Ebooks Tree

Website
Name:	Ebooks Tree
Owner/Maintainer:
Dates:	?-April 25, 2015
Type:
Fandom:
URL:	example of a fan story from the Starsky & Hutch Archive that was listed on ebooks-tree.com. As of April 20, 2015, it was one of the few fan stories still remaining on the website
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Ebooks Tree is a for-profit, professional company.

It showed up on fannish radar mid-April 2015 when some fans realized that their fanfiction was included and that there was a fee being charged to access it.

Tumblr and other means of fannish communication lit up in confusion and anger.

More investigation revealed that the fiction itself wasn't being hosted in any way; instead, the website was providing direct links to the downloadable versions of the stories at the archives where they were stored; the company was phishing and more interested in obtaining credit card information. While a smaller free link led to the download file stored at the respective archive, the larger more prominent link fed the user to a site that requested a credit card in order to view the file. It was unclear whether the fan fiction files could be accessed once a credit card was given, but at least one fan noted that her credit card had been charged.

While the AO3 seemed to be the main archive that was impacted, other archives were targeted, including the Starsky & Hutch and My Little Pony fiction archives that - like AO3 - offered ePub and PDF downloads.In the early days some fans claimed that stories were also pulled from archives such as FF.net and Wattpad; however, since neither site offers easy downloads of PDFs, ePub or Mobi files, this may have been an overstatement.

"My story is not in that ebooks-tree.com site. Yours might not be either. Type in ANYTHING in that search bar and you will get a link. It’s a dummy link."

Ebooks Tree did not focus solely on fan fiction - they appeared to pull from commercial fiction websites, including foreign language sites.

In fact, as one fan obserevd:

After looking a bit more into ebooks-tree, I’m actually more amused than anything by this site. They seem to be scraping the entire internet for all “ebooks” they can find pretty much at random, using the most generic scrape bot possible. It’s not just fanfic: they have popular published authors there as well, also scientific articles. Some books have the covers taken from Amazon and still have the “Search inside” labels on them. It seems more likely that the fanfic is only collateral damage and they’re mainly angling for popular books, hoping to scam for credit card numbers and emails/passwords. Because even if “it’s totally free” (the front page says so!), they still want your credit card for an account. Yeah, not suspicious AT ALL.

Re the scrapbed “ebooks”, they don’t seem to give a damn about popularity, language, or anything at all, and since you can’t really browse this site to find stuff (except for using the search box), it all seems to be designed to pop up in as many google searches as possible. (But good luck trying to get hits via my Büttenwarder fic; I have to admit I’m feeling a bit of schadenfreude that they’re probably more wasting their resources with that than anything.)

And their “recommendations” are hilarious, they’re just searching for the same words of author/title in other author names and titles. Even though the front page promises “Outstanding eBook fractal index & regulary updates; Smart searching algorithms based on Upon-Request multithreading; Suitable intuitive catalogue structure allows to find the needed eBooks in 3 clicks”. Yeah, lot’s of techno-babble with nothing to back it up.

It seems like the web page equivalent of “I’m the heir of a rich king in south Africa” scam mails.

Many fans filled out DMCA notices modeling them along helpful instructions provided by the fyeahcopyright and the OTW who responded quickly upon discovering that their files has been hotlinked. Others began locking their AO3 stories so that only registered users could access their fanworks (as suggested by the OTW). Others stopped posting chapters for a while. Only a few removed their fanfic from AO3 entirely. As one fan explained: "I'm not going to pull my work from AO3. It isn't their fault some scam artist managed to scrape some of my pieces from their site. IMO, AO3 is still the best multi-fandom archive."

Most fans were pleased with the quick and protective response by the OTW. Shortly after a flood of fan driven DMCA notices began arriving at eBooks Tree, the site changed its domain name (to eBooks-Tree.net), removed most of the AO3 fan fiction (even without the authors submitting DMCA notices) and disabled the search feature making it more difficult for authors to find and locate if their files were being used. As of April 20, 2015, the site was still operational and only a few non-AO3 fan stories remained. However, a week later, professional author Diane Duane did a manual search and discovered that four of her published books had reappeared with new and different download links.

