Tag Archive for: Authors

How A Feud Among Wolf-Kink Erotica FanFic Authors Demonstrates What The Copyright Office Got Wrong In Its DMCA Report

Last week, we wrote about one of the biggest, glaring flaws in the Copyright Office’s long awaited report on the DMCA 512’s safe harbors was its refusal to recognize how frequently it’s abused to take down legitimate works. As if on cue, over the weekend, the NY Times has quite the story about a feud in (I kid you not), wolf-kink erotica fan fiction, that demonstrates how the DMCA is regularly abused to punish and silence people for reasons that have nothing to do with copyright.

The full NY Times article is worth reading, describing a still ongoing legal fight between two fanfic authors who wrote stories building on some apparently common tropes in the wolf-erotica fiction genre. One author sued another, but, as the article notes, all of the supposedly “copied” elements are common throughout the wider genre:

Then, in 2018, Ms. Cain heard about an up-and-coming fantasy writer with the pen name Zoey Ellis, who had published an erotic fantasy series with a premise that sounded awfully familiar. It featured an Alpha and Omega couple, and lots of lupine sex. The more Ms. Cain learned about “Myth of Omega” and its first installment, “Crave to Conquer,” the more outraged she became. In both books, Alpha men are overpowered by the scent of Omega heroines and take them hostage. In both books, the women try and fail to suppress their pheromones and give in to the urge to mate. In both books, the couples sniff, purr and growl; nest in den-like enclosures; neck-bite to leave “claim” marks; and experience something called “knotting,” involving a peculiar feature of the wolf phallus.

[….]

It’s hard to imagine that two writers could independently create such bizarrely specific fantasy scenarios. As it turns out, neither of them did. Both writers built their plots with common elements from a booming, fan-generated body of literature called the Omegaverse.

As the article goes on to note, this whole “Omegaverse” concept spun out of fanfiction based on the TV show “Supernatural.” And then a bunch of common tropes emerged:

Some Omegaverse stories involve lycanthropes (werewolves), vampires, shape-shifters, dragons, space pirates, others feature regular humans. But virtually all Omegaverse couples engage in wolflike behavior. Alphas “rut” and Omegas go through heat cycles, releasing pheromones that drive Alphas into a lusty frenzy. One particular physiological quirk that’s ubiquitous in Omegaverse stories, called knotting, comes from a real feature of wolves’ penises, which swell during intercourse, causing the mating pair to remain physically bound to increase the chance of insemination.

Normally, in copyright law, this should mean that there is no infringement. Either you have the idea/expression dichotomy come into play (the same idea expressed differently is not infringing as the idea itself cannot be covered by copyright) or there’s the concept of scenes a faire, in which a story in a particular genre needs those features to be a part of that genre.

However, even so, the DMCA has been weaponized here:

Ms. Cain urged Blushing Books to do something. The publisher sent copyright violation notices to more than half a dozen online retailers, alleging that Ms. Ellis’s story was “a copy” with scenes that were “almost identical to Addison Cain’s book.” Most of the outlets, including Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Apple, removed Ms. Ellis’s work immediately.

See that? Merely by claiming infringement using the DMCA’s 512 notice-and-takedown provisions, one author was able to literally delete a bunch of books from most major book stores. Doesn’t that seem like a problem? The Copyright Office barely acknowledges it. But here it’s turned into a massive fight.

In late April 2018, Ms. Ellis got an email from a reader who had ordered one of her books from Barnes & Noble, then learned that it wasn’t available anymore. She soon discovered that all of her Omegaverse books had disappeared from major stores, all because of a claim of copyright infringement from Ms. Cain and her publisher. Ms. Ellis found it bewildering.

“I couldn’t see how a story I had written using recognized tropes from a shared universe, to tell a story that was quite different than anything else out there commercially, could be targeted in that way,” Ms. Ellis said. “There are moments and scenarios that seem almost identical, but it’s a trope that can be found in hundreds of stories.”

