Datasets:

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nyuuzyou

/

archiveofourown

like 14

I'm not sure it's legal at this point. I sent the counter-notice exactly a week ago, and so far there have been no updates. Unless the OTW takes legal action, the dataset will be available again within 3-7 days.

So how do I get you to remove my work from all 3 sites? This is downright evil

posting an unavailable dataset while it's currently legally unavailable is very classy of you, my guy

I'm not sure it's legal at this point. I sent the counter-notice exactly a week ago, and so far there have been no updates. Unless the OTW takes legal action, the dataset will be available again within 3-7 days.

It’s easy. Individual authors own the copyright to their own works. This is illegal and you’re in violation of the DMCA for reproducing their work, in its entirety, without their consent. FWIW, I contacted your registrars elsewhere to inform them of the violation as well. Stop stealing.

stop reposting the datasets when you should not have posted them to begin with. you are stealing.

I am very interested in this dataset (maybe not even as a dataset, but as an offline archive of this site), if they don't open it for you (they won't return it), could you put it somewhere else and send it to me.
As an option (free space without restrictions), create a closed group in telegram and put it there in a separate subgroup (so you can save all your datasets for backup).

Hey! If you want to archive fic or artwork from AO3, do it yourself instead of supporting a disgusting thief.

I'm not sure it's legal at this point. I sent the counter-notice exactly a week ago, and so far there have been no updates. Unless the OTW takes legal action, the dataset will be available again within 3-7 days.

Yeah, it's not legal to STEAL OUR WORK. You don't own the copyright, and you didn't ask permission.

Stop stealing our work. I'll be reporting in addition to the copyright that is both my art and my characters all have their oan original story. You'll end up with the biggest lawsuit if you look at how people are responding on Reddit.

AO3 users own the rights to their published works on the archive.
You've just opened yourself up to thousands of copyright takedowns and suits.
Destroy the data set now.

Delete this data set.

You do not own the website, you do not own the data, you do not own any of the works, and none of the actual owners have given their consent for you to do this.

"i'm not sure it's legal" it's not. get a basic understanding of copyright law before you pull shit like this.

"I'm not sure it's legal" OF COURSE this is not legal. You are STEALING work from people that DID NOT give you permission to use their works for GenAI, myself included. This is shameful behavior--not only can you write whatever you want to read yourself, you do not own ANYTHING on this list. Not the website, not the works, not the owner's permissions. You can't even say that you're doing this to provide an offline database--THERE IS A DOWNLOAD BUTTON FOR EACH WORK ON AO3 FOR A REASON.

I have reported this. You have stolen extremely personal works from me. You have stolen my own style of writing and poetry. I put those on AO3 for people to enjoy--not for people to steal and use it to make whatever they want. Destroy this data set immediately.

This isn't legal and you're actually screwed buddy. Try scraping your own ass out of the mess you've made.

@nyuuzyou
I did not grant you a license to post or redistribute my copyrighted art or the art owned by PaperDemon LLC anywhere.

The artists and writers on our website granted us a license to display their works on PaperDemon only. Paperdemon's license to host our members art and writing does not extend to you. If you want to use those works, you need a license from the original artists and authors.

Please remove our content from your website on datafish.ru

It appears our dataset has been removed from modelscope thankfully. If it appears again, we will file a DMCA.
~PaperDemon LLC founder

You’re right! It’s not legal.
Remove this. Immediately.

Can I just point out it was very courageous of you to counter-notice a non-profit which had a revenue of $822k last year, staffed by some of the most respected IP law professors in the States, and whose mission statement is 'protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge'. I think this truly has the potential to result in a landmark ruling for decades to come.

If the storage, and in this case we are only discussing their storage (you do not have the facts of learning from this set of neural networks), of your fanfiction is not legal, then why is it legal for you to create and then exploit them (writing to order, and most likely for money) using other people's author characters without obtaining Do the original authors have permission for this?
You write fanfiction based on well-known (copyrighted) books, films, cartoons, TV series, etc. You upload them to a public space with free access, but at the same time you don't want anyone to be able to copy them all to their archive, referring to their copyrights. You are hypocrites, gentlemen!

If the storage, and in this case we are only discussing their storage (you do not have the facts of learning from this set of neural networks), of your fanfiction is not legal, then why is it legal for you to create and then exploit them (writing to order, and most likely for money) using other people's author characters without obtaining Do the original authors have permission for this?
You write fanfiction based on well-known (copyrighted) books, films, cartoons, TV series, etc. You upload them to a public space with free access, but at the same time you don't want anyone to be able to copy them all to their archive, referring to their copyrights. You are hypocrites, gentlemen!

A lot of A03 writers are original writers of their owns stories or posting their own art. Even if it is a fan fiction, no one is writing for money on A03. A03 is not where you earn money. They instead often run donation for charities. What this user is doing is using free legal stuff for money.

Can I just point out it was very courageous of you to counter-notice a non-profit which had a revenue of $822k last year, staffed by some of the most respected IP law professors in the States, and whose mission statement is 'protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge'. I think this truly has the potential to result in a landmark ruling for decades to come.

Genuine question: is this sarcasm? I feel this is sarcasm towards nyuuzyou

Genuine question: is this sarcasm? I feel this is sarcasm towards nyuuzyou

Partly yeah. And also acknowledging this is actually a pretty significant Watershed moment. I'll leave it open to interpretation.

Now say that again without crying.

If the storage, and in this case we are only discussing their storage (you do not have the facts of learning from this set of neural networks), of your fanfiction is not legal, then why is it legal for you to create and then exploit them (writing to order, and most likely for money) using other people's author characters without obtaining Do the original authors have permission for this?
You write fanfiction based on well-known (copyrighted) books, films, cartoons, TV series, etc. You upload them to a public space with free access, but at the same time you don't want anyone to be able to copy them all to their archive, referring to their copyrights. You are hypocrites, gentlemen!

Correction: AO3 writers own the copyright to their works as stated by the sites TOS which here was blatantly ignored. They aren't trying to claim rights to already copyrighted work, just to the stuff they themselves write because that is theirs. As for "Making money" off of their works? They dont. AO3 doesn't allow that sort of thing and never has. As someone pointed out a lot of AO3 stories and art are also purely original works in which the authors do own copyrights to, which Nyu did not get consent to use in their dataset.

Please educate yourself on AO3 and what its about.
https://archiveofourown.org/faq/about-the-archive?language_id=en#:~:text=The%20AO3%20is%20built%20on,no%20advertisements%20on%20the%20site.
AO3 is just a fanficiton and story writing website for creative minds, nothing more. Noone earns anything and AO3 itself is funded entirely by donations, (A quick google search tells you this on their official FAQ.) No ones required to give money to them to use it, hell, there's not even Ads on the website!

As for calling us "hypocrites" Please read up on how fanfiction and copyright is in its current state, its very shaky land and hasn't been tested extensively in the court of law because of Fair use, Derivative works, etc. So by technical standards we don't even know for certain if fanfiction is illegal or not and would be shot down in the court of law. People lean towards "yes" without realizing that fair use, derivative, and transformative works exist, and that just adds more unstableness to a already shakey table.

Now say that again without crying.

Aren't you another fella who just had to take down a dataset of over 6K stolen works?

Say that again without using Deepseek to write it for you. Theres a reason people are pissed off about this kinda thing. :p

Aren't you another fella who just had to take down a dataset of over 6K stolen works?

I'm just a smart fella, Not a fart smella. I didn't care enough to have a 18K message argument. Especially for data that'd turned out to be quite sloppy.

Say that again without using Deepseek to write it for you. Theres a reason people are pissed off about this kinda thing.

This doesn't mean nobody will ever train off Ao3 again in the OSS space. Just means that we'll private the datasets. Anthropic, OAI, Etc will train off Ao3 aswell and nothing will ever happen.

Just a reminder for the future.

Aren't you another fella who just had to take down a dataset of over 6K stolen works?

I'm just a smart fella, Not a fart smella. I didn't care enough to have a 18K message argument. Especially for data that'd turned out to be quite sloppy.