In the end, as one fan wrily noted:

Regarding the ebooks-tree.com mess: Sort of cracking up that in fandom we go on DMCA-sprees to keep our work free. HOW DARE YOU CHARGE FOR MY FREELY GIVEN SMUT.

The site (both .net and .com) went offline around April 25, 2015.

Topics Discussed

• fandom and profit
• not being asked for permission
• fandom and visibility
• fair use

Fans Explain It To Other Fans

From Organization for Transformative Works:

The OTW began receiving reports on Monday, April 13, that a site called Ebooks Tree was hosting downloadable files of works posted to the Archive of Our Own, and that they were charging for access to these files. Since then our Legal team has been investigating the entities involved and our Accessibility, Design, & Technology Committee has been finding out what had been done with AO3 content and how.

Upon further investigation, it became clear that Ebooks Tree is not hosting MOBI files of AO3 works, but linking directly to the versions hosted on the AO3 servers, and we do not currently believe they are hosting PDF files, either. The AO3 team has taken action to prevent anyone from downloading works if they were following the links provided by Ebooks Tree.

In the meantime, we have received many questions from fans through both our news outlets and the AO3 Support form. We would like to compile here some of the responses we have already made, as well as address steps that fans can take. We would like to ask that if you have further questions you make them here as it will be easier for more people to get the same information.

Another fan posted:

The website ebooks-tree.com has been "scraping" fanfics from AO3, UrBookLibrary, and Wattpad to host as mobi and PDF downloads on their site. This has been done without the authors' permission, and a lot of people are understandably upset at what amounts to the theft of their work. AO3 has stepped up and responded quickly to take measures to make it harder for this site to continue to do this on AO3, but several Tolkien fandom authors have had their work stolen. The AO3 Tumblr has information on how to send a DMCA takedown notice on your behalf to have your work removed from the site, if you find it there and wish to have it removed. AO3 notes that the ebooks-tree.com DMCA page erroneously claims that you have to have a lawyer do this for you; this is not correct.This is your work, and you can advocate on your behalf to have it removed, should you wish to do so.

One fan posted a series of screencaps to help fans navigate the site safely and to understand what links led to the credit card phishing sites and what links led directly to the safer AO3 download URLs. Click to see larger versions.

• 

  "Image 1: If ebooks-Tree has links to your fanfic on AO3, this is the screen you will see. The number of stories is in the upper left corner."

• 

  "Image 2: If ebooks-Tree does not have links to your fanfic on AO3, there will be no stories listed. There will be a fake download link in the center that will take you to a pay website that will ask you for your credit card to download your fiction .... I do not know if you can download stories from this “fake” website link."

• 

  "Image 3: If the story is on ebooks-Tree you will find an individual page (This story is “A Visit From the Home Office” by esteefee). There are two links: the center link is to the pay website that will ask for a credit card to download your fic. The smaller link to the far left is a direct link to the story on A03. The mobi file in this second link is still stored on A03."

• 

  "Image 4: The last page is what happens if you click on the “free” link to the left to the mobi file stored on A03. As of 4/13/2015, AO3 has disabled the direct links and this is the page the reader will see. They will not be able to download the A03 file. They will not be able to go to your AO3 page. However, the “fake” link remains - I do not know if you can still access the story from there as it requires a credit card to test. edited: as of 4/14/2014, ebooks-Tree has found a way to bypass the AO3 block. "

fyeahcopyright 's DMCA instruction post

The fyeahcopyright blog also posted instructions on how to submit a DMCA notice.

Fan Reaction: 2015

April 13

FOR ALL AO3 WRITERS

YO DUDES!

Looks like AO3 fanfiction is being stolen and sold as e-books.

And if you are wondering why you should care, someone else profiting off your transformative work (that is protected under fair use grounds) undermines that protection EVEN IF YOU HAVEN’T AUTHORISED IT. Fanfic exists in a grey area some rights owners are happy to ignore, and others hate … profiteering like this strengthens the arguments of the sort of people who want to shut fanfic down altogether. So - let’s protect the ethos of our free creative communities, and shut these fuckers down. (Vengeful Slytherin in me coming out.)

