Piracy and ways to fight it

Last night, I found that a lot of authors on this site are having their pay site content leaked on a site called kemono party. I did a couple of hours of research and found at least 21 authors are having there site leaked. This pisses me off, so I want this thread to be about how to combat piracy. The problem is, I'm not tech savvy, not software savvy, not 'anything relevant' savvy. I'm going to post the few things I've found online, but if anyone with actual know how can recommend better methods or finds anything I quote here bullshit, then please, @ me and I'll either quote your advise here or remove false/ineffective information here.

So, let's start with the most useful bit of info I've found. From here we get this comment.

This seems to be pretty effective way to combat piracy, though very work intensive.

Another way I've seen artist combat this, is that they don't post their content on Patreon but instead post it on discord, drop box, etc. while the patreon gives you access to said site. This doesn't seem very secure and looks like it's just a delaying method, but I'm sure it works in some capacity if they bother with it. However, I'm just as sure it's a method that'll be eventually breached.

Honestly, I think this is the recommended way to protect pay site content for those that don't have the time to go through the more thorough way, but if it's breached you should probably use said thorough method.

You may have noticed I haven't mentored any method for subscribestar. That's because there wasn't information I could find on that, so I don't know if patreon methods will work on it or other pay sites. I will say subscribestar can also be leaked, but I don't know if it's more, relatively, secure then patreon it is with such a small sample size that I've went through (I spent a couple hours on Patreon content creators then started to flag when I switched to subscribestar, so I've only checked a little of that).

If anyone knows if subscribestar and other pay sites users can also use the above methods, or if they need unique methods, then again, please @ me and I'll quote you here.

That's all I have for now.

Edit: I didn't think to do this, but now that I realized it, it's important to make clear the intent behind this thread. At the end of the day, I don't have the power to make you practice anti-piracy. I never will, I don't think I ever should.

What I want to do is give the choice on what to do with piracy to creators, because it seems the majority of creators have been kept ignorant on it. I want to spread information on what is happening to a creators content to said creator and I want to give them tips on anti-piracy measures that they can use at there own discretion. To have a fighting chance.

Again, to reiterate, I don't seek to dictate, I seek to give choice.

 

This is awkward, but have you considered that some users (eg. me) would want way for paid contents to be bypassed, and thus have interest for site like that to continue?

 

And I hold no sympathy for that sentiment. It is theft of a creator's content and threatens their financial stability. An author I know on this site is staking their livelihood on patreon and theft of their content puts them in danger. I really don't see how ruining people's lives is worth access to media.

 

Let's suppose I don't have money to pay for paywall. So, earning from me would be zero, because I can't afford your good. I then get your paywalled contents. Since it's digital, and it's probably paid by someone else anyway, the cost of hosting and transmission is zero. Therefore, whether I get your contents or not you'll get zero either way.

Suppose you make it trickier to pirate. But it wouldn't just make it tricky for us who hoist the jolly roger flag; it'll also make it trickier for your paid readers to access, and complicate the maintenance.

There is a long, long, history of huge corps doing the same thing, to the point now they completely refuse to let their product go, and when the corps died so does their products, the one your readers paid for; why do you think it doesn't apply to you?

EDIT: Practically, I don't think limiting contents on digital distribution is entirely possible. It's cost-benefit; there'll always be a gap, because computer and internet is build with assumption copying and transmitting is really easy. The more you try to move away from this, the harder and more effort will be required. And the more you'll have to sacrifice comfort or convenience, which is the entire reason why you can do the thing you now can do (publishing stuff easily so the whole world can see it, isn't that amazing and kind of crazy?)

 

Are you saying that it's a net neutral to pirate? That acts under the assumption that you are the only one accessing the pirated content, which is flat out ridiculous. I don't there's think ever a "only one" case, so it's always a net negative.

I do think this is a reasonable point, but one only relevant the further anti-piracy measures are taken. While yes, it will be a bit inconvenient in the first measures, it will discourage most piracy attempts. To put it simply, most people are lazy, so the harder it is to pirate, the less likely it will be pirated. There will always be that one determined guy, however, that will go through as much trouble to pirate.

That won't happen in most cases, at least at the start, but I'm guessing it will eventually happen.

At that point, it will be a war of escalating measures until it's too inconvenient for the actual patrons to get content for them to stay around. I don't know what some one should do to practice anti-piracy at that point, my uninformed guess being to switch up methods to start back to square one. But if that fails, the lesser evil I can offer is rolling over and letting the pirates have their way while relying on the generosity and ignorance of others. It fucking sucks, but that's the only way to make money at that point.