Say that again without using Deepseek to write it for you. Theres a reason people are pissed off about this kinda thing.

This doesn't mean nobody will ever train off Ao3 again in the OSS space. Just means that we'll private the datasets. Anthropic, OAI, Etc will train off Ao3 aswell and nothing will ever happen.

Just a reminder for the future.

Yes and to that i respect you, thank you for taking it down when it was brought up. /genuine

As for "Nothing ever happens." its becoming an international viewpoint that yeah, it can help get things done but also countries are actively working on formalizing AI laws. AI itself is a rather new concept and its going to take time before something does happen. For example: Japan is working on banning AI works based on Studio Ghibli because people started monetizing it among other problems.

Im not trying to be rude in any way, shape or form towards anyone who uses AI (Unless you do what Nyu is doing and is avoiding the DMCA takedowns, which is my main gripe here.) just saying that: yes, eventually, something will happen and laws about AI will be put into place, since its now becoming an integral part of the world and yes, is unavoidable.

Im not a #FUCKAI entirely, it has its uses but what i am against is AI being trained off of non-consensual works of writing or art, evenmoreso on a mass scale like this. With all due respect Delta this is 8 websites that were scraped without consent and the only reason we know is because someone from Paintberri was affected so Nyu didn't even say anything about this and was just gonna get away with it. Many of the websites that were scraped say right there in their TOS that people on the site own the copyrights to their works. An estimated 50K artworks were taken as far back as the early 2000s. That's not ok.

I would also like to bring up that Itaku's works were crushed entirely after their DMCA takedown was officialized on huggingface, but is now back up on the external site, that is another gripe many people have that the DMCA is not being recognized and is being seen as a joke. So its not a fact of "We're gonna hide it in the future, you cant stop it" etc etc, its the fact that this is right in our face and people dont expect those affected to lash out because their works are being used without consent.

Its like dangling a ribeye in front of a starved lion, you're gonna get bit in the ass for it, yaknow?

your dataset on the .cn website has already been removed and the .ru website has been sent to the Organization for Transformative Works (IE: AO3's parent company), who is issuing these dmca takedown notices and know that you are actively trying to circumvent the takedown notices. I hope you get sued until you're homeless. You're a trash human being and every one of you gen ai bros deserve to burn in the deepest pits of hell. get fucked. Truely.

This is insane. Nobody should wish harm on others...

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I'm genuinely sorry for your email.

I am from the community at side7, which is not a fan-based community. many of my original works, which I am the sole copyright owner of, have been scraped. One of the works you scraped from my side7 gallery is a portrait of myself, next to a picture of my real face. You don't have legal bounds to upload copies of my original works to datafish, and the inclusion of my personal photo crosses another line entirely related to privacy laws. Please contact me either in dms on bluesky (I have notified you there from my account), or on my report on side7's database here on HuggingFace, to address removal of my materials from existing datasets.

I'm not going to bother making DMCA claims for each of the half dozen or so works you're infringing on with this because I don't really want them associated with my real name or identity, but enjoy the piss kink fic man I hope your checkpoint starts randomly spitting out sounding fic 👍

Genuinely thank you for what you do. Also thank to the many users who came here to bitch and moan about it. You could have handled things quietly and privately, instead you decided to make a big fuss about it. No bueno. Next time scrapers will make sure that these datasets are anonymous and secured in multiple copies on different websites.

Genuinely thank you for what you do. Also thank to the many users who came here to bitch and moan about it. You could have handled things quietly and privately, instead you decided to make a big fuss about it. No bueno. Next time scrapers will make sure that these datasets are anonymous and secured in multiple copies on different websites.

I have been trying to contact the user privately and quietly but have not been able to reach them. Do you know how I can contact them? They have not responded to my pings on bluesky, and they have dms set to only be allowed from people they follow. I am not contacting them on behalf of any ao3 works I have uploaded; I am trying to reach them regarding my original works from side7. They responded to a fellow side7 user on bluesky last week, but have not responded to me, and I am unable to determine why.

I'm not going to bother making DMCA claims for each of the half dozen or so works you're infringing on with this because I don't really want them associated with my real name or identity, but enjoy the piss kink fic man I hope your checkpoint starts randomly spitting out sounding fic 👍

don't threaten me with a good time mister.

i hope you genuinely die in a fire. You are STEALING works from actual writers who sometimes spend YEARS working on them, for your AI slop.

Now say that again without crying.

Genuinely thank you for what you do. Also thank to the many users who came here to bitch and moan about it. You could have handled things quietly and privately, instead you decided to make a big fuss about it. No bueno. Next time scrapers will make sure that these datasets are anonymous and secured in multiple copies on different websites.

We know those kind of scrappers exist.

Don't blame people for following due process. If a copyright infringement report process exists, people will use it if they deemed it necessary. In this case, fanfic is protected as fair use and we posses the rights to our writing and style.

AO3 allows bots to scrape data, but discourages that data to be used for AI training and the sharing of the sets. A lot of people in the community scrapes the website for statistics and other forms of data engineering. Nobody bats an eye.

But people has not consented to the distribution of that data outside the license provided to AO3 described in their TOS and of course almost no one has consented to the inclusion of it on datasets that could be used for LLM training.

Not because as a dev you can do something means you should do it. At least I was taught that on Ethics & Engineering in College but what do I know.

Genuinely thank you for what you do. Also thank to the many users who came here to bitch and moan about it. You could have handled things quietly and privately, instead you decided to make a big fuss about it. No bueno. Next time scrapers will make sure that these datasets are anonymous and secured in multiple copies on different websites.

We know those kind of scrappers exist.

Don't blame people for following due process. If a copyright infringement report process exists, people will use it if they deemed it necessary. In this case, fanfic is protected as fair use and we posses the rights to our writing and style.

AO3 allows bots to scrape data, but discourages that data to be used for AI training and the sharing of the sets. A lot of people in the community scrapes the website for statistics and other forms of data engineering. Nobody bats an eye.

But people has not consented to the distribution of that data outside the license provided to AO3 described in their TOS and of course almost no one has consented to the inclusion of it on datasets that could be used for LLM training.

Not because as a dev you can do something means you should do it. At least I was taught that on Ethics & Engineering in College but what do I know.

I can count on one hand how many people try to train AI models ethically. It's like once the concept was introduced to them, 99% of them just shut off that part of their brains.

Genuinely thank you for what you do. Also thank to the many users who came here to bitch and moan about it. You could have handled things quietly and privately, instead you decided to make a big fuss about it. No bueno. Next time scrapers will make sure that these datasets are anonymous and secured in multiple copies on different websites.

I have been trying to contact the user privately and quietly but have not been able to reach them. Do you know how I can contact them? They have not responded to my pings on bluesky, and they have dms set to only be allowed from people they follow. I am not contacting them on behalf of any ao3 works I have uploaded; I am trying to reach them regarding my original works and personal photo from side7. They responded to a fellow side7 user on bluesky last week, but have not responded to me, and I am unable to determine why.

I think they're attempting to dodge and wait for everyone to stop asking about it, and probably looking for a new place to upload. They expected to have access to the dataset back by now, and instead they have more than 120 complaints about their blatant theft.

Hugging Face staff needs to get off their asses and just delete the dataset at this point. This is already more than enough proof that nyuuzyou doesn't own the rights to the material, and more keep coming in.

Genuinely thank you for what you do. Also thank to the many users who came here to bitch and moan about it. You could have handled things quietly and privately, instead you decided to make a big fuss about it. No bueno. Next time scrapers will make sure that these datasets are anonymous and secured in multiple copies on different websites.

I have been trying to contact the user privately and quietly but have not been able to reach them. Do you know how I can contact them? They have not responded to my pings on bluesky, and they have dms set to only be allowed from people they follow. I am not contacting them on behalf of any ao3 works I have uploaded; I am trying to reach them regarding my original works and personal photo from side7. They responded to a fellow side7 user on bluesky last week, but have not responded to me, and I am unable to determine why.

I think they're attempting to dodge and wait for everyone to stop asking about it, and probably looking for a new place to upload. They expected to have access to the dataset back by now, and instead they have more than 120 complaints about their blatant theft.

