guess with the XF is somebody's rec page, because my story was never widely distributed or archived and thus an old archive grab seems unlikely. But maybe I've just forgotten a small archive somewhere and that's what was copied.

[cschick.livejournal.com]

Somebody over on Haven mentioned that it looked like a copy of Bobbi's Autoerotic Asphyxiation archive, and I think that's been gone since 1997 or so.

[blackpsychi.livejournal.com]

You might also want to look over at http://www.agentwithstyle.com/. I stumbled upon it tonight and saw that they had "Rainbow Sign" in one of their Smallville zines. I didn't check out the other fandoms.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

No, that was with permission (ultimately a failed experiment on my part). I appreciate the concern, though. And I love your icon.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

I just tried to link to the site and got "site not found". Hopefully that means the hosting company yanked it?