Anyway, initial measures to counteract piracy is not likely to be a deal breaker for most patrons. It's not that much of an inconvenience and if some become a patron without knowing of anti-piracy measures before hand, they're likely to buckle down and deal with it, because while most people are lazy, most people also want their money's worth.

Of course, if it reaches a certain point they'll want a refund, as stated above, but that's dependant on how far the patreon, or other pay site, creator is willing to make anti-piracy convenient, also as stated above.

And I think the effort should at least be made, though that's up to Patreon creators themselves, to stymie piracy. Yes it will not be guaranteed to be effective, yes it will rely on luck to not be targeted further, and yes it may lead to a never ending war that could lead to giving up or loss of any income. That doesn't stop the fact that the author should be able to protect their content as much as they want. The author should be able to look out for their financial stability, not be discouraged to even try.

 

Nah, I assume there are others like me, who can't afford it for any sort of reason. The creation of works have cost; but it is necessarily limited, because after that everything is (more or less) free. So long the creators can recoup the cost plus necessities, everything else is gravy.

If you increase your effort, you still get zero from them. As said; either way, they don't pay to you. While you expend more effort to prevent it.

You can't say you're concerned about creators' financial stability when in the same sentence you also said this should be done, even if it'll decrease their earning.


Perhaps your objection isn't finance, but morality? That pirating is wrong? That it should be righted, even if it'll cost effort and earning?

 

I'm ignorant of the statistics here. I don't think there any statistics avaliable in any case. Anyway, I highly doubt that the majority of people pirating can't afford to rightfully gain content, although that's also an unprovable gut feeling. I'll just have to rely on the fact that a lot of people are uncaring and callous, that they'll do evil if it's convenient and they can justify to themselves that "it's not that bad" or "it's their fault they did x".

In any case, from the perspective of pirating because you can't afford legitimate access, I can see that view point and in some cases even agree with it (see: the ridiculous pricings needed to buy old games, thus the need for emulation). However, it still supports content theft, and while I personally don't care if that happens to big, faceless, corporations, I care when it's an actual threat to people.

On the other hand, you do raise a good point of the statistics of pirates. Discarding morality and being practical, if the majority of pirates are simply those that can't pay, then it would not be cost beneficial to practice anti-piracy.

That all hinges on whether it's true, however, and if a source can't be provided then it's a moot point. It would just be relying on gut instinct and anecdotes. Unless an author can know for sure their pirates have no effect on their earnings, I don't see anything impractical with practicing anti-piracy.

The only way to see what is cost beneficial or not would be to eye ball it and then it should be up to the creators discretion what to do.

At the end of the day, creators should be informed of piracy of their content and ways to deal with, wether they bother with them or not should also be up to them.

The whole reason I made this thread is to balance the playing board. I'm not going to badger creators to practice anti-piracy, it's up to them to decide what to do with their content. But it seems like most creators are ignorant that they are being, or at risk of being, pirated. I want them to know and I want them to have the choice to use anti-piracy.

Edit: on second thought, and I feel dumb for not considering this sooner, are you telling me that the average pay site is too expensive? How is 1$, 5$, hell, even 10$ a month expensive? Unless your telling me that the majority of pirates are just barely scraping by and need to carefully spend their money to survive, this is flat out ridiculous.

No, the average pirate can not be that poor with just how many there are. Most are simply callously evil.

 

There are studies on Movies, TV Series, and Manga, with the result of it being mixed. I don't know if there's one for web content, however.

The second is, well, I don't know, do you want to be the sort of person that prevent others from enjoying your works? Sure they don't pay for it, but they do enjoy your work. Is that the sort of person you want to be?

It's not unusual pirate is preferable not because of price, but because of convenience. From time to time I see Japanese' creator works get plundered because they require so much hoop to jump around. Go to this social media, click on this link, click on link on this page after doing this, do a barrel roll, etc. You get the point, I'm sure.

The notion of balancing the playing board is a load of shit. There are powerful interest that really really want to be no piracy. They have all the funds. And if they get their way, they'll round all the creators in pens and charge admission to enter.

 

Holy... are- are you actually saying this? Are you seriously using a strawman argument? Just, you do know right that I can't take you seriously anymore. If your going to resort to a fallacy and name calling, than you're no longer someone I can debate with.

Just... wow. I've never really debated online before, so this is very new.

Anyway, goodbye.

 

In time past, way before ffnet exist, there are many authors that tries to defend their work so much, they sued people that write fanfic about them. Nowadays most authors are pretty chill about this, but we still remember the time for it.