Hugging Face staff needs to get off their asses and just delete the dataset at this point. This is already more than enough proof that nyuuzyou doesn't own the rights to the material, and more keep coming in.

They also need to get off their asses and ban all the crazy users sending death threats to the curator of this database.

I'd like to issue a reminder to everyone who claims the copyrights for Ao3 fanworks are not owned by those who write them. The official Ao3 terms of service state the following: "AO3 maintains that fanworks are transformative and that a fanwork's creator owns the rights to the expressions in their work that are unique to them. A fanwork creator holds the rights to their own content, just the same as any professional author, artist, or other creator." (https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#fanwork_copyright).

Every fic writer owns the rights to their own fanworks and has the legal right to dispute their unauthorized use. However, I would recommend handling such requests respectfully and in a lawful manner. Threats will only serve to cast this issue in a negative light, and it will be taken less seriously as a result.

At least he didn't post a magnet link to a torrent of the dataset. That would make it truly beyond the reach of DMCA takedowns. "AI bros" rely heavily on centralized servers, and that is their great weakness which can be exploited until they are completely crushed.

Genuinely thank you for what you do. Also thank to the many users who came here to bitch and moan about it. You could have handled things quietly and privately, instead you decided to make a big fuss about it. No bueno. Next time scrapers will make sure that these datasets are anonymous and secured in multiple copies on different websites.

I have been trying to contact the user privately and quietly but have not been able to reach them. Do you know how I can contact them? They have not responded to my pings on bluesky, and they have dms set to only be allowed from people they follow. I am not contacting them on behalf of any ao3 works I have uploaded; I am trying to reach them regarding my original works and personal photo from side7. They responded to a fellow side7 user on bluesky last week, but have not responded to me, and I am unable to determine why.

I think they're attempting to dodge and wait for everyone to stop asking about it, and probably looking for a new place to upload. They expected to have access to the dataset back by now, and instead they have more than 120 complaints about their blatant theft.

Hugging Face staff needs to get off their asses and just delete the dataset at this point. This is already more than enough proof that nyuuzyou doesn't own the rights to the material, and more keep coming in.

They also need to get off their asses and ban all the crazy users sending death threats to the curator of this database.

the "curator" of the dataset is a thief and should be bullied off the internet. the person who possibly wished death upon them is already a deleted user, i however wished for them to be sued into oblivion and for them and the rest of yall ai bros to burn in hell. thats not wishing harm per se, thats hoping that karma catches up to yall. or if you're not a christian whatever your religion deems to be punishment for the assholes. I hope yall go there.

hoping that karma catches up to yall. or if you're not a christian whatever your religion deems to be punishment

Do you think karma is a Christian concept?

hoping that karma catches up to yall. or if you're not a christian whatever your religion deems to be punishment

Do you think karma is a Christian concept?

bro im a kemetic pagan i dont even believe in the christian god

I'd like to issue a reminder to everyone who claims the copyrights for Ao3 fanworks are not owned by those who write them. The official Ao3 terms of service state the following: "AO3 maintains that fanworks are transformative and that a fanwork's creator owns the rights to the expressions in their work that are unique to them. A fanwork creator holds the rights to their own content, just the same as any professional author, artist, or other creator." (https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#fanwork_copyright).

A website claiming that all of the content on their website is owned by the user isn't a strong defense that the content published on the website can't be liable for infringement of popular IP's. I believe that is a statement of the website claiming that they do not own the copyright of any of the work that is posted by their users, so they can't claim that they own every single writing made on the website.

I think people here are being waaayyy too confident in saying fanfiction is protected by Fair Use, when in reality most fanfiction exists because of the lax enforcement of copyright from the original IP owners. I think OTW should be applauded for their work in championing transformative fan content, but from what I can find, OTW has yet to have a legal case challenging their claims of fair use that ruled in their favor to settle the copyright status of the content hosted on their website. I'm pretty hesitant to test the limits of copyright, considering that the Internet Archive has infamously lost the case to its digital libraries. Who knows what that will imply about the archiving status of AO3?

A website claiming that all of the content on their website is owned by the user isn't a strong defense that the content published on the website can't be liable for infringement of popular IP's. I believe that is a statement of the website claiming that they do not own the copyright of any of the work that is posted by their users, so they can't claim that they own every single writing made on the website.

I think people here are being waaayyy too confident in saying fanfiction is protected by Fair Use, when in reality most fanfiction exists because of the lax enforcement of copyright from the original IP owners. I think OTW should be applauded for their work in championing transformative fan content, but from what I can find, OTW has yet to have a legal case challenging their claims of fair use that ruled in their favor to settle the copyright status of the content hosted on their website. I'm pretty hesitant to test the limits of copyright, considering that the Internet Archive has infamously lost the case to its digital libraries. Who knows what that will imply about the archiving status of AO3?

If you visit the webpage detailing the Archive's terms of service, you will see that the Archive goes on to explicitly say that the fanworks are protected due to qualifying under transformative use. An official quote: "The Supreme Court of the United States has explained transformative use as 'add[ing] something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first [work] with new expression, meaning, or message.' Essentially, by significantly reinterpreting the original material, the creator of a transformative work makes a new, distinct creation that does not require the copyright owner's permission to create or share." (https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#fanwork_copyright).

If the works on AO3 were posted on the website for profit, it would be an entirely different story, of course. But seeing as fair use is the same doctrine that allows song parodies and sketches to be distributed freely on video sharing platforms, I fail to see how works posted on AO3 would not also be covered by this legal doctrine.

Even so, the jurisdiction surrounding AO3 itself is a different conversation. Hypothetically, if it were to be ruled by jury that the works posted on AO3 are not protected under copyright, then it is likely they would instead be ruled as infringing the copyright of the source material. Thus, any reproduction of works from the Archive, such as an unauthorized dataset as is the case here, would also be infringing on the copyright of the source material.

Either way, the collection and redistribution of this data for AI training is legally troubling. However, as I stated earlier, I do not think this constitutes threats of violence to the original uploader of the database.

If you visit the webpage detailing the Archive's terms of service, you will see that the Archive goes on to explicitly say that the fanworks are protected due to qualifying under transformative use. An official quote: "The Supreme Court of the United States has explained transformative use as 'add[ing] something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first [work] with new expression, meaning, or message.' Essentially, by significantly reinterpreting the original material, the creator of a transformative work makes a new, distinct creation that does not require the copyright owner's permission to create or share." (https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#fanwork_copyright).

This is not based on any legal precedence, it's the opinion of the website, one I rather support, but what is written on the FAQ isn't going to hold up in court for every individual work on the website.

On the topic of transformative fair use, the case of Perfect 10 v Amazon.com should be mentioned, in which the adult magazine Perfect 10 accused Amazon's practice of framing and hyperlinking their photography as an infringement of their copyright. The case originally started against Google when their search engine used web crawlers to get information on websites and obtain thumbnails to be displayed on the search page. Perfect 10 claimed that these websites directly profited from these services therefore they were owed money for the company's usage of their images.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc.

The case concluded with the court siding with Amazon.com and Google, and they held that what Google and Amazon did with Perfect 10's images is considered "highly transformative" use, even though they didn't change the image or any of the metadata displayed on their search result, just why they were used. Additionally, while Google undeniably profited from their search engine, however, the court determined the harm towards Perfect 10's website wasn't proven anything beyond hypothetical. This puts a wrench in the "It's non-profit therefore no infringement"/"It's for-profit therefore it is infringement" idea that people have with copyright.

I mention this case because I feel like some people have this very convenient definition of what "Transformative" content is, when in reality, it's just as nebulous and contention as any other aspect of fair use or copyright, and it's never a safe bet hoping that copyright will side with them.

I highly recommend practicing skepticism and scrutiny when regarding copyright and fair use in the context of both fan fiction and AI.

How about you write your own shit instead of being a pathetic little thief?? Millions of people, including myself, have spent so much time and love creating stories/art and you have the audacity to scrape it and act like you’re doing nothing wrong??

