So. Yesterday's PLN to go seeking publishers/agents went awry. Why? Because yet another instance of site skimming apps cropped up and this time, I had to take action.
Site skimmer apps are more or less little bots that go through other sites' content and present it as their own. Some are little more than cosmetic windows by which users can interface with the site, others... copy without permission.
What they all do is remove traffic from the origin site, so statistics for that site take a nose dive if the app gets popular. For a site funded entirely by user donations, this could mean death for AO3.
No traffic means that the apps don't transmit that AO3 is doing a funding drive. No funds means that the legal team defending all the fanfics on there can't do their jobs. No funds also means that updates and functionality don't happen.
No funds, in the extreme case, means no AO3.
So I did my bit. I reported every suspected fanfiction site skimmer I could find in Google Play and I spent most of my afternoon locking every single fanfiction I've written from outside view.
Why?
- It is illegal to make a profit from fanfiction. Especially where I am.
- If my fanfics are found on a for-profit app, some dullard in the executive wing could easily conclude that I am making profit from this app.
- Which, in turn, means I could go to jail for a crime someone else committed.
- Site skimmer apps, as outlined above, are some shade of light evil and I refuse to enable them by inaction.
- Locking a fic to AO3 members only prevents other site skimmers I may have missed from using any of my fics for the aforementioned light evil.
Sometimes, it's the little, seemingly harmless things that cause big problems. For want of a nail and all that noise.
Today, though, Mayhem has work, and I shall use that time to collect my "ice cream ration" aka six halo tops and something TRULY sinful from the sugary edge of the tub collection. You know. For the 'day off' Keto. Sometime in the middle of everything, I shall find the most likely to like my bullshit and jump through their hoops as I send Adapting off to potentially yet another rejection.
Four rejections to go.
You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to collect 52 rejections from #MSWL after this arbitary thing. Once a week. Pick a person. Send it. Don't even bother waiting. Repeat next week.
If that doesn't work, then I'm officially toast and using GoFundMe to get my other books edited at minimum.
52 rejections per book. Let's go. The way I write? I'm never running out of material.
Sooner or later, this is going to work.
I can't know I've failed until I've failed my whole life.
[Shown here: A clump of hair on some grass. There is definitely enough there to make a cat]