While Ellis did file a counternotice, the Times says that online stores were incredibly slow to put the books back (some took months).

A lawyer for Ms. Ellis and Quill filed counter-notices to websites that had removed her books. Some took weeks to restore the titles; others took months. There was no way to recover the lost sales. “As a new author, I was building momentum, and that momentum was lost,” Ms. Ellis said. And she worried that the “plagiarist” label would permanently mar her reputation.

The author, Ellis, eventually sued over the takedown notice, claiming it was improper (and also that it was defamatory — which, seems like a SLAPP suit on its own, unfortunately). However, the author accusing Ellis of infringement seems pretty big into SLAPPing as well:

Two years later, Ms. Cain and her publisher filed D.M.C.A. takedown requests against Ms. Ellis’s first two “Myth of Omega” books. Ms. Cain also asked her publisher to file an infringement notice against an Ellis novel that hadn’t even been released yet. “Book three needs to come down too. I don’t want her to make any more money off this series,” Ms. Cain wrote to Blushing Books in April, according to a court filing.

That’s… not how any of this works. The NY Times says that Cain’s publisher caved in and admitted there was no infringement and apparently paid up to settle with Ellis, but Cain has kept the case going. She should lose. By the way, if you want to dig into the details of the actual lawsuit, you can find the docket here. The NY Times does not appear to link to it.

But, as the article makes very, very clear, the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown process has been weaponised repeatedly. If it’s so obvious that it’s happening in such a niche area as “wolf-kink erotica fan fiction,” you know it’s happening in many other places as well. It seems ridiculous that the Copyright Office felt it wasn’t worth paying any attention to, and assuming that the only problems with DMCA 512 was that it didn’t take down enough content fast enough.

Techdirt.

China Extends Its Censorship To Australian Books, Written By Australian Authors For Australian Readers

News that China is extending its censorship to new domains barely provokes a yawn these days, since it’s such a common occurrence. But even for those jaded by constant reports of the Chinese authorities trying to control what people see and hear, news that it is now actively censoring books written by Australian authors for Australian readers is pretty breath-taking. The Chinese government has done this before for single books whose message it disliked, but now it seems to be part of a broader, general policy:

Publishing industry figures have confirmed that the censors from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China are vetting books sent by Australian publishers to Chinese printing presses, even though they are written by Australian authors and intended for Australian readers.

Any mention of a list of political dissidents, protests or political figures in China, including president Xi Jinping, is entirely prohibited, according to a list circulated to publishers and obtained by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

As the story in the Australian newspaper The Age explains, the reason why Chinese censors are able to impose their views on books designed for the Australian market is that it’s cheaper to have books printed in China than in Europe, say, especially it if involves color illustrations. As a result, publishers can be faced with the choice of accepting Chinese demands, or not publishing the book at all because the costs are too high.

The list of taboo topics is long, albeit pretty specific to China. It includes mention of major Chinese political figures, such as Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping, as well as a list of 118 dissidents whose names may not be mentioned. Political topics such as Tiananmen Square, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Tibetan independence, Uyghurs and Falun Gong are all out. Pornography is completely forbidden, but even artistic nudity can be censored. The Chinese authorities are very sensitive to how maps are drawn, since they can involve disputed borders. More surprising is the ban on mentioning major religions.

The Age article notes that the rules had been in place for some time, but largely ignored. Now, however, the censors are checking every page of every book, and enforcing the rules strictly. It’s yet another sign of Xi Jinping’s obsessive desire to control every facet of life — even outside China, if he can.

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Techdirt.

Sundown exploit kit authors champions of copy-paste hacking – The Register


Softpedia News

Sundown exploit kit authors champions of copy-paste hacking
The Register
Authors of the Sundown exploit kit have proven themselves masters of copy and paste, stealing exploits from rivals and borking encryption when they opt for originality. Exploit kits offer an arsenal of attacks to the unscrupulous and are popular
Sundown Is Just a Bunch of Exploits Stolen from Other Exploit KitsSoftpedia News

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“exploit kit” – read more