If there’s a way to seek justice, you bet I’m looking into it and ripping you into shreds for ever. single. one. of my works you STOLE. You, and the losers defending you, are pathetic low lives, and I hope the universe dishes all of you out something nasty.

If you visit the webpage detailing the Archive's terms of service, you will see that the Archive goes on to explicitly say that the fanworks are protected due to qualifying under transformative use. An official quote: "The Supreme Court of the United States has explained transformative use as 'add[ing] something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first [work] with new expression, meaning, or message.' Essentially, by significantly reinterpreting the original material, the creator of a transformative work makes a new, distinct creation that does not require the copyright owner's permission to create or share." (https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#fanwork_copyright).

This is not based on any legal precedence, it's the opinion of the website, one I rather support, but what is written on the FAQ isn't going to hold up in court for every individual work on the website.

On the topic of transformative fair use, the case of Perfect 10 v Amazon.com should be mentioned, in which the adult magazine Perfect 10 accused Amazon's practice of framing and hyperlinking their photography as an infringement of their copyright. The case originally started against Google when their search engine used web crawlers to get information on websites and obtain thumbnails to be displayed on the search page. Perfect 10 claimed that these websites directly profited from these services therefore they were owed money for the company's usage of their images.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc.

The case concluded with the court siding with Amazon.com and Google, and they held that what Google and Amazon did with Perfect 10's images is considered "highly transformative" use, even though they didn't change the image or any of the metadata displayed on their search result, just why they were used. Additionally, while Google undeniably profited from their search engine, however, the court determined the harm towards Perfect 10's website wasn't proven anything beyond hypothetical. This puts a wrench in the "It's non-profit therefore no infringement"/"It's for-profit therefore it is infringement" idea that people have with copyright.

I mention this case because I feel like some people have this very convenient definition of what "Transformative" content is, when in reality, it's just as nebulous and contention as any other aspect of fair use or copyright, and it's never a safe bet hoping that copyright will side with them.

I highly recommend practicing skepticism and scrutiny when regarding copyright and fair use in the context of both fan fiction and AI.

There's also this which rules using copyrighted material for GenAi is not fair use: https://natlawreview.com/article/fair-use-falls-short-judge-bibas-rejects-ai-training-data-defense-thomson-reuters-v

It is copyrighted material either way, either for fanfic authors or the original authors.

Let's not also forget that both 50 Shades of Grey and The Mortal Instruments were both fanfiction originally and then had the serial numbers filed off and the originals are still on the net. Neither of those authors have been sued and were allowed to make a profit.

As someone who has written on AO3 for years, and has all their works included in this dataset, I really don't understand the reaction here. I also want a copy of this dataset. Its a nice, JSON formatted backup of AO3, what's not to like?
This type of thing has existed for years (in a rather annoying format), and is exactly what has been used when people who are looking for old deleted works on r/AO3 get their requests fulfilled by the kind community members. Why the AO3 community has resigned themselves to personal attacks and death threats over this nicely organized backup of the archive is beyond me.
Yes I get that we don't really want our works included in an AI model, but that ship has sailed. Meta and others have already scraped AO3, and there's nothing stopping the big, multi-billion dollar companies from doing that again if they want to. This is a public, open source dataset (not an AI model) which can by used BY the AO3 community.

@nyuuzyou Not all of us are assholes. I appreciate the work you've done scraping and compiling this. Hopefully it gets released as a torrent or something so that I, an AO3 community member, writer, and someone who's NOT interested in AI at all, can get a copy.

To the other members of AO3 on here, chill the fuck out. This isn't even an AI model, its a dataset which CAN be used for training if you so choose, or it can be simply used as a backup of AO3. Grab a copy, and you'll have your own AO3, which is quite frankly, awesome.

As someone who has written on AO3 for years, and has all their works included in this dataset, I really don't understand the reaction here. I also want a copy of this dataset. Its a nice, JSON formatted backup of AO3, what's not to like?
This type of thing has existed for years (in a rather annoying format), and is exactly what has been used when people who are looking for old deleted works on r/AO3 get their requests fulfilled by the kind community members. Why the AO3 community has resigned themselves to personal attacks and death threats over this nicely organized backup of the archive is beyond me.
Yes I get that we don't really want our works included in an AI model, but that ship has sailed. Meta and others have already scraped AO3, and there's nothing stopping the big, multi-billion dollar companies from doing that again if they want to. This is a public, open source dataset (not an AI model) which can by used BY the AO3 community.

@nyuuzyou Not all of us are assholes. I appreciate the work you've done scraping and compiling this. Hopefully it gets released as a torrent or something so that I, an AO3 community member, writer, and someone who's NOT interested in AI at all, can get a copy.

To the other members of AO3 on here, chill the fuck out. This isn't even an AI model, its a dataset which CAN be used for training if you so choose, or it can be simply used as a backup of AO3. Grab a copy, and you'll have your own AO3, which is quite frankly, awesome.

Just because you are okay with it doesn't mean the rest of us are, you do not speak for us. The onus of people asking for deleted fic is to keep it offline and shared like the 90s/00s, not to archive it or repost it. It was deleted for a reason and could put people at risk who did it for safety purposes. Your entitlement to wanting all fanfic archived does not negate the risk to them. Community understanding on this goes back decades.

People's original fiction has been taken too, 600,000 works. Do you not see how awful it is to spend hours/weeks/months/years creating something and people steal it to make a quick buck by selling datasets like these to LLMs?

This is why more AO3 writers are quitting in droves and there'll come a point where no creative will share anything. No writing, no art, no music, nothing.

shared like the 90s/00s

Through peer-to-peer networks? :D

shared like the 90s/00s

Through peer-to-peer networks? :D

I know you think you're being clever here, but the problem with this whole thing is intent/consent. Yes, like through peer to peer networks, through email, whatever, art and fics were shared. but the intent of that was always for personal use, not for feeding into an AI LLM for corporate profits.
If AO3/OTW created this dataset as an additional preservation method for transformative works and creators had the choice to opt-in or out, that would be one thing.
This is not that. This is someone taking works that don't belong to them (regardless of whether or not the fic/art belongs to the creators or the original works, it certainly does NOT belong to the scraper) in order to profit.
Fandom is not about profit, it is about sharing love for the original works, about community, about creativity, all things AI is bereft of.

the intent of that was always for personal use, not for feeding into an AI LLM for corporate profits.

The dataset is (was) available for free, openly, without cost. Where are you getting the profit claim from? Looks like personal use to me...

People's original fiction has been taken too, 600,000 works. Do you not see how awful it is to spend hours/weeks/months/years creating something and people steal it to make a quick buck by selling datasets like these to LLMs?

Unless I'm missing something, nothing is being sold here? The dataset was free and open. Nobody was selling anything. If it was sold to a giant company for use in a LLM, of course I'd take issue with that, but for free, open, personal use? Not at all! I'd much rather see it used in this way for any community member, especially knowing that all the big AI companies have probably already scraped it all for profit without telling us anyways.

People's original fiction has been taken too, 600,000 works. Do you not see how awful it is to spend hours/weeks/months/years creating something and people steal it to make a quick buck by selling datasets like these to LLMs?

Unless I'm missing something, nothing is being sold here? The dataset was free and open. Nobody was selling anything. If it was sold to a giant company for use in a LLM, of course I'd take issue with that, but for free, open, personal use? Not at all! I'd much rather see it used in this way for any community member, especially knowing that all the big AI companies have probably already scraped it all for profit without telling us anyways.

This site pays nyuuzyou for info. This whole site is about selling data for eventually ai. So yes, they are selling it. They are selling our work for money. They basically stole THOUSANDS of work from a nonprofit organization and writers for money. Which is against copyright.

People's original fiction has been taken too, 600,000 works. Do you not see how awful it is to spend hours/weeks/months/years creating something and people steal it to make a quick buck by selling datasets like these to LLMs?

Unless I'm missing something, nothing is being sold here? The dataset was free and open. Nobody was selling anything. If it was sold to a giant company for use in a LLM, of course I'd take issue with that, but for free, open, personal use? Not at all! I'd much rather see it used in this way for any community member, especially knowing that all the big AI companies have probably already scraped it all for profit without telling us anyways.

