Someone's stealing my stories

[Andyhm]

A friend just sent me link to a site where she found a batch of my stories (fetstories.com) It looks like the whole site is a scam. I can see no contact link nor anyway to get my stories removed. It also seems that several other authors works have been stolen - BuckyDuckman is one I recognise.

Has anybody got any suggestions as to how I can get my stories removed?

 

[lovecraft68]

They are probably a fly by night and will end up closed down soon then reopen again...

You can send a link to the site to laurel (you see her name at the threads on top of this forum) and let her know what is going on, they are pretty good at getting sites like this shut down.

 

[Darkniciad]

It's hosted by Namecheap, which has something of a reputation as a host that harbors spammers, scammers, and thieves.

Apparently they will take down content, but only after you harass the living shit out of them ( including going public on their social media sites ) and fill out a to-the-letter DMCA with all your personal information.

Even then, there are some cases of the same content being immediately reposted to a different URL on the same site as soon as the DMCA was received, at which point they required yet another DMCA for the new URL.

In short, good luck with that.

By way of consolation, the site has pretty much zero traffic, ranking in the above 2 million range on Alexa. It's a miracle your friend found them in the first place, because virtually nobody else is.

 

[Manu]

Thank you for letting us know. We'll send some letters to the host and anyone else related who we can track down. We suggest that every author who finds their work on that website do the same.

The domain was only recently registered, so this is a new site with almost no visitors at this point.

They don't seem to have any advertising (one of the most important things to go after when you find a site stealing any type of content) and their "donate" button goes to a Bitcoin page.

Often the way these things go is that some scammer starts a ripoff site thinking they are going to put ads on it and make easy money. Authors find out about it and we all go after the hosting company.

It either ends there, or the hosting company is known for hosting scammers and they refuse to cooperate at first. In the case of uncooperative hosting companies, we keep putting pressure on them and wait for the scammer to put up any sort of advertising so we can get them banned from every sponsor that they try to do business with.

Eventually, it won't be worth their effort because they don't care at all about authors/readers, they are doing it for "easy" money. If they can't make money, and they have to pay money for hosting, then there is no reason for them to continue.

This is the case with all types of stolen content online, not just stories. Artist of all kinds - musicians, photographers, videographers, visual artists - deal with the same issues. It's annoying, but in the end most of these scammer sites will shut down - even the rare ones that seem popular temporarily.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The one thing is...they are crediting the authors of the stories they post. It's not like someone else is taking credit for your stories, just posting free content somewhere else.

Of course they are doing that without your permission.

Here is a list of authors...

2stfauther 1 stories
ANDYHM 15 stories
AnonyMPC 25 stories
Antonio_y_Cleopatra 9 stories
Bleariab 0 stories
Brodosist 4 stories
BuckyDuckman 51 stories
C.D.E 2 stories
Data001 27 stories
Dede 1 stories
Deeply_Twisted 32 stories
DoctorHook 11 stories
Dr_mabeuse 4 stories
Emmah 14 stories
Ericktebe28 0 stories
Fetstories 0 stories
Heather 5 stories
Heywheresmysnack 0 stories
Isabella 8 stories
J.Mischief 7 stories
JammyJimmy 42 stories
Jayded_Lust 6 stories
Mallory 1 stories
Mentalcase 29 stories
MJRoberts 9 stories
Mr_Owlow 26 stories
Niceguy4401 0 stories
Nicholas Fellheimer 24 stories
Ozorli 1 stories
Panesofglass 12 stories
Phil Phantom 48 stories
Punky_girl 8 stories
Puppyloverdawn 16 stories
Redicular 0 stories
Rgjohn 118 stories
Sir_Nathan 76 stories
Starfire 0 stories
Stephanie Keating 1 stories
Stifflittlepoints 6 stories
Texas_Refugee 3 stories
TryAnything 53 stories
Unchained904 0 stories
Watson1884 0 stories
Wondash 29 stories
Xelliebabex 15 stories
ZenZerker

It would seem he also gave us a list of authors he's planning on ripping off. He really likes rgjohn.

 

[lovecraft68]

Then he is stealing stories from somewhere other than lit because "jammyjimmy" has two stories here on lit.

I wonder if one of the 15 from XelliebabeX is the one I co wrote with her.

I had a version of that turned into an e-book and could go after them for that as well.