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YiffParty Content Leak by INKtiger
Hey guys, I just wanted to address something thats been popping up alot in my notes and messages lately. I am aware that my Patreon content is being stolen and leaked to Yiffparty.com. Unfortunately I can't do anything about it, I have contacted the site in the past and taken DMCA complaints against them. Nothing comes of it. I cannot afford a lawyer to fight this problem, I am a freelance artist making barely Minimum wage and sometimes not even that. The owner of the site has openly admitted they don't care about hurting creators in anyway. And the site continues to flood my inbox with spam to this day for trying to have my content removed from their site.
You can make the argument that if you put your work on the internet, it will inevitably be stolen and reposted. You can also make the argument that people going to these sites would never give money to keep your art coming to the internet freely anyway so there's no harm done to creators in stealing from them in this way. Am I frustrated by my art being reposted? Yes of course I am, sends me into a rage every time I'm reminded of it, and being completely unable to do anything about it at all is upsetting and discouraging.
So I see 2 options here.
A: Keep creating and working in the job I love, improving my skills and abilities and providing as much art as I can on the internet and inviting the people who like my work and want to see more to support me on my Patreon and keep it coming. Offer commissions and YCH's as much as I'm able to provide custom content and a regular income for myself and my family. Go to conventions to meet people and offer my art services and merch to those interested in obtaining both.
OR
B: Give up, and stop sharing my artwork online completely. Get a job somewhere doing whatever I can, and maybe find some time here and there to doodle something just for myself and my loved ones. No more commissions, no more pin-ups, nothing shared where people are going to take it for themselves.
Frankly, I'm choosing A. I love making art, I'm driven to do it day in and day out, long hours and struggles and tears and frustrations. My wife has been so supportive of my Career in art and the idea of me having to give it up makes her break down and cry. I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN MY WIFE CRIES! I'm an artist, thats all there is to it.
So thank you so much for bringing the leaks to my attention. If there was something I could do I would, but I'm powerless here. And thats why it really makes me feel so special to have the Patron's I have, helping to keep my head above water so I can continue to do what I love and share it with them and with all of you. I've been given a mighty gift of support, and I couldn't be more grateful for it.
~Ty
Update checking through the page, it seems Yiffparty is gleaning pretty much only the public content for now, though they are actively asking for a supporter to please leak the reward packs to them. https://www.dropbox.com/s/nv7n68l6in2nyjw/Screen%20Shot%202018-03-17%20at%207.37.33%20AM.png?dl=0
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Comments
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This is rough. I'm sorry that you're constantly upset by the emails and have the wound keep opening like this after trying to stand up for yourself. I believe in you, that you can keep going on and making art! Regardless of bottom feeders, you can tow the line with your own content. They won't be able to have your creativity or vision.
Convention-only deals can curb the online scavenging. Gathering a group to collectively lawsuit with a DMCA violation is a possibility. Perhaps spending a few months scouting people who have also had this happen to them, and then spending a bit making an action plan to raise money, or save up all together. I know for a fact that there are places geared towards helping these situations, called Dispute Resolution Centers. There is a local one in my city, and perhaps there is one near another person hurt by Y*ffParty. They council individuals and often provide or direct people to mediators. Public resources are your best friend in this case, including artistic advocacy. If you're feeling alone in it, there's resources out there.
Keep on keeping on with the Patreon. And may your wife cry no more!!
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Is the site in the US? Because if so, you could go over their heads and DMCA their hosts, see where that gets you.
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I know the that the site only scrapes posts, and it looks like you send pretty much everything to people via PM's so there is not much that ends up on the site, still crappy, but methods like yours mitigate any sort of scraping.
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The strange part is, I have the Charge up front feature, so anyone even able to view content, is only able to do so if they are pledging support. I don't like the idea of a supporter leaking content I've given them, but maybe that's the case here.
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Possibly, but looking at the wikifur page it sounds like it may be bots that have found a way past it.