It's redundant. AO3 is ALREADY an archive. There is literally no reason for this dataset unless it's for profit or for LLM companies to use.

And if you're advocating for archiving fanfic in case of deletion, you're saying your right to read fanfic trumps people's safety without their consent.

It's redundant. AO3 is ALREADY an archive. There is literally no reason for this dataset unless it's for profit or for LLM companies to use.

Although I love AO3, the organization behind it, and their goals. In the current political climate, we need as many backups as possible. AO3 was founded because of mass deletions of specific content types at previous sites, and promised never to do that themselves. I believe them, and that's why I donate every year and have for many years.

That said, the aren't immune to outside forces, especially governments. With AO3 being located in the US, I don't think its unreasonable to want to take precautions. Who knows what the future will hold...

This site pays nyuuzyou for info. This whole site is about selling data for eventually ai. So yes, they are selling it. They are selling our work for money. They basically stole THOUSANDS of work from a nonprofit organization and writers for money. Which is against copyright.

Well I didn't know that, so apologies for making that claim. Though I do still question if that's the uploader's intention, considering how aggressively they are reuploading on other sites which presumably do not work the same way. If they end up making a torrent, there's no way to get paid from that.

It's redundant. AO3 is ALREADY an archive. There is literally no reason for this dataset unless it's for profit or for LLM companies to use.

Although I love AO3, the organization behind it, and their goals. In the current political climate, we need as many backups as possible. AO3 was founded because of mass deletions of specific content types at previous sites, and promised never to do that themselves. I believe them, and that's why I donate every year and have for many years.

That said, the aren't immune to outside forces, especially governments. With AO3 being located in the US, I don't think its unreasonable to want to take precautions. Who knows what the future will hold...

The OTW has a lot of money saved aside to move servers to a different country in that exact scenario.

Other archives are unnecessary

This site pays nyuuzyou for info. This whole site is about selling data for eventually ai. So yes, they are selling it. They are selling our work for money. They basically stole THOUSANDS of work from a nonprofit organization and writers for money. Which is against copyright.

This is a lie, This is FOSS, Nobody gets paid shit. We all do it for fun.

This site pays nyuuzyou for info. This whole site is about selling data for eventually ai. So yes, they are selling it. They are selling our work for money. They basically stole THOUSANDS of work from a nonprofit organization and writers for money. Which is against copyright.

This is a lie, This is FOSS, Nobody gets paid shit. We all do it for fun.

The site literally says in their own rules and tos that y'all get paid. No need to fucking lie about it. I looked into the tos to see if hugging face would stand by a persons side if it was taken to court: they won't.

The site literally says in their own rules and tos that y'all get paid.

I'm currently 40,000$ in debt from buying H100s, Where's the clause?

I looked into the tos to see if hugging face would stand by a persons side if it was taken to court: they won't.

Yeah no shit, Almost every company has that. Ao3 probably has a similar clause if you posted something that was sensitive eg: CSAM. They wouldn't defend you in court.

The OTW has a lot of money saved aside to move servers to a different country in that exact scenario.
Other archives are unnecessary

The weavers of this basket have spent lots of money making it sturdy. There's no need for another basket to put your eggs in.

I don't know if any of you remember but there was an election for OTW Board Election a few years ago https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/wlxk3m/otw_board_election, where there was genuine concern that one of the pro censorship and anti-LGBT candidates would have won. Luckily this didn't happen, but at that moment I was horrified that if people like that got in power they could delete all of the "bad" content forever. I wished there was a compact form to backup all of this information to preserve our culture from tyrants like those in the future. This dataset is exactly what I wished was available a few years go to help me sleep better at night. So please, I understand that you are concerned about the data being used by AI, but the big AI companies will continue to scrap data whether or not you take this dataset down. In fact, Ao3 has already been scrapped multiple times. The only people you are really hurting with these DMCA notices are regular people, both writers AND readers, who want to keep a record of our literary culture. Please, let us not foolishly depend on one single organization to store several decades worth of our fanfics and let's all keep an archive of our Archive. Do it for the people!

I don't know if any of you remember but there was an election for OTW Board Election a few years ago https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/wlxk3m/otw_board_election, where there was genuine concern that one of the pro censorship and anti-LGBT candidates would have won. Luckily this didn't happen, but at that moment I was horrified that if people like that got in power they could delete all of the "bad" content forever. I wished there was a compact form to backup all of this information to preserve our culture from tyrants like those in the future. This dataset is exactly what I wished was available a few years go to help me sleep better at night. So please, I understand that you are concerned about the data being used by AI, but the big AI companies will continue to scrap data whether or not you take this dataset down. In fact, Ao3 has already been scrapped multiple times. The only people you are really hurting with these DMCA notices are regular people, both writers AND readers, who want to keep a record of our literary culture. Please, let us not foolishly depend on one single organization to store several decades worth of our fanfics and let's all keep an archive of our Archive. Do it for the people!

Exactly my thoughts. I remember that happening, and I luckily did find a scrape around that time since I had the same concern as you, but it was somewhat incomplete and indexed in a rather complex way. This scrape is perfect, and gives me peace of mind in case something happens to the archive.
I'm not going to trust the systems in place and hope that AO3 stays protected against malicious board members, governments, or hosting providers. If I can just store a TB or so and permanently guarantee that I have it, that's always going to be a better option. I hope AO3 stays censorship free forever, and that this is pointless, but storing a TB or two of data is a insignificant price to pay for that piece of mind.

The fact neither of you understand the concept of consent is troubling.

Authors have their own back ups. We don't need you to steal our work. We'd upload it to whatever came after AO3 if that was the case. Fanfic has been going at least nearly 70 years and it will survive but perhaps you're too young and not well versed in the history of it.

This is not the answer. This will cause people to not share their work.

You are causing active harm to the community for your own entitlement.

The site literally says in their own rules and tos that y'all get paid. No need to fucking lie about it.

lol. there are a lot of really dumb people here

You are causing active harm to the community for your own entitlement.

The AO3 community has neither suffered nor benefited from this data set. It doesn't change literally anything.

But you are now "harming" the data enthusiast community by harassing huggingface users. Chill guys, your data was scraped by openai a long time ago. It's insane though how random uploaders are now massively targeted by harassers.

Why tf you guys think that dataset uploaders have any profit from it? They are literally experimenting with all this out of pure interest.

I'm not sure it's legal at this point. I sent the counter-notice exactly a week ago, and so far there have been no updates. Unless the OTW takes legal action, the dataset will be available again within 3-7 days.

Thank you friend, you are the best!

I'm not sure it's legal at this point. I sent the counter-notice exactly a week ago, and so far there have been no updates. Unless the OTW takes legal action, the dataset will be available again within 3-7 days.

I can help you with that: It's a 100% illegal. You breached the personal copyright of every author and AO3's TOS (who have a delegated right from the original authors).

I'm not sure it's legal at this point. I sent the counter-notice exactly a week ago, and so far there have been no updates. Unless the OTW takes legal action, the dataset will be available again within 3-7 days.

Thank you friend, you are the best!

why are you requesting something that's illegal?

You are causing active harm to the community for your own entitlement.

The AO3 community has neither suffered nor benefited from this data set. It doesn't change literally anything.

But you are now "harming" the data enthusiast community by harassing huggingface users. Chill guys, your data was scraped by openai a long time ago. It's insane though how random uploaders are now massively targeted by harassers.

Why tf you guys think that dataset uploaders have any profit from it? They are literally experimenting with all this out of pure interest.

Crying harder about the harming of your 'dataset' thieves. People want their stuff taken down, because this was illegal. And it's not out of pure interest, it's out of pure selfish desire.

Remove fic number 24248485 and 33441607. These are mine and I will absolutely do a DMCA take down.

If you don’t have an ounce of creativity in your body my suggestion is this: go outside you datahumper.

That’s where you learn about the world to write about it. The thing that we do regularly before you steal our work for your own personal gain? It’s shockingly important for being a better human being. Something that’s clearly no one ever taught you.

