There's A Website Dedicated To Stealing Furry Porn From Patreon Artists

[Megalan]

[QUOTE]
[IMG]https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--aZb6Rq4P--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/waialshi1yb262pknsct.png[/IMG]
A horde of pirates is undermining Patreon’s financial structure, reposting paywalled pornographic images on an illicit website for free. The makers of these images are furious that internet denizens are putting their livelihoods in jeopardy to score free porn.

Yiff.Party has been around since July, 2015, but has picked up speed exponentially in recent weeks. How it works is simple. Users or bots subscribe to Patreon creators’ accounts, allowing them access to content that’s restricted to patrons who pay. After scraping that content, the users or bots upload it onto Yiff.Party’s feed, where it’s accessible to everyone with just a few clicks. In the span of 24 hours yesterday, Yiff.Party’s admin says users uploaded over 3,000 posts. Those posts mostly contain porn, both live-action and furry (“yiff” is a reference to furry sex), but all sorts of artists have been affected.

A half dozen Patreon creators I interviewed say they’re frustrated and angry. Art noveau artist Alice, who makes $230 a month and estimates she relies on Patreon for a quarter of her income, says she feels “absolutely shattered” after seeing her content reposted onto Yiff.Party.

When Alice contracted Patreon about it, she, like others, said she was told to file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown request to defend her content. It’s a lengthy and labor-intensive process. Patreon users who say they filed DMCA takedown requests against Yiff.Party say they were ignored.

A furry porn artist who goes by Kadath says that Yiff.Party has stolen his and his friends’ content for years. He makes $3,600 off Patreon per month. To defend against pirates, Kadath started vetting all of his pledgers, which he says was a lot of work. Scrubbing his subscribers looking for anonymous users with no icons, numbers for usernames, hotmail usernames takes time out of his day he could spend making more art. He has routinely made less money than he anticipated because subscriptions tied to Yiff.Party pirates were charged back or fraudulent.
[/QUOTE]

Source: [URL="https://kotaku.com/theres-a-website-dedicated-to-stealing-furry-porn-from-1821818309"]Kotaku[/URL]

[sir whoopsalot]

Saw this article pop up on Twitter a few days ago, it's pretty depressing.

[bitches]

[QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;53038073]Saw this article pop up on Twitter a few days ago, it's pretty depressing.[/QUOTE]

Though the sleazy sense of digital entitlement is far from limited to porno piracy, it does feel worse when it's the work of indie artists trying to pay rent.

[DrBones]

Really doesn't seem that much different from, say, TPB or Nyaa or any number of private trackers.

[Gbps]

[QUOTE=eatdembeanz;53038093]Really doesn't seem that much different from, say, TPB or Nyaa or any number of private trackers.[/QUOTE]

Still pretty fucking scummy to take from independent artists. Furry porn is no exception :v:

[Protocol7]

Well it's shitty but wherever there are gated paid downloads on the internet, there is a less legal place to download those things for free. Especially porn.

[Noob©]

Does the "piracy does not equal lost sales" apply here? I'm leaning towards yes.

[gdfsgdfg]

Normally I would say anything but there's so much drawn porn on the internet you will die before ever seeing all of it so this is pointless and hope it doesn't impact the artist's too much.

[DrTaxi]

[QUOTE=Minigun;53038115]Normally I would say anything but there's so much drawn porn on the internet you will die before ever seeing all of it[/QUOTE]

Speak for yourself

[DrBones]

[QUOTE=Gbps;53038098]Still pretty fucking scummy to take from independent artists. Furry porn is no exception :v:[/QUOTE]

Is it really stealing? We're running headlong into the same territory as any warez argument, and I don't want to get banned over this. I'm just going to say that the folks who use this site most likely aren't potential lost sales for the artist and Patreon really shouldn't be a place to put exclusive content. You've got Gumroad for that.

[Scot]

I thought furry porn artists made money off commissions? They're charging for regular stuff too now?

[Jugador]

[QUOTE=Scot;53038137]I thought furry porn artists made money off commissions? They're charging for regular stuff too now?[/QUOTE]

[Quote]A horde of pirates is undermining Patreon’s financial structure, [B]reposting [I]paywalled[/I] pornographic images on an illicit website for free[/B].[/quote]
No, they're not charging for regular stuff. They don't like that their art that people have to pay for so they can see it in their Patreon is being posted on that site.

[Swilly]

This was going to happen eventually.

Anything that's behind a paywall that people want will end up getting it for free somehow. Paywalls have never worked without legal abilities. Problem is will Patreon go to bat for these artists or will they just snicker from behind their corporate walls.

[Seba]

[QUOTE=Scot;53038137]I thought furry porn artists made money off commissions? They're charging for regular stuff too now?[/QUOTE]

If people want your stuff and you're strapped for cash, paywalling your content is the easiest solution

[Doom14]

[QUOTE=Scot;53038137]I thought furry porn artists made money off commissions? They're charging for regular stuff too now?[/QUOTE]
Commissions.
Uncensored work.
"Your Character Here's"
Non-Delayed Comic Pages
HQ Versions of normal stuff.
Things not posted elsewhere compiled into a pack.
Adoptables, aka premade characters people buy the right to use. I don't get it either.

This isn't exclusively furry tropes either. Smut artists have gotten crafty about potential income streams. :v:

[megafat]

[QUOTE=Noob4life;53038107]Does the "piracy does not equal lost sales" apply here? I'm leaning towards yes.[/QUOTE]

If you're pirating it, you weren't going to pay for it to begin with.