Okay guys, I have a very sweet reader who sent me a worrisome message.

My fanfiction has been uploaded to a place called ebooks tree. I have never given anyone permission to upload my stuff to an ebook place, so I have asked them to take my stuff down. This worries me because when I go to look at the items in question it asks me to make a free account. One of my friends doesn’t even get that option, M does, I do. When I went to make a free account, it now wants a credit card number to verify where I am living.

Please, please, all writers, check this place out and see if your stuff is there. I don’t want anyone’s personal free fiction to be behind closed doors where we don’t know if someone is getting paid for our writing. This is super important to me.

What is this Ebook Tree Shit?

So I kept seeing this post about some website stealing fanfiction and marketing it for download illegally. I thought to myself “Myself, isn’t that kind of rude?” and I promptly forgot all about it. BUT it later occurred to me, as a writer of such fanfiction, I should perhaps check on my more popular story. LO AND BEHOLD, what should I find but “Babysitting Tony Stark is a Hazardous Obligation”, my baby, being marketed by strangers. My baby, my precious little brain child born of my adoration of Stan Lee and Joss Whedon and the wonderful Marvel company, in which I often remind that I do not own Marvel or their characters, stolen from under my finger tips. Not cool dude. And to make matters worse, its happening to lots of amazing multi fandom fanfic authors, so if you or a friend write awesome fanfiction, well em to check this website for their work and to contact the website and demand it be taken down. This website tells you what to say and how : update-below-weve-taken-measures-to-make-it And that is very kind of them. Go, do it. Do it for the introverted nerds out there who put their life and soul into this fanfiction and don’t want strangers who did not ask nor receive their permission to make it downloadable or whatever. And example of how your email telling them to fuck off to please remove your work below: “Hey asshat, To Whom This May Concern, What the hell man? I am the original writer of the fanfiction entitled INSERT FANFICTION HERE. (But you probably knew that since you freaking stole it you human personification of the feeling of stepping barefoot in poo) And I never had my permission to market it requested or given. The link of you marketing it is here: INSERT, and the link to the original properly formatted is here: MY POOR BABY INSERT HERE. My email for contact information is here: INSERT. “

The very helpful website linked above than says to add these two statements: “ This statement: I have good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. This statement: The information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. “ Then conclude with something passive aggressive and a touch snarky, but avoid Shakespearean insults like “you illiterate pus engorged worm” or “you lead paint licking excrement suckling ass” never those. And then save your work.

Go forth and rectify.

Wow. One of my pieces was reposted. At least they kept my name as the author, so there is that bright side? This is just surreal.

I tagged the people I found, but I know that doesn’t always work so here’s a separate post to everyone. Guys, if you have even one fanfiction up on AO3, read THIS post asap and look up yourself on the shitty ebook website that tries to make money by stealing and sharing fics from AO3.

I saw that post on my dash many times today, but it’s never occured to me to look myself up because small fandoms, hello?

But small fandom writers are not safe, either. Everyone is targeted. They pull from AO3 randomly.

I have not given them my permission (and, perhaps more relevantly, as far as I can tell neither has OTW, the organisation that runs AO3 and hosts my stuff), so it’s annoying on that end - as far as I know, the eBooks-tree bots just pull stuff from AO3. I’m not actually sure why that is a thing they’re doing, although fyeahcopyright has been commenting on the workings of eBooks-tree.

Okay, though, deep breath, guys: I’m not doing anything about it. I can’t. I do not have the spoons for this sort of thing. Politely contacting somebody else to ask that they stop posting my stuff without my permission is an anxiety nightmare for me. Depending on how upset I became while trying to do that it might well mean I couldn’t get to work later. So I’m afraid I’m destined to take the philosophical view on this one.

However, I understand that some other people, who have a much greater capacity to deal with this sort of thing without a lot of lorazepam, are also upset. If this affects your work or you’re just really mad about it, transformativeworks reblogged [this specific post] from fyeahcopyright to help people address it.

Sorry. I know I’ve said previously that I will not lock my AO3. But now three of my stories have been posted on ebooks-tree without my permission. I’ve contacted them, but frankly am not sanguine. I’m me, one person, and they clearly have a bit more than the frustration of a middle-aged housewife behind them. The fact that they’ve taken my work without even asking speaks volumes about their ethics.

