We’ve run a couple of articles about useful apps that can turn fanfiction posted at popular online fanfiction repositories into e-books readable on portable devices. But lately, it seems that one of the most popular fanfiction repositories, Fanfiction.net, has taken issue with one of the more popular downloading tools, the Fanfiction Lightweight Automated Grabber (FLAG).
FLAG admin Steven Gilberd posts an email exchange he had with Fanfic.net’s administrators. When he originally developed the tool in 2008, Gilberd asked for and received permission from Fanfiction.net to allow the tool to operate. However, Fanfiction.net has suddenly changed its tune, saying, “Please note it is against our policy to use an automated system to retrieve and/or archive content from our websites.” The site currently does not allow any exemptions, though promised to let him know if that policy should change or an API is released.
It’s worth mentioning that Fanfiction.net has also removed the ability to select text from its stories for copying and pasting. It is no longer possible to highlight or mark text with the mouse on its stories. And some users have complained that Fanfiction.net has upped the amount of advertising on its pages as well. Someone posted a petition asking the site to reverse these changes which has currently reached 494 signers out of a goal of 500.
On the one hand, I can sort of see why the site might want to do this. I actually had someone copy and repost one of my own Fanfiction.net stories without permission to another fanfiction site, adding a bit to it and claiming it as his own. (He was very sorry about it after he got caught.) But this kind of measure is not an effective deterrent. It’s very simple to hit Ctrl + U to view the source, then scroll down and copy the actual HTML text of the story, after all.
And other fanfiction downloading tools—such as the Windows/OS X app Fanfiction Downloader, or the similarly-named but unrelated Fanfiction Downloader plug-in for Calibre, continue to work. (I tested the app on my story; it worked just fine.) And it’s hard to see how Fanfiction.net could prevent them from doing so. If they send the proper user-agent information, pretending to be an ordinary web browser, Fanfiction.net shouldn’t have any way to distinguish them from a person reading their stories.
And they are still being used. The author of the Fanfiction Downloader app noted that he had to disable the email-based interface of his app, except for emailing directly to Kindles, because after FLAG was blocked its load went from about 100 requests per day to more than 5,000 per hour. It seems there are a lot of people out there who would rather read fanfiction on their e-readers or mobile e-reader apps than from a web browser.
Hopefully Fanfiction.net will stop this foolishness and return to offering its works in the way readers want. It would be excellent if they released an API. But it seems unlikely this will happen if the site continues in its present stance. I suppose we’ll just have to see.
That’s an offshoot of the “mine! mine! mine!” school of thought. It’s possible that a number of fanfiction.net contributors have complained about incidents similar to the one you mention, not realizing that anyone can plagiarize anything — neither copyright nor DRM can truly protect you. (Incidentally, Ctrl-U isn’t the only way to circumvent the copy-paste protection. You can just as easily turn off Javascript, or save the page to disk. Or, hell, take a screenshot and run it through OCR. I think you can even do that on Android nowadays, so no kind of system restrictions truly work.)
No the real issue is that some people panic at the idea that anyone can trivially copy their hard work, not realizing that making a copy is absolutely necessary for even viewing digital content at all. Take this article for example — I already have a copy simply because I visited the web page, and so does every router between me and the server. That’s how it works. But many people don’t grasp this. They want control over the uncontrollable. And the only people who suffer are the genuine fans, those who just want to read your work more easily.
Keeping readers on the site so that ad impressions are maximized is the key to understanding this. Although absolute control is not possible as you point out, every little bit counts.
Even if all the FanFic web site wants to do is break even (charitable non-profit), they still have costs to cover. If they fail to do that they will eventually shuffle off to the dustbin of history.
Perhaps there is a better way of reaching and even exceeding that break even point. Having to solicit page views and ad impressions in order to sustain oneself has certainly degraded many aspects of modern life, journalism for example.
I agree with Frank that the page views and ad income are important. Fan fervor is nice, but it doesn’t pay the bills, and a site as big as fanfic.net must cost a bloody fortune to keep running.
Felix doesn’t factor in writer rights. If you give all the rights to the readers and those others who profit from the apps, etc., you destroy the ecology of the whole system because you deny those who are the reason for the ecology any form of control.
