Stolen Artworks/Comics Behind Paywalls

[Romirom]

Hey guys,

There is one thing that doesn't leave me alone. I tried to ignore it but I have to get it off my chest and maybe someone made the same experience.

It's about various sites like romcomics, svscomics or xxxcomics. I found some of my works there, which I don't mind since they were uploaded to Pixiv and Slushe by me anyway. What bothers me is that the site owners of these pages hide all image files behind "get premium to download" buttons, which indirectly earns them money even if they only shorten the links.


Isn't that piracy? What do you think about that? Is there a way to avoid it or do you think I should let it just happen and move on?

 

[Sed]

It's a form of theft, and illegal.
But it's also near impossible to stop. It is not worth the effort to try, and there is some chance that it would not be in your best interests anyway.
You do gain some exposure, and your work reaches a larger audience because of them, sometimes.

It's a bit of a kick in the nuts to see someone else profit from your work, especially if you haven't, I know. But going after them, or getting upset, is not going to change or help anything.

I made some free games years ago, and to this day I can find them on a number of shady game-sites. Especially russian and asian ones.
There is nothing I could do, even if I wanted to. Since I didn't make the games for income, I'm just happy to see more people playing them.

 

[Romirom]

Thanks for sharing this with me. It really helps me to understand how to handle this situation.

I never knew how I should feel about it. At first I felt pretty honored and proud but about a year later I couldn't stop thinking about it since I found more and more images on those sites.

Sometimes I think it could be bots because they get the same image on every site pretty much on the same day.

 

[MissFortune]

It's not really illegal, nor is it piracy seeing as you had it up for free. They aren't claiming ownership of it, nor are they selling the products. Just mirroring your content on premiums hosts. It's really no different than you, yourself, using something like Adfly to link to your games. Said user puts the game/comics up for free, they put it up behind a paywall of sorts. It's easy profit, and one of the oldest tricks out there in the age of the internet. Look at some older YouTube videos on how to pirate Photoshop or something along those lines. All of them used adfly or something of the sort, because they know people will click on the links. Easy money. It's as the proverb goes, 'don't hate the player, hate the game,'. It's pretty easy to get passed that paywall with a Debrid service (Real-Debrid, All Debrid, etc.), which is basically able to unlock premium accounts without having to pay for every website. You also get the side benefit of free tv/movies with it.

That being said, your comics on there have nearly five thousand combined downloads. That's five thousand people who may not have known about you otherwise. Maybe one of those people signed up to your subscribestar because of it, or you have more lurkers reading your material than you think because of that. Point is, people are going to hustle however they can. You nor any authority will ever be able to control it. if you keep focusing/stressing on it, it's just going to eat at you and that's not doing you any good at the end of the day.

You're far better off just embracing the fact that people/new audiences are reading/viewing your content. It's just easier at the end of the day.

 

[Romirom]

I'm not a huge artist with hundreds of dollar income every month. I always thought those people will get their stuff stolen for making money out of it because it's more lucrative. I wasn't aware of this situation and never thought that it would hit me one day.

Like I said before, it's a weird feeling to see your own artworks showing up on shady sites.

 

[anne O'nymous]

It's not really illegal, nor is it piracy seeing as you had it up for free.

It is totally illegal. There's really few countries where one can distribute the works of another without the explicit permission to do it. And, no, the fact to make your works available for free do not mean that you authorize anyone to the distribute it.
It's also totally piracy. There's no need to ask for a compensation, monetary or not, for an action to be qualified as piracy. The sole fact to distribute something without the consent of its creator is enough in regard of the law of most countries.

This being said, the named sites are, like here, piracy sites. Therefore it's not surprising that they are offering pirated content. The main difference with f95zone is that they focus on making money more than they focus on offering a service to the community, what explain the premium content.
Yet, when you think about it, here also there's premium content, since you can't access the links if you aren't a registered member. It's just that, once again, F95Zone not focusing on the money, this free registration is all what is needed to access the whole content without restriction.

 

[Sed]

It's not really illegal, nor is it piracy seeing as you had it up for free. They aren't claiming ownership of it, nor are they selling the products. Just mirroring your content on premiums hosts. It's really no different than you, yourself, using something like Adfly to link to your games. Said user puts the game/comics up for free, they put it up behind a paywall of sorts. I

That is entirely false.
In most nations, all Western ones, this is a form of IP theft and against the law.

an original work is automatically protected by copyright the moment you create it.

you control how it is used in order to protect its value. Others who want to use the work have to buy or otherwise get your permission.

These sites that use our stories or games without permission, and without the IP being released under an Open or PD licence, are breaking the law.
That is not an opinion, it is an easy to verify fact.