You are causing active harm to the community for your own entitlement.

The AO3 community has neither suffered nor benefited from this data set. It doesn't change literally anything.

But you are now "harming" the data enthusiast community by harassing huggingface users. Chill guys, your data was scraped by openai a long time ago. It's insane though how random uploaders are now massively targeted by harassers.

Why tf you guys think that dataset uploaders have any profit from it? They are literally experimenting with all this out of pure interest.

Maybe they should take that interest and use it with something that isn’t illegal. We ao3 writers are the ones whom are hurt by this as it’s actively supported by us financially. We regularly have donation drives to up keep the website so we can own the content we post. It’s legally ours. Youand others wouldn’t be getting “harassed” if you didn’t essentially come up to a zine making charity and start grabbing the zines and ripping off the artists signature and claiming it’s yours.

We regularly have donation drives to up keep the website so we can own the content we post.

How does this dataset prevent you from collecting donations? Your readers won't use it because it's simply inconvenient. They will continue to read you on AO3 the way they used to. This dataset doesn't change anything. It just makes it easier for enthusiasts to collect data - instead of downloading the data from AO3 by yourself, it's already collected here.

claiming it’s yours.

No one is claiming it's theirs.

Y'all are crying for no reason

We regularly have donation drives to up keep the website so we can own the content we post.

How does this dataset prevent you from collecting donations? Your readers won't use it because it's simply inconvenient. They will continue to read you on AO3 the way they used to. This dataset doesn't change anything. It just makes it easier for enthusiasts to collect data - instead of downloading the data from AO3 yourself, it's already collected here.

claiming it’s yours.

No one is claiming it's theirs.

We don’t want our works downloaded for data either. And the money we collect is being used to fight against people collecting our data instead of hiring tag wranglers, system operators, and the upkeep a website this size needs.

People who use this data set could create “fan” fiction using this data set. Then claim it is an original work. We know this. It’s happened with fan art.

We don’t want our works downloaded for data either.

You cant decide that lol. If your text is published online then anyone can download it and you can do nothing about it (unless they try to reupload and you can dmca, but they can decide to not reupload and just train). You cant protect yourself against ctrlc ctrlv and you shouldn't.

And the money we collect is being used to fight against people collecting our data instead of hiring tag wranglers, system operators, and the upkeep a website this size needs.

This sounds like nonsense. The money you collect is going into your pocket. If you collect anything, of course. AO3 doesn't need you to go and attack random ai repos.

People who use this data set could create “fan” fiction using this data set. Then claim it is an original work. We know this. It’s happened with fan art.

I don't understand what are you saying. Is this supposed to be an irony?

If someone will train on this dataset and then write fiction with trained llm than of course it will be an original work. Because it will have little connection to text that it was fine-tuned on.

But it's not like it's even matters, adding AO3 dataset to already very smart and proficient in writing models will not change much. But it can uncensor it and maybe improve prose a bit. Or worsen it.

You are fighting against a few enthusiasts that finetune - (not create from scratch) small models for fun.

@Ainonake

But it's not like it's even matters, adding AO3 dataset to already very smart and proficient in writing models will not change much. But it can uncensor it and maybe improve prose a bit. Or worsen it.

Just ask Google DeepMind

We don’t want our works downloaded for data either.

You cant decide that lol. If your text is published online then anyone can download it and you can do nothing about it (unless they try to reupload and you can dmca, but they can decide to not reupload and just train). You cant protect yourself against ctrlc ctrlv and you shouldn't.

I can’t, you’re right! Good job, you know how to copy and paste! I know that’s must be so difficult for a child.

And the money we collect is being used to fight against people collecting our data instead of hiring tag wranglers, system operators, and the upkeep a website this size needs.

This sounds like nonsense. The money you collect is going into your pocket. If you collect anything, of course. AO3 doesn't need you to go and attack random ai repos.

I’m not collecting it bro. Archive of our own runs donation drives and actual show where the money goes.

People who use this data set could create “fan” fiction using this data set. Then claim it is an original work. We know this. It’s happened with fan art.

I don't understand what are you saying. Is this supposed to be an irony?

People have stolen fan art to make data sets. Those data sets then are used to make ai generated art. That art is claimed to be made by the user. It was generated using stolen fan art, and therefore isn’t an original piece of art. I have also seen people do this with unfinished fanfic, and then the person who put the fanfic into the program went on to tell the author they did this.

If someone will train on this dataset and then write fiction with trained llm than of course it will be an original work. Because it will have little connection to text that it was fine-tuned on.

And I’m sooooo excited to read something without soul or care for the original work. I’m sure it will have just so consistent of themes.

But it's not like it's even matters, adding AO3 dataset to already very smart and proficient in writing models will not change much. But it can uncensor it and maybe improve prose a bit. Or worsen it.

Except for all the authors-pretty sure it matters real human authors who have spent their finite time on this planet to hone their craft, develop their own style of writing in the hopes to either one day be a professional. Now, take the work they did to practice and send it in to a programmer, steal their whole written voice, and boom. That author doesn’t have a job.

Are you also a thief? Because that’s the only reason I can think of why you think stealing from people is peachy

@Ainonake

But it's not like it's even matters, adding AO3 dataset to already very smart and proficient in writing models will not change much. But it can uncensor it and maybe improve prose a bit. Or worsen it.

Just ask Google DeepMind

Or maybe people want the authors prose. Maybe that’s why we are upset.

It was generated using stolen fan art, and therefore isn’t an original piece of art.

So if you were learning to draw by copying references material or just looking at it and after a long time you created your finally are able to draw, everything you will create next is still a stolen piece of art and a plagiat? Then every picture in this world is also stolen from some ancient artisans.

And I’m sooooo excited to read something without soul or care for the original work. I’m sure it will have just so consistent of themes.

What.

Except for all the authors-pretty sure it matters real human authors who have spent their finite time on this planet to hone their craft, develop their own style of writing in the hopes to either one day be a professional. Now, take the work they did to practice and send it in to a programmer, steal their whole written voice, and boom. That author doesn’t have a job.

As I said, this dataset and availability of ones author's work in it don't matter for the final outcome.

If authors will be replaced - it will not be because of this dataset. Not even close.

Are you also a thief? Because that’s the only reason I can think of why you think stealing from people is peachy

Nah, I don't collect data. But I like some nyuuzyou works and related to him creators in ai space. It's fun to play with rp llms. And it doesnt affect any authors one bit.

I can’t, you’re right! Good job, you know how to copy and paste! I know that’s must be so difficult for a child.

It's nice to see that you understood that anyone can go and download whole AO3 by themselves and train on it and you will never know that it happened.

I’m not collecting it bro. Archive of our own runs donation drives and actual show where the money goes.

Okay, I misunderstood you by thinking that you were thinking that we are stealing you donations. But it doesn't really changes anything. How this dataset prevents AO3 from collecting donations for drives?

It was generated using stolen fan art, and therefore isn’t an original piece of art.

So if you were learning to draw by copying references material or just looking at them and after a long time you created your finally are able to draw, everything you will create next is still a stolen piece of art and a plagiat? Then every picture in this world is also stolen from some ancient artisans.

Okay but that’s. Not how any of that works. I’ve been to art college my guy. You aren’t arguing with me on artistic intent. It’s not someone’s hand, foot, mouth or other bodily output that’s copying things that makes something stolen. That’s because it’s put through something called skill or talent that that person possesses.

I’ve “stolen” the Mona Lisa a billion times to learn. I’ve also “stolen” Naruto Uzumaki. What I don’t do is recreate someone’s art style and say it’s them. My Mona isn’t De Vincci’s but if I were to attempt to create it down to the exact brush stroke, and then put it out into the world with no disclaimer then that’s still cutting it mighty close to art forgery in many law books

I’m not going to bother arguing this out further because this argument has already happened for me in 10 different academic settings and honestly I’m not looking to improve my grades here. I don’t have to look smarter than you to get a degree, I already know what art forgery is.

