Fanfiction.net deleted NOFP

Just an FYI:

The AuthorLord would like to inform you that FanFiction.net deleted Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past. He received an email stating that it had been removed because it had copyrighted material that he did not own. There was a note specifying song lyrics. Harry Potter and NOFP doesn’t have any copyrighted song lyrics. The only song lyrics are from some original verses that I (runsamok) wrote for the sorting hat to sing, which was used with permission.

Update May 21st: The AuthorLord is appealing the decision with FanFiction.net and it will likely take a few weeks for them to respond.

Update June 13th: There has been no response from FanFiction.net in any way to our appeal. This is alternately disappointing and infuriating.

Update: July 9th: There has still been no response from FanFiction.net in any way to our appeal. The AuthorLord is considering options and has not made a decision yet on what we are going to do. He is concerned that something similar could happen to Team 8 or his other stories there. Thank you all for your kind comments and attempts to help with the situation by contacting FF.

79 thoughts on “Fanfiction.net deleted NOFP”

  1. Thank you for letting us know, I got the update via email and was shocked to see the whole story gone. Leave it FF.net to act first and question never.

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  2. Smells like YouTube. Someone put in a copyright claim and they pulled a ‘delete first let the author ask questions later.’ approach.

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  3. grumble-grumble
    Move it somewhere else, such as AO3 or Wattpad?
    I don’t know what the author interface looks like for either of them, but I’ve heard AO3 was started for exactly this reason.

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    • I second this actually. Archive of our own has become. My go to for stories, and it’s much more writer and reader friendly than FanFiction in my opinion . I only found out your story had been removed because I was raving about it to another author and they wanted to know which story I loved so much.

  4. Agree with Dale, AO3 seems like a good place to throw a backup at least, possibly a few of the other HP specific sites may also help in that regard.

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  5. Given how famous NoFP is – having even been mentioned specifically in articles (Time magazine, I believe?) this seems a very bad move on ff.net’s part, the sort of thing guaranteed to earn bad publicity….

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  6. I’ve been looking at the other places that you say the book is updated as well, and noticed that those places haven’t been updated with 43, but are still up.

    Is there a chance that you could upload the new chapter(s) to those places so we’re not tied solely to one site owner?

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    • Matthew lost access to the other sites some time ago and has been working on getting back in to them. This is why they were not updated when FanFiction.net was updated. However, most of the fan base is using FF so losing the story there hurts the most.

  7. Here’s hoping this appeal works out and something like this inspires certain people to ‘take more care’ when doing something as stupid as taking down a story that popular on such a baseless accusation…

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    • The only way this would make them be more careful is if it actually costs them something more than just bad publicity.

      The big industry boys have become less caring about looking good these days since there’s almost always a bunch of folk who’ll keep using their services no matter how many P.R. disasters they run into.

  8. I’ve been a long time fan of NOFP and I am trying to spread the word among my own readers about this travesty and encouraging them to make a stink about it. I’ve let it be known via a support email I sent that if they do not resolve this and issue a public apology to you, I will be removing all my works and also asking as many who will listen to remove all of their works as well. I/we cannot let this stand. I will not sit by and watch FFN become Youtube.

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  9. I would advice to mention this also on your S’TarKan profile at failfail.net

    Honestly, how can they even delete the biggest story on their site without properly investigating? What brainless idiot done that?

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  10. Not just you – a number of other well established FF Authors have had their stories flagged up for song/music lyrics . Guess you’re the most prominent ‘victim’ & at least now the problem has been headlined . Let’s hope they’ll learn from this cockup & not rely on such idiotic procedures in future … ( yeah right ) .

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  11. I think it’s back on FanFiction because I’ve been able to pull it up. I hope that’s the case cause I adore this story

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  12. I second the others here who have brought up Archive of Our Own – the set of authors who left FF.net for AO3 in disgust with the former is not empty.

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  13. Let me add my voice to the people saying you should post the story to AO3. It’s so much better than FF.net, and it’s run by and for fans. Which is

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  14. Seconding the ebook recommendation. It’s had significant proofreading by kaotik and I, and it includes cover art & two authorised one-shots (“G for Ginevra” and “A Night at the Burrow”).

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  15. What are the odds that someone has launched a bot that did an overly aggressive pattern match and saw a phrase in NoFP that coincidentally happens to appear in a song? Like maybe a character said “You can’t always get what you want,” and the bot detected it as a Rolling Stones infringement?

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  16. I’m still able to pull the story up on the app because I have it downloaded. If you need any help recovering chapters, maybe I could help out with that! Here’s hoping FanFiction will correct their mistake.

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  17. When I saw it gone back a couple weeks ago I assumed it was because you have a Patreon directly tied to chapters produced for the story which is pretty direct monetization.