Less obliquely, that's how your action will be perceived. Generally just paywall is fine; something that allow hopping them like kemono.party, usually, are rather patchy and unreliable, unless your pirate is very very motivated and into your works (which just mean they like your works and want to spread them more, or people like your work so much distributing them for free giving them prestige - both a nice problem to have).

 

Keep in mind that it's a balancing act between keeping your content secure and having it be accessible to the client. Added to this is once it's online then sooner or later it will be accessible outside of your control.

In my opinion, your best bet is to focus on finding a system that balances everything out well enough then not worry about it. If you go too far to prevent access then you'll gain a reputation that would be more damaging to get more clients. This in my opinion is worse then worrying about those who would either pirate or ignore your works. In the end there's no perfect solution. This is much worse with writing over games as well because it's a bigger problem.

 

There's another issue about paygating content which is that for some of us monetary limitation might not be the only problem with paying.

For example, there are a number of loli artists I like, but I cannot pay using anything linked to my legal identity because in my country that would be most unwise (and in cases where it's written content, that doesn't make it any safer to pay). So I have the option of filesharing (with anonymization precautions) or nothing.

Until artists like these wake up and start offering anonymous payment methods on platforms that enable those, then I have no other option.

Another consideration is that anyone willingly going above & beyond to implement DRM in my book is someone worth blacklisting, because that's extremely harmful in the long run and a complete disregard of my freedom in computing.

Generally I stand by these: Remuneration of artistic work doesn't require copyright and there are some major problems with copyright's fundamental conceits.

 

I think you were never poor and had to consider every coin you spend to juggle the few luxuries you can afford. Not to mention that not everyone who consumes the content lives in the US or UK. Some people live in countries with low wages or currencies with low purchase power. 10$ might be half an hour of work to you, for someone else it's half a day's work. Children and Teenagers also might not want to blow half their allowance for 3 advanced chapters.

That said, not everyone who pirates is poor. Some people don't have access to the payment methods, don't want it to show up in their bank statements, or simply don't want to pay.

 

Look, your game will be pirated no matter what. It's inevitable. The goal isn't to prevent piracy, it's to provide reasons why people should buy your game instead of pirating it. If it's a good quality product at a reasonable price and easy to access then people will be much more willing to purchase your product. It's why Steam is so massively popular. Yes, you could get all those PC games for free but it would be a complicated process and Steam makes it both really easy and pretty cheap to buy those games. There's a reason people go to farmers markets despite it being a lot more expensive than your regular grocery store, and it's not because the quality of produce is necessarily better. It's because they like to support small and local businesses. Market your game well, make it a reasonable price and easy to access, and you will get plenty of people lining up to buy your game. Trying to stop piracy completely is a fool's errand.

 

Kemono party doesn't touch or barely touch small content creators from any category/genre.
It doesn't matter if you are in the right and you are within your right to demand takedowns, people will take it the wrong way and turn spiteful.
You ranting or complaining won't help because you are provoking people to do it more just to get a reaction out of you. Or even make you quit all together.

So still you are within your right to fight off piracy but do it quietly or dont make a big deal out it.

Whenever paid stuff is concerned piracy will always be present

 

This thread basically:

 

Fighting piracy isn't really something all that easy, digital things that aren't free are going to be pirated. At most you can cut some of the avenues by contacting webmasters and complaining, reporting it, suing if you can afford the lawyer and so on but even then there's going to be ways to get around it; sites hosted in countries that don't give a fuck, torrents and so on.

I think the best bet is to just shrug it off as publicity hoping some of the pirates like your work enough to purchase the advanced chapters to support it.

Also probably couldn't hurt to diversify your revenue stream; there are sites like cafepress where you can do custom tshirts, mugs and stuff of your book/signature and picture or whatever you want. You can add on a tip jar as well, and maybe even give commissions a shot and so on.

 

It shows. Lemme go over a few things real quick for you.

Copyright infringement is not stealing. There is a very distinct difference in that copying something does not deprive the first person of the original. Confusing the issue just makes people annoyed and less likely to take you seriously.

Business models that rely on selling something that is easy to copy are broken and they cannot be fixed without either going full totalitarian or regressing technology massively. If you rely on those outdated business models then you are an idiot. If your patreon rewards only involve access to content that can be trivially copied then you are doing it wrong.

Law surrounding copyright is utterly fucked up. It has been insane since the Berne Convention in 1886 somehow decided to set a minimum copyright duration of author's life plus 50 years. This has given copyright infringers the moral high ground by default ever since, and things have only gotten worse since then.