Also, the power of the fanfic.net platform is the interaction of the writers and readers because of their love of a particular media world and characters. By pulling readers away from the site by putting the stories on ereader devices, etc., much of that interaction is gone. That’s not good for either party.
@Marilynn. While I agree that fan interaction is good (I’m a fanfic writer myself), the problem is that fans are demanding ebook versions. I know of stories where potential readers say they won’t read a story if there isn’t a version downloadable to an ereader. Ultimately, writers want their books to be read, and the savvier fanfic writers have responded by archiving on AO3 or other sites where there is a downloadable version. At some point, you have to give your “customers” what they want or you’ll stop having customers.
I think part of the problem is that fanfic.net is a horrible website. In the words of one web designer “it’s a really, really suckily designed site.” You can’t get a story in one chunk. You have to read in chapters. That’s kind of hard to do when you don’t have internet access.
The google fanfic downloader was disabled shortly after flagfic. Yesterday evening, squeebook.net also stopped working (had been working all afternoon).
I understand ffnet not wanting to lose page views and advertising money (merely my own guess as to the motivation of their current path). Ffnet is a MASSIVE site, with very good functionality. I am not of the “I won’t pay for internet content” contingency. If the work is good and the service valuable, I don’t mind paying for it. That’s why I always donate for a good donate-ware utility, and why I always look for legal copies of software. I have got to imagine some compromise could be reached to fulfill the needs of the site, the authors and the readers. I would not object to having ads in my downloaded book, for example, or even paying a subscription fee for being able to download content. People have to keep the lights on after all. (We will leave the question whether or not authors deserve a small split of this money for a later time).
For all of the great functionality of ffnet, reading in a browser SUCKS! If you are reading an author with a fondness for long chapters, it is very easy to lose your place with an accidental screen tap. Never mind not being able to bookmark in the middle of a chapter and come back to it.
Even with the adjustability of the width of the text, it is still harder on the eyes than reading from a kindle. Never mind the glare of LCD display.
My kindle is lighter and easier to hold than my laptop, or even my iPad mini. After years of being in the Information Age, my wrists start to ache after a while.
Never mind being able to read at the pool, beach, park, or insert-outdoor-venue-here.
And then ALL of ffnet’s trouble is made useless, because safari’s Reading List functionality pulls and saves the stories without the ads. So all they have done is alienate masses of previously happy users, and have left the back door unlocked anyway.
Hopefully the heads of ffnet will spend some more time thinking of the massive push back from their users, and try to come up with something that takes into account our needs as well as their own.
I think FanFiction.net will soon go the way of publishing giant, Readers Digest.
Once read by millions, Readers Digest had a patriarchal administration that used and abused it’s customer base: it wasn’t the constant sweepstakes, it was their rigid morality that fed insipid stories and censorship.
There is little doubt that even large companies like FanFiction need to keep the lights on, but that won’t happen without an enlightened management. One that doesn’t force an agenda, but understands what those pesky adult fans want.
I am certain that FanFiction, like Readers Digest, suffers from a more endemic problem: hidebound policies, ineptly policed by extremist thinking.
The first signs started years ago when FanFiction Allowed openly racist and misogynistic forums to bully fandoms they don’t participate in, using grammar or poorly and unevenly applied TOS, without recourse, without review. This is as dangerous as book burning. Forums like The Literate Union (sic) work as administers within FanFiction, and export intolerance and bigotry within sock puppet forums.
The center will not hold, and there are many, many sites that can and will respond to their customer base’s needs.
The convenient blind eye speaks of their mistakes.
FanFiction does not apply their rules consistently, or fairly, and even cLaw complains about the administration turning a blind eye to popular, but rule breaking stories. For example:
cLaw has been petitioning hard to remove twific ‘Offside’ by Savage off the site for TOS abuses. Months go by, and it still stands, while others are gone within hours. At over 38,000 reviews alone, with readership in the millions, FanFiction turns a blind eye to Savage’s crimes, despite many claims of reporting by cLaw. FanFiction admins are clearly reluctant to lose the income, like they did when they forced out the millions of readers of ‘Fifty Shades of OMG Uterus!!!’. The Twilighted site was happy to welcome the millions of adult readers that followed IceQueensSnowDragon to a site that, yes features advertising, but also filters reading material by age of the register. Censorship is not hard when it’s applied in an appropriate way.
