Should the prohibited content rules for Scribblehub be ammended to include Illegal Monetization?

[Empress_Omnii]

It feels like this is closing to the death of the SH.

The reason for this change isn't to cause harm to the writers, but prevents legal action harming the site.

Videos are taken down frequently based on the made up claims that might not even involve the actual IP owner, but abuse the mechanic of three strikes to straight away attempt to delete the competition if any report is taken seriously.

And this is what you aim to create here.

I think either I'm completely wrong, or I am right thinking you've misunderstood.
What would be put in place is just stopping authors to post patreon to read ahead for fanfics. Not any way of taking down your works, just the patreon if it is for a fanfic.

 

[Tyranomaster]

I think either I'm completely wrong, or I am right thinking you've misunderstood.
What would be put in place is just stopping authors to post patreon to read ahead for fanfics. Not any way of taking down your works, just the patreon if it is for a fanfic.

No, that's correct. It'd also help protect authors who may not know that what they're doing is illegal. If they stopped charging ahead suddenly, they'd probably never have to worry about a dmca coming their way, and just get to keep whatever ill gotten gains they've already made.
I'll also throw out the fact that, regardless of what the site rules say, they're actively breaking the law right now, and at any point could find themselves in legal hot water if they're making a significant sum of cash.

 

[Empress_Omnii]

While I appreciate the help, you can just ignore them. They're suffering from some kind of psychosis about royal road. Their profile is full of them ranting about it every day. I'll usually banter with them once or twice then just stop bothering. I made the mistake of making a comment how royalroad wasn't quite as bad as they made it out to be and was labelled a paid actor from then on.

Does this not show that they are more in need of help? I don't know their experience with royal road, but regardless I don't want them to feel like they need to remove their work and waste all the effort put into it.

No matter how the situation, I still think it is important. For me at least, to do my best to help them. I hope a nights rest and my explanation should help at least in some part. I'll not flood the thread anymore, but to anyone worried. Please wait to hear what Tony thinks, this thread isn't forcing his hand, just a reference as to what some people want.

 

[Tyranomaster]

Does this not show that they are more in need of help? I don't think their experience with royal road, but regardless I don't want them to feel like they need to remove their work and waste all the effort put into it.

No matter how the situation, I still think it is important. For me at least, to do my best to help them. I hope a nights rest and my explanation should help at least in some part. I'll not flood the thread anymore, but to anyone worried. Please wait to hear what Tony thinks, this thread isn't forcing his hand, just a reference as to what some people want.

You are a kinder person than I, then. I would like their story to remain up as well, for what it's worth, but I'm done giving them benefits of the doubt when they purposefully portray me as a villain over and over.

Tony will likely do nothing, for what it's worth for anyone freaking out about it (though I personally think he should).

 

[JayMark]

I am here. I have read. I vote present.

 

[3guanoff]

All these issues are the reason why I only read fanfictions in Russian (and, occasionally, Chinese). They are more creative, too. English writers should restrict themselves to writing fanfiction of public domain works.

 

[Deleted member 266]

Obligatory.

In Soviet Russia, fanfiction writes you.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

I don't know how many moderators/employees there are here on Scribblehub, but its unreasonable to think they can enforce a prohibition against monetizing fanfics very effectively. I suggest announcing the prohibition, and monitoring only the fanfics which have the most traffic/readers, maybe the top 10% or so, and otherwise taking action when the story is flagged for breaking the rule by scribblehub users or the IP owner.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

IDK how I missed this, but yall been cooking too much.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

To be fair, ravens dagger has fanfiction contests for stray cat strut that are official.

Good to know that at least those authors are not breaking the law and cheat.

 

[beast_regards]

I think either I'm completely wrong, or I am right thinking you've misunderstood.
What would be put in place is just stopping authors to post patreon to read ahead for fanfics. Not any way of taking down your works, just the patreon if it is for a fanfic.

Not true.

Patreon and Kofi are linked with the account, not with the story.

