ALERT: Fanart and fanfic theft!

[krait]

Thanks to allzugern for alerting me to this:

Ebay user doctor_beth2000 appears to be selling "fanzines" (stories she has printed out and bound, including stories that have never been printed in a 'zine) for profit... without the consent of the artists and writers used.

One of the works listed for sale was discovered by the artist and has now been pulled, but there are 450 listings for this person's account, and I bet that there's more stolen stuff than just that one "fanzine"...

If you're an artist or writer in Smallville, Star Trek, Stargate, Due South, or and inform other Fen to go to this ebay page and also check to see if their work is being sold at her store: doctor_beth2000. There are 744 Zines offered there. 744!

There is fiction being offered from an astounding variety of fandoms. In five pages of browsing, the list of fandoms on offer contained:


Beauty and the Beast
Sentinel
Man from UNCLE
Riptide
Airwolf Scarecrow
Battlestar Galactica
Blake's 7
Buffy
Dead Zone
Doctor Who
Due South
Equalizer
Forever Knight
Garrison's Gorillas
Highlander
Horatio Hornblower
Indiana Jones
LotR
MacGuyver
Magnificent 7
Magnum PI
MASH
Miami Vice
Power Rangers
Professionals
Rat Patrol
Real Ghostbusters
Red Dwarf
Russ Logan
Seaquest
Simon and Simon
Smallville
Stargate (SG1 at least)
Star Trek (TOS, Voyager, DS8 at least)
Starsky & Hutch
Star Wars
The A Team
The Bourne Identity
The Mummy
TJ Hooker
Twin Peaks
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Wild Wild West
Without a Trace
X-Files
Young Guns

Keep in mind this is a partial list -- I read only one-third of the auction titles and perhaps three actual listings!

I also see at least one original work, "Solace" by Alexa C -- anyone know this person, and whether this is an authorised production?

Some of the zines look authentic -- one gave a publication date of 1996 and had some water damage. However, many had no date at all, which makes me very suspicious. Artists and writers, please, no matter how obscure your fandom, do a title+description search for your fandom within this seller's items. (I've noticed a lot are listed only by acronym, so search "MFU" as well as "Man from Uncle", etc.)


I don't know what a word would be worth from me, since I am not a writer, but at least one author has submitted a complaint to Ebay (I think; and I know allzugern has), so let's see what we can do, folks!

Comments

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I looked at the entire page of listings, and I can't see any problem at all.

If there were any fake zines, they've been pulled. Everything she has looks legit to me - I own a huge chunk of those myself, and they all look like originals.

I'm stunned at the prices, though. If she can get $200 for K/S Greater California then I'm sticking my copy up pronto!

[allzugern.livejournal.com]

She's already had to pull one fic because fanfic author ran across it and told her to take it down. She had never made a zine and certainly had never authorized anyone to make money from her fic. The seller may not be aware? Possibly, but it doesn't change the fact that there are free fanworks being sold for profit without the knowledge of the authors. I've e-mailed both e-bay and the couple of authors I'm pretty sure don't have a clue that their work is being sold. I'll be interested to see what happens.

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I didn't see anything that wasn't legit, but her prices are pretty surprising. I wonder if she manages to sell many? I have a lot of those zines - if she can make $200 for an old K/S zine, I'm putting mine up, too!

She's selling some of the zines I produced back in the 90s for a hell of a huge mark up. Good luck to her if she can get it - but I still have old stock I'd like to get rid of. At a third of her price.

[allzugern.livejournal.com]

She already pulled the fic by mistressace, and it *is* possible that this seller has no idea that some of the fic wasn't authorized to be sold as a zine. I figure ebay will look into it, and if word gets out to enough fanfic writers, they can police what she is selling themselves. The problem is fanfic writers often have no clue that this is happening.

I was pretty shocked at the prices she was asking as well, but it looks like she's selling quite a bit - maybe she's getting much less than she's asking though. I'm not a zine collector or fan, but it's stuff like this that ends up spoiling the milk for everyone.

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with people selling second hand books, but it should be watched if she's selling downloaded stuff as fake zines. At least she took down the dodgy ones - like you said, she may not have known. I have a few thousand zines, including a lot of the ones she's selling, and they all look pretty legit to me - the ones I recognise, anyway.

Back when I first started collecting zines, er, 70s? there were a lot that were pirates around and I had no way of knowing it. The only zine importer in Australia was a guy who would buy one copy then photocopy them to sell out of his shop at huge mark ups. I wouldn't have bought them had I known, but that was the only option available at the time. Not worth crap now, couldn't resell them even if I wanted to.

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the $200 made me blink a few times! Wish I had some of those lying around!