Whatever FanFiction wants to achieve through prudish reading policies, they have to be able to do the simple math regarding how many readers are over 18, and as adults, want fanfiction to speak to those sensibilities. How can you have, for example, a Sopranos fanfiction on such a squeamish site?
Why not address the concerns about underage reading by using a filter? Instead, they have a self reporting module that allows trolls, rather than sound policies, to manage their wide open site.
It will be a case study for future web business schools as they ask why did the giant fail? Millions of readers, so what went wrong? Trust me, A penchant for more advertising dollars will only be a a drop in the bucket of endemic issues compared to their high handed and shortsighted treatment of ‘offenders’. It will be the blind eye turned to the majority of their readers/customers being over eighteen, hounded out by self righteous trolls who abused civil rights, all under their watch.
This just like the fucked up changes on YouTube/Google are all part of the battle between big corporations vs big brother. Both sides want global control which is why Edwards Snowden took a big risk to revel information about the NSA spying and how facebook/Google/Microsoft.etc all have back door deals to send user information without you’re consent.
Fanfiction.net is likely being harassed by the NSA to give in to *The System* or being taken over by communist agents as all these rules are very communist not at all reflecting the will of the people.
It seems harmless now doing a few things here and a few things there but down the road it can and will be used to blackmail you even though “I’ve got nothing to hide” which is the popular excuse to give up privacy. We’ll see how well that turns out.
I hope more people like him speak out. I HATE globalism. with a capital H. I bet this post will be deleted because I am too close to the truth..
The only question remains is who will win global control. Big Corporations or Big Government? Neither choice offers freedom to start you’re own business or hobby.
I’ve been on fanfiction.net for 11 years now, I’ve seen changes come and go and this is by far the worst. Now I can understand the issue with plagiarism but this feels like a real knee jerk reaction and its really hurting the site. Plus something really bad is going on the site has constant problems and their not fixed.
Like today I updated a chapter but that not showing up, my review e-mails have not worked in four months since the update in September of last year, I’ve sent countless e-mails regarding the issue even posted on the blogs but been ignored. Its like there’s been a shift in attitude members are no longer important and I’m not just sounding off here I have had issues before I’ve sent off e-mails and they’ve been fixed ive even had reply’s.
It just doesn’t feel like the welcoming place it once was and it angers me because I love the site and the writers, but a part of me is thinking that if the fanfiction.net does not wake up and see the damage its doing to members someone will swoop in offering better and everyone will jump on ship.
@Silver, you’re right. It’s not as welcoming, which is why I joined Archive of Our Own. Now I just need to migrate all my stories. They are the easiest site to download from.
Well I have to say it was a major blow having these get taken out cause a lot of stories get taken down for various reason, or forget what a certain story was and you want to read it again. Like for instance Esama’s stories, yes the author removed them and I really wish I had gotten a copy of their updated stories as even if they were not going to be updated I loved reading them… So that brings back to them being removed, we have no way of saving copies of these stories before they are lost.
I loved using Flagfic as it was easy and I could do epub types for my reader of completed stories. So I am pissed with how Fanfic.net has been going in the last year or so, it really killed my writing muse, granted im not that great at writing but that really not the point. If I a novice lost the muse what of all those Great writers that quit because of all this? I know a good number of authors that high tailed it off the site.
So I hope some time soon we can find a site that wont back down from such things as FF seems to have been doing, after all they used to be an awesome site, now well I wouldnt still be on there if there was another site like it that gets updated as much as FF does, and while Ao3 is growing it is kinda hard to just browse it’s stories…
*crosses fingers* Here is hoping better news for us Readers and Writers of Fanfiction out there, for this year.