This means that users with the both fan-fictions and original fiction would be forced to have a separate account to un-link their Pateron / Social Media / personal webpages. Which means mandatory socket puppets, including separate social media account like Twitter (as it could link to Patreon) and separate personal webpages (which too could link to Patreon)

Considering who is suggesting it, there is literally zero reason to trust him

How are you seriously going to control his?

Who are you going to give moderator access to delete the stories based on assumed monetization?

There is only one admin.

Only reason to do this is to force authors to wipe their accounts and then copy-paste links into the chapters.

Of course, there is a second problem, proving author rights - if you have authorship rights, you need to prove them, which means proof of identity, which means handling personal information. Literally, your government ID or driving license etc. upload to the site, as the Google does it.

Who would receive those then? How you handle the whole security risk associated with that, on donation budget?

Who pays for that?

This is doable if you have a backing of the multi-billion-dollar corporation, not if you are site going on donation?

What if you just gave me the admin rights? I would delete the tyrantjohn account here, and problems solved. Wait... that would be the abuse of power! So how could you trust him, someone from the site which moderation is constantly power tripping, to not do the same, or worse?

I have the better solution: Do nothing.

I don't know if you noticed, but terms of the site include liability waiver for the site should any of us be ever sued for the content, so let's don't pretend he is doing it for the goodness of this site.

 

[laccoff_mawning]

Hmm. I like the idea of putting it in the rules/guidelines, but not actively enforcing it.

Maybe some suitable warning notification can pop up when an author creates a new story, but that would be about it. I feel like responsibility would first fall on patreon (or whatever platform the monetisation is occuring on) before scribblehub.

That being said, I don't really get how any of this stuff is actually handled legally.

 

[MALEVOLENCE69]

i dont know if it can work , but why not create a filter which finds copyright stuff and give them a temp fan fic and give the author 30 days for asking a review for the tag ( if it was false flagged as copyright material) . i dont know if its possible or not . but if you can do it then you could ask them to provide the original authors permission to give a tag like approved fan fic or something and the ones which have not been given the permission as non permission copyrighted material which can be removed when the author asks you to instantly if its a violation. if its a positive flag for copyright material. ( again i dont know if it helps sh). (again i can be gravely wrong on this, so please go easy while dragging me to grave?)

 

[beast_regards]

i dont know if it can work , but why not create a filter which finds copyright stuff and give them a temp fan fic and give the author 30 days for asking a review for the tag ( if it was false flagged as copyright material) . i dont know if its possible or not . but if you can do it then you could ask them to provide the original authors permission to give a tag like approved fan fic or something and the ones which have not been given the permission as non permission copyrighted material which can be removed when the author asks you to instantly if its a violation. if its a positive flag for copyright material. ( again i dont know if it helps sh). (again i can be gravely wrong on this, so please go easy while dragging me to grave?)

The "copyrighted stuff" have "fanfiction" tag and the customizable "fandom" tag.

No one is in doubt what the fanfic is. Their author wants to let you know their fan-fiction, in fact, a fan-fiction. They don't tend to hide it at all. If you are writing a Naruto fan fic, you want everyone to know, because it is the people who want to read such a fan fic would find you.

The fan-fiction masquerading as the original work is not an issue there.

The issue is that the fan-fiction writers could create a Patreon account and ask people for money.

However, since your Patreon is not linked to your story, but to your account, you aren't really collecting money for the fan-fiction....

Problem is not fan-fiction itself.

Problem is people having Patreon account.

 

[MALEVOLENCE69]

The "copyrighted stuff" have "fanfiction" tag and the customizable "fandom" tag.

No one is in doubt what the fanfic is. Their author wants to let you know their fan-fiction, in fact, a fan-fiction. They don't tend to hide it at all. If you are writing a Naruto fan fic, you want everyone to know, because it is the people who want to read such a fan fic would find you.

The fan-fiction masquerading as the original work is not an issue there.

The issue is that the fan-fiction writers could create a Patreon account and ask people for money.

However, since your Patreon is not linked to your story, but to your account, you aren't really collecting money for the fan-fiction....

Problem is not fan-fiction itself.