Okay but that’s. Not how any of that works. I’ve been to art college my guy. You aren’t arguing with me on artistic intent. It’s not someone’s hand, foot, mouth or other bodily output that’s copying things that makes something stolen. That’s because it’s put through something called skill or talent that that person possesses.

I was learning how to draw too. Its either spend years learning to draw - or spend millions of dollars on training and decades on science, technology advancements and programming to create diffusion.

Not how any of that works

It's exactly how it works. AI learns to draw "like" humans do - by looking at references and then producing original works. But it also needs MUCH more effort by scientists and MUCH more money.

I’ve “stolen” the Mona Lisa a billion times to learn. I’ve also “stolen” Naruto Uzumaki. What I don’t do is recreate someone’s art style and say it’s them. My Mona isn’t De Vincci’s but if I were to attempt to create it down to the exact brush stroke, and then put it out into the world with no disclaimer then that’s still cutting it mighty close to art forgery in many law books

Yeah models produce their own styles by mixing elements from teachers, just like humans do.

Btw you still can't answer how this dataset prevents AO3 from collecting donations

Hi there @Ainonake , if the only way you can try to justify yourself is by pointing the finger at someone else, then you've already lost the argument.

In plain terms, we CONSENT to what AO3 is doing. They're welcome to collect donations because they're using those donations to increase the number of servers, put that money for technological resources (cloud storage, minimal latency, security measures, etc), and use them for US. They're giving us logs for every penny and pound they're spending. Therefore, we CONSENT to that. We CONSENT our work to be hosted by AO3, OTW, etc. But we DO NOT consent what you are doing. Of course, there may be people who may be okay with it, and no hate to them genuinely. All love and power to them, but we ask that you PLEASE leave the rest of us alone.

This is a craft for us, something we spend countless hours on outside of other aspects of our lives. We love what we do, we love the community, we love sharing our work to fellow writers and readers, and no one else. You can go ahead and say 'well, if it's public, it's fair use, so hush', but...that's really not what our community was founded on. We love fanfiction, but we don't want to make money off it. We only want to write and read each other's stories, nothing more. So please, PLEASE do not just do what's lawful, please also stop to think how many people you'd be hurting. We don't consent our data to be read by machines. Some do, yes, but it's dangerously inaccurate that that holds true for the majority. So please don't do this to us. Please don't keep arguing, we're telling you that this means so much to us than what you're reducing it to. Please listen to that, there are plenty of writers who have become discouraged enough that they quit writing altogether. Plenty of authors have author notes posted that their fics are results of trauma responses. It was a safe expression for them, something they wanted to share with their readers and their readers only. They were putting themselves out there, in a vulnerable way, and you can argue the semantics and logics for all you know, but perhaps stop to think with your heart too, if you're able to. If someone spread your nudes on the net without your consent, they're able to do that and get away with it legally in many places, but it doesn't mean that they should. I'll fight for your right to protect something that's vulnerable for you too. And that's all we're doing. At the very least, remove the data of people who did not consent. You don't get to "preserve" our work or do whatever you'd like with that disguise, when we're asking and telling you that that's not what you're doing. You're exploiting us, you're hurting us, and you're squashing on vulnerable pieces of people.

I don't hate AI or ML practitioners, I really don't. When you put your minds to good use, you're able to do incredible things. We just ask that you don't do it on the backs of people in this way and hurt others for the sake of your gains.

@nyuuzyou PLEASE TAKE THE DATASET DOWN. PLEASE!!!!!!! What more do we have to do for you to listen to the people who DID NOT consent to this??? Do you even have a heart or are you really that unaffected by people who are begging you to stop doing this?? The numerous DMCA requests, the takedown requests, the sheer outrage and pain---do they all REALLY mean nothing to you????

I expect many people here are deeply amused by the outpouring of "sheer outrage and pain" when someone mirrors publicly accessible webpages, and it hasn't gotten old yet. This reminds me a lot of when the same thing happened with Bluesky posts a few months ago.

Hey @nyuuzyou , I think you and all the other AI lovers missed something. Not only did you steal one person's art that was related to them, but you also stole my original work on AO3!!!! In your little scrapper escaped, you clearly didn't go through what you were scrapping. My original work is in the dataset, and I did NOT consent to you using them. You are digging yourself into a real deep legal hole and trust me your counter claims aren't doing crap. Take the dataset down, please. I posted my work to share it with the world because I wanted people to enjoy it. Not to make cheap copies that benefit greedy idiots who don't know the first thing when it comes to copyright law, and then make your arguments sound ridiculous. Take the dataset down.

In your little scrapper escaped, you clearly didn't go through what you were scrapping. My original work is in the dataset, and I did NOT consent to you using them. You are digging yourself into a real deep legal hole and trust me your counter claims aren't doing crap.

Bro if you published your work online then you can expect people to you know, actually open it and see it, which automatically leads to the fact that anyone can download it and use it and you can do nothing about.

What's the point of taking down this dataset when literally anyone can do the same thing locally? Because the data is publicly accessible.

Now tell me where is the secret Twitter/bluesky thread where you all gather together and looking for targets to start this clown show.

By the way idiots were telling same thing on datasets with bluesky posts and... nothing happened? turns out they were lying about illegality of copying publicly accessible data?

Then there were also some people who gathered people to harass the creator of the dataset.

same thing on datasets with bluesky posts and... nothing happened?

No, their firm assertion of their legal rights succeeding in getting the guy to take down his "One Million Bluesky Posts" dataset: bluesky-community/one-million-bluesky-posts (returns 404 error). I haven't checked, but I'm sure the AI bros learned their lesson and never did anything like that again (and certainly didn't make ever-larger Bluesky datasets simply out of spite.)

@sivarajan and to @nyuuzyou (since you're so conveniently ignoring and choosing to laugh and make memes), I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or what it is exactly, but if you are being that way:

You can laugh at it, but the outrage isn't about "mirroring publicly accessible content". it's about the clear violation of trust, privacy, and consent, not that you seem to know anything about it. AO3 was a space built on a foundation, where the creators (artists, writers, etc) expect control over how their work is used and shared. Scraping and republishing our works without consent strips us of that control and also potentially exposes many to certain harms like legal and financial ones, given you're so dismissive about the emotional aspect behind of it.

And the comparison to Bluesky is irrelevant. Bluesky users, like any other social media platform out there, consent to the ToS, and if that includes data scraping as part of the platform’s functions, then so be it. I don't know about that platform, so I can't speak anything more than this. AO3 instead has specific guidelines and safeguards that were designed to respect our autonomy. It's not about the content being “publicly accessible”; it was never about that. It's about the ethics of taking something without asking, especially when there are millions of people telling you to stop. The works belong to us, not you. Why is it that people like you can't scrape the works that are licensed and given permission to use? Why go after us, the people who are writing for fun and who are doing it with joy?

This is NOT a petty issue about inconvenience. It’s a matter of respect, integrity, and the rights of creators to have agency over their own work. You feel entitled to fight to death about this dataset, but we can't fight to have our works not be included and stolen? That is hypocrisy. Dismissing it as a trivial matter shows that you and the likes of people like you (AI scrapers) are not only heartless but also vile, sadistic, and disgusting monsters who clearly don't have friends or family or anyone you/they care about nor anyone who cares about you/them. Sad and despicable. I'm seriously not sure why that's not getting into your heads. We've pleaded with you, we've begged you---what more do you want?

(Again, this comment is only applicable if you are condoning the use of this dataset for vile means; I really couldn't tell what is what from your comment earlier.)

Leave our works alone. Leave our IP alone. PLEASE. LEAVE. US. BE. We're begging you to STOP.

@Ainonake Are you seriously comparing local copies vs those that are distributed via torrents despite numerous takedown/DMCA notices?? Seriously? Even you can think better than that. Local copies are one thing. While I would never endorse it, I also can't stop those and I'm aware of that, it's still someone using it for their personal use. They're still doing it with the intent of reading their fave fics over and over again. Not the best way to do it, but the intent isn't to harm.
Whereas you using OUR IP for AI training, despite so many people begging you not to, I honestly have no words to even convey that sort of disgust. We're asking you to stop, plain and simple. Why do you need to know why? Stop deflecting blame, stop doing the 'everyone's doing it, I can do it too'---it's really not the flex you think it is and only makes you look sadistic. Please just STOP. Leave us alone. It's not hard to grasp that we don't want your grubby fingers on our work, something we worked hard to do while you merely stole them from us. Please STOP TAKING SOMETHING THAT CLEARLY MEANS SO MUCH TO US.