"In 2016, Patreon introduced a "charge upfront" feature for creators, which allows creators who have been registered for more than a month to charge new patrons upfront for access to content, as opposed to making access instantly available and making the first charge on the following month. Creators who enabled this feature were immune to yiff.party's scraping bots, until April 2017, when yiff.party implemented a "post importer", allowing users who are pledged to a creator on Patreon to import the posts they have access to, effectively bypassing the charge upfront restriction. "
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Based on what I dug up the site uses saved cookies to basically access the page. So the leakers also have to be supporters, but it also has to be renewed every so often, because it expires. So it is also not always up to date. I am sure there are users who have had stuff on yiff.party whose stuff has not been updated in years.
It is also tedious to get to it and require one to jump through multiple hoops to even get to the site proper because if you type it in like normal you just get an image of some kind. So it is also just hard to get to if you don't know what to look for and which links to follow. And yeah I went digging for it to see how the site was set up, and surprisingly they actually try to encourage people to go support on Patreon, and a lot of artists seem to have methods already mitigating the scraping.
So it seems like a double edged sword, because it uses cookies, it means that if a patron is only supporting only at a small tier it can't get the big tier stuff, and it could also be a means for people to preview an artists Patreon to see if they want to support. So I guess silver-linings?
Yeah it is not great that people do it, but I don't think as many people use it as it made to seem, and if artists have a Patreon that they run "fairly" without paywalling literally everything, it makes this sort of behavior less likely.
An example would be Fluff-Kevlar who IMO has one of the best set up Patreons and he puts a lot of work into and he still shares a lot of the art posted there, with a slight delay 2-4 weeks. But he also doesn't care as much of his stuff ends up out there, but his system had made links of things only good for 30 days if it is bundled thing in Dropbox, one to save space and two,force people to ask for the bundles if they do sub, but he also gives the option to outright buy the packs without needing to pledge on Patreon. So there are a lot of gears turning, but honestly I don't think there is a ton to worry over especially if you use methods that don't post things directly to the Patreon page/feed.
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Very true, went delving in myself earlier and I'm relieved it seems to mostly be the public stuff on there. I'm going to start scheduling a huge delay on the public posts so they'll come out way after anything that is released to the public already has been. And while their actively asking for a supporter to please leak my content to them, I can breathe a bit easier about it all now. I feel incredibly bad for my friends who have only recently signed up for Patreon as the CUF feature is only randomly given out at this point and they don't have it yet.
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If you make the delay too long,that could also be a double edged sword, it is hard balancing act for sure. But I don't think they are asking to sign up to leak things, the wording seems to indicate that hey, you are getting this for free, but if you truly like this content you should sign up. And I am sure there are people who have used it to help make the decision of if they should support. That is generally how I see it being used a lot of the time, because people can't support every artist they watch,
For as much as people freak out over it, I think also determines if it gets leaked. Though I guess Fluff-Kevlar would be a great example of how to handle things, because he his stuff gets posted to u-18chan and he has commented a few times and actually appreciates the criticism that people anonymously give on the site. So I think artist behavior has a lot to do with it too, and generally if you kind of acknowledge it will happen, but don't freak out about it start acting erratically, most artists are will be fine.
I though the CUF feature was their thing that auto pulled posts every so often. I am not 100% certain.
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The delay won't affect anything except when the post goes public, allowing the bots to then steal it, my patrons can still see it immediately when it's posted up.
I assume CUF means Charge Up Front but I could be wrong. I personally don't think I'm freaking out about the site stealing and I'm well aware other sites do it too, I'm just trying to make people aware that I know about it, so they can stop sending me warnings and heads up notices about the site.
Artist behavior towards things will always be part of how the community the good and the bad treats you of course. Fluff has done well to turn some part of it into a positive thing for him as a while. He has a very successful Patreon and I'm glad he's doing so well with it, I was studying his page and adopting a lot of what he did to my own page in ways that suit my own methods of working. It's awesome to see a peering doing to well!-
I can only imagine getting those notices would get annoying after a while, and yeah, I am not sure.
And I think that is what I have noticed, is that artist's who respond more or less positively to what is happening even if it is not the greatest thing can definitely set a different tone. I have seen artists who have literally gone in the opposite direction of Fluff in terms of how they approach this sort of stuff and it usually doesn't go as well.
But I am glad you at least have a decent approach to it, but yeah, on some of the pages it gives little notice saying something to the effect of "You are getting to enjoy these posts for free, but you should go support the creator so they can keep making great art."
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dogpencil
The duck is wrong with people. Good on you taking the high road