Problem is people having Patreon account.

okay i am stupid on the legal stuff. just a question tho, doesn't the liability fall for patreon then ? ( i am a idiot in this situations so sorry for asking it)

 

[Alski]

okay i am stupid on the legal stuff. just a question tho, doesn't the liability fall for patreon then ? ( i am a idiot in this situations so sorry for asking it)

Yes primary liability lies with patreon, but as a large company with 500+ employees its not exactly an easy mark to drown in lawsuits. Scribblehub on the other hand(or any smaller platform) is a much easier target and still has some liability for letting people do it.

 

[MALEVOLENCE69]

Yes primary liability lies with patreon, but as a large company with 500+ employees its not exactly an easy mark to drown in lawsuits. Scribblehub on the other hand(or any smaller platform) is a much easier target and still has some liability for letting people do it.

got you, i have nothing to add here then as i am dumb in these sutiations

 

[RiceballWasTaken]

After @SailusGebel brought it to the attention of the community that a MAJORITY of fanfictions in trending are illegally monetizing their stories, I think it's worth considering whether or not stories that are breaking copyright laws should be classified as prohibited content. We already have a rule prohibiting Mostly AI content, which would similarly fall under lack of originality. AI is a murky legal area, but copyright is pretty clear cut. Almost any of the fanfictions that are monetized could receive a DMCA request at any point. Hubs of illegal content can become legal targets under certain circumstances, and I'd prefer that SH remains operational and free from any legal costs.

Personally, I think that, unless the IP owner has given express permission to use their IP for other creative works, then these stories should be taken down. Despite many people's beliefs on the matter, most authors don't have a personal lawyer combing through all possible uses of their work to file DMCA requests. In most cases, it's only when something gets large enough does it come to the attention of companies and gets a DMCA request. I myself do weekly searches to make sure my story isn't being used without permission, and have filed DMCA requests to websites a handful of times.

In practice, allowing this content hurts readers and authors too. Any fanfic that is monetized and popular will end up unfinished. If it's low enough quality, it won't get taken down, but good ones will. The authors themselves are also opening themselves up to a legal mire too. Further, young authors may not be aware that monetization of fanfictions is illegal. They are just writing for fun, and then it gets popular. After it gets popular, they simply open up a patreon or other monetization site because it's "what everyone does/recommends".

My personal proposal would be to allow fanfics, but not allow monetization of them. If you are an author on SH, and have a story tagged with any fanfic tag (or related tag like *Naruto*), then the option to link any monetization should be disabled, and a warning should be displayed when adding the tag informing the author of the law.

I do think this is something that @Tony should consider as well, but even if he wants to allow it (which is fine btw), I am interested in what the community thinks on the matter.

Edit(2x): RoyalRoad, Wattpad, and AO3 already have monetization linking denied for fanfictions, in case anyone was wondering.

Edit3: I mentioned it mid thread, but I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, just an observation as to the current state of things.

Just ban fan-fiction.

 

[beast_regards]

Yes primary liability lies with patreon, but as a large company with 500+ employees its not exactly an easy mark to drown in lawsuits. Scribblehub on the other hand(or any smaller platform) is a much easier target and still has some liability for letting people do it.

okay i am stupid on the legal stuff. just a question tho, doesn't the liability fall for patreon then ? ( i am a idiot in this situations so sorry for asking it)

By creating the account on the Scribble Hub, you agree to their terms of service. Part of those is the liability waiver for any financial and other damages for exactly this kind of situation.

It's very explicit in saying that they are not directly responsible for damages caused by the content the users posted.

The Patreon have certain degree of liability for financial damages which is complicated stuff ...

...but they also only deal with the copyrighted material stored on their platform.

 

[ZombieHat]

Straght ripping from other people should be strctly dealt with. Fanfics are a different beast, because your changing the origianl art as far as the content of the works goes, maybe not the characters and settings, but those can be dealt with by citing the orgins of the work and making sure they aren't monotized off it. Copying others work and profiting off it without changing things drastically is small dick energy.