I have no earthly idea if locking my stories will help. I’m guessing, frankly, not. It’d be easy peasy for a corporate shill to get an account on AO3 and steal stuff.

Don’t ever pay for my fanfiction. Don’t register anywhere but AO3 for my fanfiction. There are a few things I’ve posted to tumblr, or LJ, but I won’t be doing that anymore. Probably I’ll go and delete those, for all the good it’s likely to do.

April 14

Outraged Potato post by leftylain.

This info really should make the way around. What is also super important: nobody should in any case open an free account with them to check if the stories found are really theirs, or have actual content; you would be required to put in credit card info, but this is highly suspicious. Actually, word goes round that the whole thing is one large scam phising for credit card info.

I followed the trail yesterday and did some snooping about the particular site that you get funneled to ... and just as you say, there are quite a few complaints about the phishing nature of this particular site.

I know it’s site robots doing most/all of this, but why the fuck would they take a single 600 word ficlet from any given account, but nothing else? It makes take down requests easier on us, of course, but it seems… inefficient? for their own database.

like I am so touched ebook tree picked my fic when literally no one else did

ebook-tree is so weird because I looked up on a whim because they couldn't possibly have been interested in mine but one of mine was there?? and it's the least kudo-ed fic to boot and it's not even finished?? i don't know what they're trying to accomplish with this

I suspect it’s so they’ll be less noticable. And when they ARE noticed not too many people will pay attention since smaller kudos must mean less popular authors which means quieter voice when spoken up. I’ve noticed that they’ve actually backed off from targeting really well-known fics (the only one I’ve searched for is The Beginner’s Guide to Communing with the Dead but I’m willing to bet none of the more popular fics are on there) so it’s probably to do with how the more popular authors have a bigger voice in the fandom so information will spread faster if they found out. Too bad for them that there are platforms like tumblr where louder blogs that care about these issues exist anyway, so they were noticed pretty fast by a lot of people.

it’s also probably so they can snatch up ppl who’re less experienced with scams, since fandoms do contain a range of age of people.

I am pretty sure they’re bots gathering up the fics too so there’s a randomized element to it. In my case they took 2 of my artworks (on ao3) but left the others and all of my fic. Weird stuff. hm, weird. weird for me too since they took my least popular fic and my most popular fic haha I wonder if it has anything to do with my most popular fic (my dcbb) having been posted right after my least popular fic so the bot picked up both? ehh. anyway, here’s some more info on it, nonny!

i’d like to take this chance to remind everyone that ao3 offers a neat downloading function that you can get your fanfic right off the site, free, without giving your credit card information to anyone.

Well that Ebook Tree took down my 21 works the fucker stole.

Hydras gotta behind that shit

I hope they are all sued to shit@

I emailed ebooks-tree yesterday about taking down my fics. I didn’t get a reply, but I did see that they took them down., so if your fics were on there and you emailed about it, I suggest you look and see if they’ve taken yours down.

I'm happy to inform that the stories that they stole from me were taken down and deleted from ebooks-tree. Everyone go check and keep checking for yours.

Has anyone heard anything more about the ebookstree thing? Because I’m not finding my stuff in their search results any more, but I haven’t sent them an email yet.

I suppose it remains to be seen whether they've just hidden them behind the credit card payment details, or are working out a way to get around it, but hopefully fandom's shown they're prepared to act. It's any "smaller" authors I'd still worry about - as you say, the likes of Stephen King can presumably fund his own defense, but if they're pirating e-books without discrimination, there are still people who can be hurt. At least we weren't trying to make a living out of our fanfic... Let's hope the people in charge got a proper scare at least... I do wonder if we'll ever find out any more about what happened... presumably not if it was a real fly-by-night thing...

Mine were gone a few hours after I sent off the DMCA thingy, but the timing must be coincidental - stuff from people who hadn't even had a chance to catch up or do anything have had their stuff taken down too. I notice that JoJo Moyes' novels are still up on the JoJo 'page' though. It'll be interesting to see if any info is forthcoming about how this has all panned out. Hopefully it's a Yay! We won!... but I suspect fandom will be a little twitchy for a while yet.

