Hi folks. My name is Javis and I make a comic (Legacy Control, itās about a married couples sexual relationship, mostly), and the Patreon content is NSFW. Someone just took all of my paid content and posted it for free on a site. As you can imagine, this is a gut punch. Iāve alerted the site, asked the transgressor to cease and desist and admonished them for illegally posting my paid content.
I realize that this was bound to happen (especially with nsfw content), I just wasnāt prepared to have such a large glut of it spewed out over the webs all at once. As silly as this sounds, I feel violated. I was just wondering how any of you have dealt with this. Emotionally and/or legally. Possible stop gaps for stopping future activity like this (without punishing our good and upstanding patrons?)
Patreon has been great and has taken me from making almost no money from my comic for 6 years to actually making something that resembles like a living:) Thanks!
It doesnāt sound silly at all. It is a violation of both your identity and your creative works and could potentially impact your livelihood. I wish I had some suggestions for you, but it sounds like youāve got a good start on taking care of things. I wish you all the best. Iāll be following this conversation to see what others suggest and hope youāll keep us updated. With any luck this will be solved for you soon.
First, Iām so sorry this happened to you. People who think they can just help themselves to your work are just the worst.
If you donāt hear anything in 24 hours, and your content is still posted, do a whois search to find their web hosting company, and file a DMCA complaint with them.
While people who post your content will laugh and ignore you, and even site owners will sometimes roll their eyes and say itās not their problem, most hosting companies take this sort of thing seriously. They will instruct their client to remove your intellectual property from their servers, or they will sometimes just do it themselves.
If you need help hunting down the right host or the right form, please message me. Iāve filed a bazillion of these.
Thanks so much for posting your story here, itās important to share things like this.
Iām Patreonās in-house counsel and deal with a lot of these issues. I canāt offer any legal advice, but can talk about some approaches that tend to work in most circumstances.
It sounds like you are on the right path, and Lisavollrathās advice is spot on. Most companies have some sort of takedown system that applies to them, and sending a DMCA notice is a good way to get things removed. Just keep moving up the hosting chain and eventually you will find someone who will take you seriously. If nothing else you can get it de-indexed from Google to make it harder to find.
After taking reasonable efforts to remove it I think itās also important to move on afterwards. This totally and legitimately sucks to have your trust and creative output violated like this, but you canāt let it get the better of you, even if people continue to steal it. Most of your patrons would pay you regardless of whether you made that content patron only, they support you because you are putting something of value into the world. Focus on creating great stuff, it will offer a much higher return on investment than worrying about a few bad actors stealing your content.
I appreciate that, really. The site did remove the violators initial links but it seems heās bent on messing with me and has uploaded to a google drive account and is posting those links. Going through the proper channels to try togged that removed/de-indexed. Thanks, for taking the time to respond and I will just keep moving forward, FOR MY FANS:)
Keep calm, and keep filing paperwork. Google also takes copyright complaints seriously. You can file a DMCA with them about the Drive account material.
If you know which of your patrons it was, donāt forget to block them so they donāt keep stealing from you! You can do that through the patron manager. So sorry this has happened to you ):
It sounds like this advice may not be relevant to this particular situation if someone is just posting on Tumblr or the like, but if someone is stealing your work and using it in any kind of commercial setting, you might find CopyTrack useful. You upload all your proprietary images for free, they search the web for duplication, and once you verify that an apparent hit is actually your work, you can submit a claim, including what you feel itās worth and the minimum youāll accept. Copytrack does everything from the initial contact to any necessary legal work, and takes 30% of any usage fee they recover for you (nothing if they recover nothing). They are currently representing me against a random web-based Russian-language New York City newspaper whoās had one of my photos online for four years now to illustrate a news article, so Iām hoping to get a few hundred bucks for the rights they never requested. You never know what youāll find out there.
Iām truly sorry youāre going through this - I really donāt understand why so many people think that publication on the web means āpublic domainā and āfree.ā
Hi! Building off this, if you can find the Patron thatās been posting your content you can ban them from subscription (I think). This would keep them from accessing the rest of your content once you start to process the takedowns.
Hi, it sucks when that happens. Unfortunately, there isnāt always much we can do about it unless you have a way of identifying the pirateās RL identity.
Thereās DMCA of course, but not all sites will respect that. Even when they do, it probably takes you more time to file a DMCA request than it does for the pirate to create a new account and post the content again.
My contentās been posted against my will on a number of sites but ultimately I havenāt found a way of preventing it. At one point I tried reporting things to sites like Mega, but while they were responsive and did a good job of taking down my stuff itād just end up posted again with a different account or on a different site a day or two later.
There are even some people that seem to make a business of stealing patreon content - thereās one guy āF95ā that used to post torrents to many peopleās patreon content who seems to have made his own site now which Iāve seen people linking to on reddit. I havenāt checked it myself because it affects my work when I get angry about stuff like that, but I imagine that heās still posting tons of our work and if he has advertising on his site then heāll be making a profit from it too.
Well, that was a bit of a rant. It annoys me too, but I donāt think thereās much to be done about it. Companies with deeper pockets and more legal clout have tried and failed to stop piracy so I doubt the likes of us will be able to. I hope it doesnāt affect your income too much though - I regularly read your comic at legacy-control.com. In fact itās one of just 8 that I check every day and I probably will be supporting you on patreon when I get round to making a second account to support non-work-related creators.
Javis, as a fellow NSFW creator, Iām really sorry to hear this.
I launched my Page 3 days ago and now after reading your topic I am scared to google my work because Iām afraid of seeing if itās already up there somewhere, as has gained some popularity already. It is really sad/maddening you have to fight and deal with this stressful situation instead of being able to focus on your work. Hang in there buddy!
I also started to notice people pledging the highest reward tier, grab all the rewards, then remove their pledge. I guess we just have to shake these things off and try to ignore it? I know these people would never support anyone anyway, but it is unfair against those who keep their pledges.
I had this happen to me and it was completely and utterly demoralizing. Worst part isāthe pirates seem to go after you even more once they know it bothers you, or if youāve been actively trying to fight it, ala the Streisand Effect.
Itās resulted in me dropping NSFW content from my campaign completely, as I realized thatās what most of them wanted. That being said, were still several members within that specific pirate community who were bent on getting back at artists for āpaywallingā their content. Truly a crushing situation to be a part of.
As for answers, the best solution I can think of is to push the community side of your campaign. Make being an active patron as rewarding as possible. Sure, there will still be some people who prefer to take the art and run, but many others will see the interaction and energy you give to honest supporters.
Over time, I think that true following will more than make up for those few prospective patrons you may lose.