    I was pissed because people make money off playing HP music, getting commission picture requests, selling handmade merchandise with HP all over places like Etsy, heck even making adult stuff for it. And the person to get nailed is some very ill guy who’s had patreon for like two chapters, made one of the best fanfics of any series in history and has been dedicated to the story for over a decade and through a crippling medical condition.

    But it wouldn’t surprise me if that were the real reason honestly. I saw recent reviews mentioning that they didn’t like the patreon. My recommendation to you to be on the safe side is just make the wording of the Patreon more vague. Mention it’s for a chapter of your own content or something along those lines and update your followers and confirm that it’ll only go through when you publish for one of your two fics. But either way make the wording a little more ambiguous. Cause I was really nervous you got hit for this and if you did I don’t think you can really appeal it.

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    • The Patreon site is for original fiction novel chapters. Those are the only posts on Patreon that are paid. However there seems to be some confusion among fans on what it is for when it was mentioned on FF.

  18. Don’t be surprised this is a case of bots going out of control, i was once banned temporarily from a forum due to supposed case of spambot in my signature or something like, as soon as i got in contact with a human being the ban was removed.

    And i think is pretty ridiculous that you get a copyright email for a song in that site.

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  19. What the flying f***??!

    That is such bs. >: { Hope you get that decision reversed, good luck!

    There’s never a good time for bad news, but I guess at least you didn’t get the notification while you were still feeling so very poorly?

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  20. Re June update:

    No doubt they’re going to require you to bug them 1-2x per week, every week, for a month before they respond (even though they’ll tell you that you don’t need to check-in for your case’s status so often thankyouverymuch-isaidgoodday) and then they’ll make you jump through hoops to prove a negative.

    I say, give ’em hell; make their day/month every bit as “pleasant” as they’re making yours, but with exquisite courtesy and politeness. In other words, kill them with kindness and nag them to death. It’s the only tried-and-true method I’ve found that consistently works with bureaucratic bs.

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  21. AO3 really is the better site, and they ALWAYS respond when you voice a concern. I’m sorry FF is being so awful, and I hope the issue is resolved to your satisfaction soon.

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  22. I sent an outraged email to FF support. You might use an author’s note on Team 8 or something to call your fans to arms. Lots of times FF will ignore individual emails, but if they get multiple emails on the same topic, they fix things faster.

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  23. I recently started reading NoFP for the FIRST time and I LOVE it! I was saddened to see that the story had been on hiatus and was afraid to finish it (Still haven’t caught up). Thankfully it currently still available on the FF.Net App because I had downloaded it. I hope things work out for you and most importantly I’m glad you are doing better!

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  24. Over ten years dragging out the story you cant be upset they took it down. I love the story and understand the health issues. But before that you we’re dragging you feet. Yahoo groups, patreon, and this site the story could have been finished

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    • Mate…. did you actually *read* the updates?
      The takedown is a recent and annoying thing, and the author is probably considering alternatives, while trying to figure out a way to warn the people who have never seen this site and only read the story on FFnet that’ll hit even those that only followed the story and not the author profile. It’s not the reason the story didn’t update for a year, it’s an issue since the most recent update a month or two ago.
      My sympathies if you didn’t happen to catch the update before FF decided to emulate Youtube, but haranguing Mr Schlocke is neither helpful nor endearing.

  25. Hello! I’m new to your writing but stumbled upon your team 8 story. Binge read it. it’s AMAZING! lol now im off in search of your HP fanfic. I find it ridiculous that they removed it from FF. Fingers crossed you find a solution.

    Thank you for your stories!

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  26. I can’t believe it’s still down. I heard that NOFP had been removed from my sister and thought they’d have realised their collosal screw up and put it back up by now. I’ve just read your updates on the matter and I’m absolutely disgusted that they aren’t admitting their wrong doing and apologising profusely to you. They should be. I’m no big shot fanfic author, in fact my stuff would probably be better off as plant food since none of it has been edited and it’s all “hot off the press”, but I’m pulling all my stuff and migrating to AO3 in protest and I’ll send them an email saying so. In polite terms of course. One can be so much more cutting with carefully considered diplomatic language than with simple swearing and namecalling and they deserve the sharpest side of my tongue for treating you like this.

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  27. Have you considered putting your stories on RoyalRoad? They usually verify from the get go if the story is yours, so there shouldn’t be any issues afterwards.

    It’s also a pretty nice platform with a large audience.

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  28. I really hope you can get appealed but I doubt it would ever happen. The staff at FF.net are really awful.
    I suppose some of you might know of the “story” uploaded on the Naruto category called “Judgement”?
    It has nothing to do with Naruto just 46 words of a load of rubbish and 10s of thousands of bot reviews. It’s been up since Sept 2018 and I bet it’s had loads of reports and yet it’s still up..