The overwhelming majority of "anti-piracy" measures only make things inconvenient for non-infringers and the likely outcomes are to either encourage infringement or make it more likely for you to languish in obscurity. Once something digital is copied once it can be trivially copied again. Effort put into "anti-piracy" measures is generally better put towards moving away from broken business models.

 

I'm just sitting here watching this whole thing go down.

 

Piracy will win. Internet is a lousy place. If one down, another will popped up replacing it place. It's because the demand is huge. If you want to stop piracy, you should stop the demand. Which is in my opinion is impossible. Like anime piracy some years back. Japanese government is proactive in fighting them, but still the whole pirating operation didn't stop. It's easier to turn the other cheeks.

 

There are 4 groups of people who consume pirated media.

The people who won't pay, ever.
The people who can't afford it, but might pay if they could.
The people who are looking for new stuff, but don't want to pay for a trial.
The people who would pay you, but something else is a deal breaker.

#1 is irrelevant. That group will move to something else before you get money out of them.
#2 fucks up pricing schemes. Getting a price they will pay is too hard, or damages other customer bases. 10k people paying a dollar is better than 30k people paying 10 cents, etc. It's pretty hard to try to get at this group without complex pricing schemes, and those are out of reach for small content.
#3 is hard to identify and access. Some of these people will pay you after the fact in some way, some won't. Free demos, trials, etc, can help but it is hard to tell how much.
#4 is a mechanic of how hard it is to access your content. Access methods, payments methods, DRM, etc. The harder you try to lock down your content the bigger you make this group, but you do also put some limits on unauthorized reproduction in the process. I don't think they are generally very effective limits, though.

The thing to realize is that most of the pirates aren't lost sales. They are people who would never have paid you anyway, or are too expensive to turn into customers. And working too hard to try to prevent that means you are funneling people into group 4, which is the only group that most small creators have any real control over.

 

Purposely blocking them off also inherently suggests "the poor have no cultural or societal value", which I find to be both wrong and a very dangerous suggestion.

If an artist thinks that way, it is also a good cause for blacklisting them as far as I'm concerned.

 

The average Patreon creator earns between $300 and $1500 per month. "What about poor people" - the average Patreon creator is a poor person!

These aren't "powerful interests", nobody's talking about Disney or Warner Bros. Make like Robin Hood and rob the rich, no one cares.

If you're sitting there trying to figure out whether it's better to pay your utilities or your rent late, or how much more you can cut down your grocery bill, so is the person whose art or novel you are pirating. If you're going to pirate from a poor person, at least have the decency to respect their attempts to feed themselves while you do the same.

 

You ever hear of the Streisand Effect?

Yeah. Dozens to hundreds of people who had no idea people were pirating stories now know that this is a thing.

Multi-billion dollar industries haven't been able to stop piracy, you aren't going to be able to. People who want to support you will keep doing so. Just accept it and move on. If someone pirated a story, that is NOT a lost sale, because they weren't going to pay anyways.

I understand this may be frustrating for you, but the .party sites are run by people from 4chan and there's basically nothing you can do about it. I don't even think their servers are hosted in the US.

 

In addition to what others have said, another issue is that most of the patreon content from people on this site happens to be fanfics. If you want to talk about violating copyright then making money off someone else's intellectual property versus accessing a copy for free probably does not go in favor of the fanfic given the legal precedent against completely free and unmonetized fanfics. I can't speak for everyone old enough to remember when original authors did that more regularly, but I certainly eye the people making money off fanfic and wonder when a self-absorbed author with too much money to spend on a non-profitable lawsuit is going to bring the legal hammer down on them and catch others with the collateral.

 

This. To put this into perspective, I had never heard of Kemono Party before I stumbled on this thread. Therefore, I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to NameOrdane for telling me that this site exists, so that I might go and check it out. If he hadn't gone and made this thread, I would continue to have been blissfully ignorant of the site's existence.

 

I think that the definitive answer on digital piracy was made by Neil Gaiman, a far more widely read author than any of us can hope to be.



If there is an affordable, accessible option most people will buy the legitimate media, including many of the people who initially pirated the media.

I think that most content creators on this site and others are far more concerned about people posting their work under a different name (taking credit for it) than any amount of piracy

 

I don’t know when Patreon stopped being a subscription-based crowdfunding source and became just another way to sell a product, but I don’t like it and you can’t make me like it.

 

Seeing as there are multiple guys on this site making 4 figures and the type of content this site is known for, it's only a matter of time before an author takes offense to their IP being associated with QQ.