By the way idiots were telling same thing on datasets with bluesky posts and... nothing happened? turns out they were lying about illegality of copying publicly accessible data?

Then there were also some people who gathered people to harass the creator of the dataset.

Oh look, you created another throw-away account to act as if you have support in the community and because the other got deleted, hmmm? The stealing wasn't enough I guess.

Local copies are one thing. While I would never endorse it, I also can't stop those

Hang on a second: you have similar objections to people making local backups, and you're asserting a right to control expansive enough that if you could stop them, you would?

@sivarajan Having that kind of control over someone---seems like dictatorship tbh, so no. And I mean that genuinely. I really don't want to have any kind of control over someone. I want to let people live in peace, and in return, I want to be left in peace. I don't want to be exploited, I don't want something I love so so much to be stolen from me. I want to be able to trust that people around me have the common sense to behave in an ethical manner.
If I happened to have or receive nudes of someone, I wouldn't spread them just because I can or just because it's fun to do so. If anything, I would delete them asap because I have no interest in exploiting someone and I don't need to go to those lengths to achieve success. I don't need to walk on the backs of others in order to have my own gains. It's ethical to not spread them, in case harm might befell the person.
You can have and find similar analogies everyday. I wouldn't endorse smoking but I wouldn't stop people who want to smoke either. I wouldn't endorse drinking, partying unsafely DUI-ing, etc., but I also am not gonna jump over the hoops to stop people who do that. At some point, they can make the decisions for themselves and decide for themselves if all of those things are worth it. Local copies are on a similar vein for me. If an author deleted their work, me having a local copy and spreading it online is simply unethical, and it would personally make me sick if someone did that to me. I know I can't stop it, but I can beg people to. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

Now it's your turn. You hang on a second and perhaps stop trying to shift the blame on OTW, AO3, or other people. Maybe think of yourself. I refuse to be the person who does things simply because others are doing it. I refuse to be so inconsiderate as to ignore the requests of thousands and millions of people who did not want any part of this. I saw some of my close ones get their hearts broken because of this and because of actions like yours, and I know it must be so easy and thrilling for you to come online and make degrading comments about us (and if you really perceive us that way, why are you exploiting us again?), but maybe try being a bit more of a decent human being first. Maybe try having a heart about that and maybe avoid being dismissive about someone's "sheer outrage and pain". You don't have to share it or even empathize with it as you've shown no ability for it anyway, but you certainly don't have to mock it.

If an author deleted their work, me having a local copy and spreading it online is simply unethical,

Okay, this sounds like a fundamental difference: I do not think it's unethical in the slightest.

Agree to disagree. When an author chooses to delete their work, it's a conscious decision taht they make to control how their creation/work is shared and distributed. Taking a local copy is one thing but spreading it (online too no less, where everyone can see it) without their consent not only violates their rights as the creator, but it's also a clear disregard for their agency and decision-making. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with the deletion. For me, it's always been important to respect an author's autonomy over their own work. Imagine how you'd feel if someone took your personal work and shared it without your permission just because they felt entitled to it. That's what hurts---your sense of ENTITLEMENT over someone else's hard work.

But for the sake of this conversation, forget ethics. If you know that what you're doing is hurting someone, do you still need to do it? And I don't mean like something of like grandeur proportions. I'm not asking you to set aside your sense of right or wrong. I'm not asking you to put aside your values and I'm not asking you to sacrifice your career or something for me. I'm asking you to not please not feed my words, my original work, into your dataset without permission because I simply didn't and do not consent to it.

At the end of the day, this isn't about some grand moral debate or complex ethical principles. We're asking you to give basic respect for another person’s wishes. You can choose to ignore whether it's right or wrong, but if you know it’s hurting someone, why continue? My work—my words—carry meaning to me, and when you scrape it and put it in a dataset without my consent, you're not just taking something, you're disregarding the fact that it’s mine to control. I don't want a backup of my work to be done by you. Who even are you to do that? And I don't mean that in an aggressive manner. I mean that genuinely.

Imagine you invited your friend or your partner over to your house. You trusted them and gave them a home in your space, and you also shared something personal with them. Maybe a memory, maybe something you created, or perhaps something that’s meaningful to you. Now imagine they decide to take that personal item or memory without asking, share it with others, or use it in ways you didn’t ask for. Even if they say, 'I'm just trying to help you', it still feels like a betrayal. Now it's okay if you don't think that and you want your dirty laundry out on display, but it's not wrong for the rest of us to want to be left ALONE. I never gave you permission to do what you did. I don't understand why that's a hard concept. People are asking you to remove THEIR work from your computer; why can't that be respected? Why is so hard for people like you to be okay with that? Why is it so hard for people like you to respect others' work? I don't want to crush yours, I don't want to disrespect you, I don't want to assume consent by default with you, why do you want to do that to me?

from your computer

From MY computer. That's why I asked for clarification earlier: your argument rests on an assertion of a right I do not countenance. About fifteen years ago, Amazon deleted books from people's Kindles (famously including Orwell's 1984). They almost certainly had the legal right to do that, but I found that abhorrent at the time, and continue to do so.
I hold this position consistently, regardless of the reason a work becomes unavailable, be it the author's whims, violations of the platform's terms, DMCA takedowns, obscenity laws, US government sanctions, or anything else.

If an author deleted their work, me having a local copy and spreading it online is simply unethical,

Okay, this sounds like a fundamental difference: I do not think it's unethical in the slightest.

it's not just unethical. It's simply illegal. Just google how copyright works. It's not that hard, especially now that AI is everywhere. There are lots of pages excplain it in every simple terms for you guys.

Except that's not all that you're doing. You're using our data to train AI models, make money, and god knows what else. Local copy is one thing, that's what I'm saying. I could've been clearer, but I do NOT consent to scraping of my data to be used for sadistic reasons. I simply do NOT.

regardless of the reason a work becomes unavailable, be it the author's whims, violations of the platform's terms, DMCA takedowns, obscenity laws, US government sanctions, or anything else.

Absolutely disgusting.

@nyuuzyou , PLEASE take down the dataset. Have a heart please, it's not your work---certainly not the original works you've scraped. They're simply NOT.

It's simply illegal.

I was addressing what was framed as a moral argument, and made no claims about law.

When an author chooses to delete their work, it's a conscious decision taht they make to control how their creation/work is shared and distributed.

I think i was 14? 13? When i was taught that whatever you post on the internet is permanent. I don't think authors have learned that yet i guess...

When an author chooses to delete their work, it's a conscious decision taht they make to control how their creation/work is shared and distributed.

I think i was 14? 13? When i was taught that whatever you post on the internet is permanent. I don't think authors have learned that yet i guess...

"It was on the internet and I can take it and do what I want with it, so I did" is giving "this person was drunk/unconcious so I could do what I wanted. If they didn't want me to, shouldn't have drunk anything/been unconscious".

Also a few countries have Right To Be Forgotten laws as well as Google themselves. Not everything is permanent.

@Delta-Vector I know it's "permanent". That doesn't mean shitheads and a bunch of bastards now have the right to use and steal IP for their own profits and sadistic uses. Let us be. We're not debating laws with you, we're not asking to jump through loopholes to understand that. Since you're so quick to demean authors and who not, why do you wish to exploit us? We're asking you to PLEASE let our works ALONE. We've asked you nicely, we've begged you to please stop, we don't wish you any harm, and all we ask in return is let us be with our community. If you hate us so much that you can't even offer a shred of respect to the same people you're stealing from, I think you have bigger problems to worry about than what you were taught at 13-14. My folks taught me from 4-5 to be a decent person, if we want to exchange those diatribes.