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  29. Hey I’m just now seeing this update. I ended up searching the website mentioned on your ffnet profile since I was curious about what happened to the story. I’ve heard of your story before but only read up to maybe Harry’s second year. Sorry to hear it got deleted. I think the plot of 30 year old Harry Potter going back in time to his first year (and back to his 11 year old body) after losing the war is a brilliant concept. I know the takedown had more to do with song lyrics used with permission but I just wanted to say I’m a fan.

    I’m not a writer myself but I would also recommend Archive of Our Own. A dark story like this seems like it would be the perfect fit for it, and I’ve never heard of anyone having trouble there. In the meantime I will read the ebook version that was pointed out by two other people while waiting for this issue to hopefully be resolved.

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  30. I came here looking for info after searching for NOFP on my favorite stories page and being worried cuz I couldn’t find it.
    Starting anew, what with having yo upload each chapter, plus losing the inevitable readers and reviews, is a terrible burden to put on a guy already dealing with so much!
    But please, please, please don’t abandon this story. I’ll follow you wherever you go, and broadcast it to the world to help draw people to it.

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  31. You’re famous! NCIS Los Angeles mentioned Team 8 Naruto in the October 6th episode Decoy (season 11 episode 2) within the first 18 minutes of the episode.

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    • Is anyone wants to just see the mention, it’s at about 13 and a half minutes into the episode. Probably one of the writers is a fan, as the characters don’t know the reference and make it seem like it’s a super weird thing.

  32. Can I suggest uploading the latest chapters of NOFP to SIYE, Phoenixsong, and Fanficauthors.net?
    You used to post it to all three sites, but you haven’t updated SIYE or Fanficauthors in four years and Phoenixsong hasn’t been updated in a deacde.

    I haven’t been following the forums, is there a reason those sites were discontinued?

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  33. Is there another place we can follow the story?

    Also seconding the suggestion that this gets moved to Archive of Our Own. It’s a fantastic site.

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  34. Hey Authorlord,

    I love your story. I started reading a few months back and I was simply entranced. Not sure if you’ve heard the ‘rule’ about if you increase the characters’ power you have to increase the challenges to compensate, but either way you’ve done a great job.

    I started on NOFP and after finishing moved on to Team 8. Wow! Both stories are great and very moving. I hope you continue, but I realize it’s been rough recently with the health issues.

    I hope you get better! I’d also like if you continued writing but focus on the getting better part, even if you never release another chapter: it was a fun ride and thank you.

    Cheers!

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  35. Having had several stories that I follow on FF.net disappear for various reasons–thanks, PitchBlackMagpie, for throwing a wobbly and clearing everything–I’ve been using a program called Fanfiction Downloader to grab html and pdf version of every story that I have in my favorites lists.

    It’s a bit of pain to update the ones still being written, and then stuff everything into a regularly backed up 7zip archive on Google Drive for extra safety (but worth it, because my hdd terminally borked just last month), but when stuff like this happens I still have a copy available.

    Anyway, in addition to the links provided above for a copy of this story, here are two MEGA links (html and pdf, respectively) for straight-from-FF.net versions of Harry Potter and The Nightmares of Futures Past, up to date as of 4-4-19.

    https://mega.nz/#!CotgBCZS!4Yb7X7QvHxUyJcIyFXv858pvm0s2iNecBIsVaIHHHFY

    https://mega.nz/#!PssimYiZ!pd3QRGYeF38Az3HuUqPW8cY65Pw_YaJNZv2SJDspnK0

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    • You haven’t been following for very long. AuthorLord takes a while to update. Unless said otherwise, the fic is not dead.

  36. Seriously, no update in seven months? I mean, I understand if the author isn’t writing anymore or we should expect a new chapter every few years, but not even a blog post to let us know whether it’s being worked on?

    I’m sympathetic to the author’s health issues, but if patreon can be updated every so often, I’m sure two lines here to let us know what, if any, progress is being made wouldn’t be too much. Even if it’s from his proofreaders.

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  37. I’m just glad the site is back. Panicked a bit the other day when it said the account was suspended. Want you to know that I’m thinking of you, and waiting patiently! I’m going to echo the call for an AO3 account. An open source community archival project.. It’s got a great tag system too and supports multiple ebook formats as well as basic html.

    Hope you’re doing well.

    I was going to write a highly sarcastic reply to the previous comment but..meh, no one cares about that guy.

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  38. @Katosen: I’ve been following for longer than you. I’ve been following for over 10 years, so don’t tell me what I have or haven’t done.

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    • We’ve been following for around the same time, then. I apologize for assuming wrongly.

      Although I do admit an update would be nice after the site went down for half a week a week or so ago.

  39. why no in ao3?I’m a reader from China. I feel amazing that I cannot find it in fanfiction. Thanks god i find you blog

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  40. Not sure how they justify this as there are currently over 57,000 stories on FFN labeled as “songfics” which by definition means they include copyrighted lyrics.

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