April 15

So looks like it’s shaking out now. As I emailed to my profic list… A—, it appears that it’s been discovered to not be a copyright issue after all, leaving it as “just” a phishing scam (I haven’t heard any evidence of malware being involved, but I wouldn’t be surprised) where they’re using the names of professional (and other) authors and the titles of their works to draw in the scamees. Specifically, it seems that Ebooks-tree does not actually possess any works on it but instead is charging people just to follow a link back to where the works are hosted elsewhere. V—, this may explain why it’s your samples that are already up Book View Cafe, as you mentioned to me before. I first saw this discovery through a fan works blog, and here’s their post on it: ebooks-tree-update However, even better news is that it seems Ebooks-tree has removed many authors’ names and book/story titles. Many of the professional authors who I previously found on the site are no longer listed. Yay!

Yeah, if you haven’t looked at the page recently, it looks like they did take down AO3 authors and all the pro authors whom I’d seen on there before. Now go run a virus scan and check your browser extensions haven’t been changed.

Stuff is gone, which is good - but two people on my flist have now left LJ / AO3. :'-( So in the end, this isn't the best of endings.

Two people have left lj/A03 for something that lj/A03 had absolutely no control over?! I'm sorry, I think that's a bit mad, unless they were on the very edge of trusting the online world anyway and this just tipped them over. The thing is, I think we do have to accept that we lay ourselves open to the nasty people out there - just like when we go out we're really careful to keep hold of our belongings, and lock up our houses, but it's still possible that really determined horrible people will come along and try to steal our things... Hopefully they backed off in this case because enough people made noise at them about it (like it being harder to steal when you're in a crowd and people are watching and prepared to shout oi! Put that down, it's not yours!) - in which case, hurrah fandom... I've not gone wandering yet today to see if there's other information/news, but I must...

I do wonder about [Ebooks Tree] - it's front looks eminently respectable today, you'd never know they were anything other than a big ebook company. I never did get around to sending anything, so I just hope they don't decide the people who didn't act are fair game - and I can't now, because there doesn't seem to be anything of mine still up. We'll see... I've had a little wander around to see if there's any new information, but nothing's come up. It would be good to know more about it, though. I guess we'll have to wait and see...

You know, the more I think about this thing, the crazier it gets. To send a robot out to collect anything, then link to whatever it is as if it's an e-book... Maybe someone messed up with the robot's coding. It grabbed graphics, videos, stories. If they are legitimate, they'd not have any repeat customers. If the whole thing was just a credit card scam, well, that makes no sense, either, even as phishing, because while I could see someone possibly paying for well-known author's e-books, if cheaper than what you'd find elsewhere, who in the world would pay for something we wrote? I mean, they wouldn't recognize the names. Sorry to go on, but I'm really just boggling over the whole thing. While still being grateful that it was cleared up. Apparently. So, yeah, victory if fandom's! *g*

We were deluged at AO3 with people all frantic about it so I spent all day yesterday on it along with most of my team and three other teams. From what we can gather:

• the site did not actually collect the works, it was hotlinking and one of our coders has provided a fix - temporary but to be made permanent. Any security system has loopholes unless you lock the place up so tight the users find it hard to use, so whilst we're aware, there won't be any visible changes.
• the cc company was not 'affiliated' with the book site and might have been being used as a kind of 'look, this for adults only' thing but the cc company are known scammers. We thought about using one of those prepay cards to investiigate further but by the time we'd OKed the idea it was all over. It is quite possilbe that the whole thing was started by someone wanting to make money via the cc scam.
• as soon as fans started sending in the takedown notices as per AO3's instructions on Tumblr the site realised it had bitten off more than it could chew and started removing the links. Remember most fans are in US and they were working during our night. By the time I woke up it was mostly over and my fics had disappeared even though I hadn't had time to send a report.
• one way of keeping most sites like that away from your work is to f'lock all your fic and lock it to logged in users on AO3 - but that strikes me as a bit like never crossing the road in case you get run over.
• some of the published authors have had their fics removed too - it depends, I think, on whether they noticed and wrote but they will probably all be removed quite quickly. I suspect the site will disappear rapidly - after all, why pay a pirate site with a dodgy cc link when you can buy cheaply on e.g. Amazon? The pirate sites that do do well have other agendas and different payment methods.... My own efforts were mostly recording and linking 'tickets' so that we could make sure everybody got a reply - and there were so many it was a job in itself. Then talking through what we could and couldn't do with the other staffers and everybody chipping in with suggestions. The site is pretty definitely US based and it could be just a 'pirate' site which is bad enough but then they thought they would start on fandom..... little did they know!! Some of our legal team have day jobs as hot shot US lawyers, too, so that gave fans a head start in writing the reports and having the confidence to send them.