[Doom14]

[QUOTE=megafat;53038157]If you're pirating it, you weren't going to pay for it to begin with.[/QUOTE]

If piracy is made easy enough, people who would potentially buy it out of frustration or at a later date - will pirate it. That group is something like less than 10% of normal piracy, but it exists.

[Kaelan Frey]

-snip, doom14 nailed it-

[Rowtree]

[QUOTE=Doom14;53038153]
This isn't exclusively furry tropes either. Smut artists have gotten crafty about potential income streams. :v:[/QUOTE]

i don't know if that's horrific or hilarious... Probably both.

Either way, I guess it sucks that artists are having content stolen. Even if I disagree with the concept of a paywall, they still have to pay the bill some way. If their content is good enough to warrant being stolen, I guess that's a roundabout complement? :v

I suppose as well, it's harder to get a DCMA approved if the images in question are pornographic. Law is still pretty backwards in that aspect. Sucks all around.

[Swilly]

The issue with Piracy here is that these directly impact the person creating this stuff. These aren't multinational corporations with guaranteed sales who will have pirates at the 1 to 2% level.

This could easily explode into 15% or more for them. Its actually happened to small time developers like the guys behind Project Zomboid. Its why I don't take the 'people were gonna pirate it anyway' as an argument because we don't have clear statistical data that actually supports any argument because its almost impossible to study it.

[FuckOffEuroTrash]

[QUOTE=Noob4life;53038107]Does the "piracy does not equal lost sales" apply here? I'm leaning towards yes.[/QUOTE]

It's the same exact argument, only this is impacting smaller persons rather than corporations. "people who pirate weren't necessarily going to buy it" can still be applied, even though it's a bullshit argument.

[Megalan]

[QUOTE=Scot;53038137]I thought furry porn artists made money off commissions? They're charging for regular stuff too now?[/QUOTE]

There are some really scummy artists who:

1) Get paid by someone to do a commission.
2) Paywall this image behind patreon and make it available for a limited time.
3) Make people pay for it again by releasing it as a part of art pack at a later date.

People who do this bullshit deserve their stuff to be pirated imo.

To be honest I miss the times before artists came and started using patreon as paywall thus making patreon position itself as a marketplace instead of a donation website.

[megafat]

[QUOTE=Doom14;53038159]If piracy is made easy enough, people who would potentially buy it out of frustration or at a later date - will pirate it. That group is something like less than 10% of normal piracy, but it exists.[/QUOTE]

I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but as you suggest, it's a pretty small amount.

I will admit that i have bought games that i wouldn't have otherwise because i got them through less than stellar means. So it works both ways.

[simkas]

[QUOTE=Scot;53038137]I thought furry porn artists made money off commissions? They're charging for regular stuff too now?[/QUOTE]

A lot of artists in general seem to do that on Patreon now. I'm surprised Patreon hasn't cracked down on that, it's turning Patreon into less of site for donations with some extras on top to a straight up storefront.

[BYK]

Its not just furry stuff, DanielFromSL was on here and you could click the unlisted videos.

[Destroyox]

Locking your work behind a paywall is always shitty. Because guess what, most people who make things on the internet will focus entirety on the paid stuff and it won't be any more quality than the stuff before too. I've seen some artists on Tumblr/DA who basically stop posting because now everything is on patreon.

[Gmod4ever]

I know of a guy who does this, but even worse, for SFM porn.

He steals Patreon-exclusive content, cuts the watermarks out of them, compiles them together into compilation videos, and then resells them, pocketing all of the money for himself.

And when people tell him to quit stealing other artists' work, he has the audacity to defend his work by saying "I'm doing more work than these artists. They don't deserve the money, because they're not [b]really[/b] doing any work; [b]I'm[/b] doing all the work, by downloading these videos, cutting their watermarks out, and then compiling them together."

He honestly and sincerely believes that pirating and cutting watermarks out is more work than writing, posing, animating, lighting, directing, lip-syncing, directing voice actors, and editing fully produced works. And that he's completely justified in not only stealing these works, but reselling them.

There are some [b]really[/b] scummy people out there. And there always will be.

[Gbps]

[QUOTE=Destroyox;53038192]Locking your work behind a paywall is always shitty. Because guess what, most people who make things on the internet will focus entirety on the paid stuff and it won't be any more quality than the stuff before too. I've seen some artists on Tumblr/DA who basically stop posting because now everything is on patreon.[/QUOTE]
I don't see how wanting to be paid for your skilled labor is shitty. This isn't EA we're talking about

[big woop]

[QUOTE=Destroyox;53038192]Locking your work behind a paywall is always shitty. Because guess what, most people who make things on the internet will focus entirety on the paid stuff and it won't be any more quality than the stuff before too. I've seen some artists on Tumblr/DA who basically stop posting because now everything is on patreon.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I really don't think Patreon is meant to work as a main source of income for artists/other content producers. There are other incentives you can offer for patrons' support without alienating the majority of your followers.

[Nahash]

[QUOTE=Protocol7;53038103]Well it's shitty but wherever there are gated paid downloads on the internet, there is a less legal place to download those things for free. Especially porn.[/QUOTE]

I've only seen one website manage to completely lock down its contents and it's slipshine. Their Neapolitan series in particular is impossible to get outside of their website