Despite being a heavy FFN reader for more than a decade, I’ve been spending most of my time elsewhere, especially on AO3 for most of a year now. This is due to FFN’s lack of ability to create a printable document, the lack of search parameters (which has just recently been updated, much to my delight before this latest blow), and its stringent fic requirements that caused many fics to be unable to be posted, or to be removed sporadically. As I lack internet at my home, I need to be capable of downloading my reading material onto my ipod touch and be able to access it with the text to voice program I use as a library. With this latest move forcefully blocking FLAG, I have found myself not using FFN anymore at all. Even Fanfiction Downloader is only useable on Kindle and PC. AO3 has picked up the slack where FFN has dropped the ball: lots of search options, customizable tags, a rating system that includes just about anything an author wishes to post, an ability to bookmark fics outside of the site as well as within, and best of all: an in-site option to concatenate the chapters into a single printable document. FFN has become as depressing and frustrating as the long list of uncompleted abandoned fics it hosts. Perhaps its readership should become just as bleak until they give their site an overhaul!
I highlight the text as I read it in order to keep track of where I am on the page, it was SUPER annoying when fanfiction.net removed the ability to select text on the page. I made a quick chrome extension to get rid of the restriction 😉
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/selectable/jcidlhgdoojamkbpmhbpgldmajnobefd/details
I am an avid reader and a I read a lot of Harry Potter stories. I used to read them online (mostly on ff.net actually as their site has lots of stories and has good readability. A lot of other sites have wonderful colors such as red writing on a dark background. It looks beautiful but it’s a horror to the eyes. Or they have such tiny fonts that it’s just too much strain for me to bother with it.) Two years ago I bought a Kindle and was overjoyed when I could download the stories to it. For one thing I already spend 8 hours a day in front of the computer at work and also some more time while tending to my long-time-online games, so I really like to rest my eyes a bit when reading on the Kindle. Also I can take my kindle with me wherever I go and a lot of times I read when I don’t have access to a computer.
I would be willing to pay a fee for being able to download the stories I want to my kindle (I also gave a donation to flagfic as such things clearly should be supported) but if I can’t download the stories to my kindle, they will not get read anymore. Even my favorite authors will have to do without my reading them nowadays.
@Lira, Most web browsers enable you to override the font choices made by web site developers so as to better suit your own needs. Here’s an example for Chrome but you should be able to find the equivalent for all major web browsers: https://code.google.com/p/openpub/
TWCS (9) , Twiwrite (7), and Twilighted (2) all have different skins that allow you to change backgrounds. You can change them by going into My Account, Edit Preferences. On TWCS, I use dotnet or vision on my phone and kindle. Works great.
I abandoned FFn in the summer of 12 when they did a huge purge of stories thanks to the trolls of LU and cLan along with the allowing of guest reviews along with removing the ability of authors to block these guest trolls were just a couple of the reasons I left. Even without FFn, I’m never without something to read. Primarily I’m on TWCS and blogs, but have a TBR list for A03, Twiwrite, Twilighted, and FictionPad if I ever run out of TWCS material.
Storymaster still works on FFn as well. http://storymaster.the-code-monkey.com/ You may have to wait if the queue ahead of your request is large, but I still get my stuff eventually and it can send directly to your kindle if you set it up.
I’m really pissed with ff.net. They upped the advertising and as many other commenters hvae already noted, this doesn’t stop piracy, it just makes it harder for genuine fand to read works. I used to only write/read fic on ff.net, but this recent action has cayused me to explore other options, namely Ao3. If they keep this up, I’m sure many others will continue to go my way. (It also helps that Ao3 allows explicit material, and ff.net is a big baby and censors everything.)
Its interesting that these people are getting all proprietary about fanfiction – like it is their own property – when, in simple matter of fact, these are stories written anybody BUT them.
They’re demanding ownership of hundreds of other people’s writing? That’s just twisted – crooked. I’ll use ANYTHING to get the amateurs stories these guys are trying to claim as their own – trying to steal.
jp
theres an incredibly easy solution to the problem with the ads though: get google chrome, and install the ad blocker app/extension. and voila no more adds on fanfiction.net, youtube, deviantart, or just about anywhere else for that matter. its extremely effective, just get the free version, its all you’ll need
I for myself never did gave much of a fuck about ffn’s “policy” (idiocy would be more appropriate) of forbidding to make offline copies. Like you said, it’s trivially easy to copy, I made a primitive script to pirate a story off ffn and convert it into formats I use on my pc (pdf) or my phone (epub).
how do I read all the episodes of oakdale continues starting with number 1