At least most people are grateful. There are a few - aren't there always? - who were scathing about our server security but would probably be the first to complain if we had e.g. a captcha system.

April 16

so apparently ebooks tree has removed fics… except not really.

1. ebooks tree dot com now redirects to dot net. The dot net domain was registered 1st of April 2015. It was updated on the 14th of April 2015.

2. If you search your username, no results pop up. That means there’s no fic right? Except the search doesn’t work. Even for a simple search like ‘James’ returns no results, despite having titles by Jameses on the front page.

3. To actually find an author, you have to use the letters at the top of the page. Admittedly there are fewer entries and fewer works than before, but they’re still present. (Sorry girlinpinkboots and Eustacia Vye, you are close to my own username and the most prodigious author I could think off the top of my head respectively.)

4. This rather circuitous way of finding titles probably does mean the main method this site is using to profit is through delivering ads. Thankfully I have adblock, so no revenue for you! (Although phishing scams and malware proliferation do likely still apply.)

So ebooks tree has done something in response to all those DMCAs. Except instead of taking the site down, instead redirects to a site that doesn’t have a working search function but still has lists of works available through a rather circuitous process of looking for the author’s name.

It’s worth noting that the download links still redirect to a service with ad-centre ads. (No, I’m not going to visit urbookdownload and see what kind of dubious site it is, although once again that is a newish domain with a recent new owner.)

I’m not surprised that apparently a tidal wave of DMCAs hasn’t discouraged this site at all from continuing their practises. And possibly even making things worse now those fic downloads definitely aren’t fic.

I’d still advise caution when dealing with the site and to use adblock and Chrome or Firefox and NOT downloading anything if you are going to see if your fic is still up there. I don’t know if hitting them with DMCAs again will help or if they’ll just start up again or ignore them and continue exploiting visitors to their site.

April 17

The Ebooks-tree.com assholes are not actually taking down anything in response to the DMCA notices. They’re just dumping links that no longer work to leech files off another site. So anything they got from AO3 is now gone, but if they got any of your works from elsewhere, those works will still be up and there is no sign that they’ll be removed any time soon unless these fuckwits run into a hard block. Accordingly, my archive ebooks are currently behind a password, which means no downloads for anyone until the aforementioned assholes are shut down.

April 18

Virtual Porch Climbers. I’m beginning to despair. Fanfic-journal.com, ebooks-tree.com… by now I feel that the only safe way to tell our stories is gathering around the campfire and sharing our tales while roasting Lembas. (I will not post my LOTR fic to LJ anymore. You can find it only on AO3 here)

April 19

So, in order to save my files from the Ebooks-tree assholes, I password-protected my entire folder of ebooks (and cover art) on my archive.

For anyone wanting to download, or view cover art for that matter, the log-in is [redacted].

I am highly, if incidentally, entertained that this was rated a “very strong” password. It should keep the bot out, at any rate.

April 20

Erryone talking about Ebook-Tree and here I am, just LEGIT OFFENDED my vivisection porn isn’t on there.

Gallery of Comments

screencap of tumblr discussions on April 14, 2015

screencap of tumblr discussions on April 20, 2015

Additional screencaps of tumblr discussions can be found here,here, here, here,here, and here,

Screencaps were taken over a period of days from April 14, 2015 to April 20, 2015 of entries bearing the "ebooks-trees" tag.

Further Reading

• EbookTree and Fanwork Content: Archive of Our Own: Post for April 15, 2015, ^{Archived version}