Khadija Horton // Getty Images Archive of Our Own aka AO3 has become the place to spend your time when you’re trying to escape doomscrolling at 1 a.m. and turn to doom- reading instead, as you speed through a fanfiction that would keep you up the rest of the night. But last week, AO3 shocked everyone when it announced it would be down for the next two to four weeks due to a security incident.
For a normal website, this might not be such a big deal. But Archive of Our Own is run by volunteers, so things can’t be fixed as easily. Just as readers yelled out, “Well, what am I supposed to read now?” (A book, maybe?) the community came together to create their own kind of archive of AO3 works, creating folders on Google Docs to share amongst their fellow fans. But there’s a reason as to why this has caused some major issues between the readers who cannot stop consuming these alternative stories and the authors who bring them to life.
For the uninitiated, Archive of Our Own first launched back in 2018 as a site where any and all fanfiction can live. S everal other sites made policies to ban certain content—Fanfiction.net has banned some fandoms due to authors’ dislike for fanfiction, Tumblr started to ban explicit content including written works in late 2018, and Wattpad did the same for content that is exclusively “created primarily for sexual arousal”—but AO3 never made rules like that.
For some, this means that there may be content on AO3 that goes against their morals or their ideas of what is okay to consume in media. But, for Archive of Our Own’s founders, it’s elemental to making sure that fandom continues to grow. Fics are tagged based on original IP, relationships, tropes, and content warnings like “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” that try to warn users that what they might be reading might not be for them.
All this means that the site has grown significantly, becoming a safe space for both creatives and readers to access stories that normally would not be available anywhere else. And it also means that if anything were to go awry, it can come with some serious consequences.
For authors, the Google Drive initiative is seen as their work being reposted or repurposed for something that it was not initially intended for: private consumption. Fans have always been able to download their favorite fanfics from AO3, but only so they can read them offline. It was never meant to be shared around other than the platforms where the author has uploaded the stories themself.
For some readers, however, it’s all about continuing the legacy of AO3 in the time that it’s down.
Authors, however, have called out the behavior: They never gave permission for the work to be uploaded anywhere else and they are concerned with Google Drive’s use of AI, which may scan their work for other uses.
“Sorry folks but I don’t give permission for my Ao3 fics to be shared on a Google Drive or uploaded to literally any other site,” one author wrote on Threads . “I know this is just me shouting into the void but it sure as hell would be nice if people didn’t give AI scrapers easy access to people’s writing.”
Unlike Google and the other sites like Wattpad and Tumblr, AO3 does not have to adhere to certain content guidelines as they are not-for-profit and do not run any ads on their site. AO3 is run by volunteers (hence the longer-than-normal downtime after this security incident) and through donations by paid members. As they are not making a profit on sex content or copyrighted intellectual properties, the site is able to protect itself under fair use.
For some fans, it feels like they’re just sharing the wealth in a time of uncertainty. But there’s no denying that this entire situation has become a bit of a slippery slope, both ethically and legally. Is community more important than that? That feels like an argument that we’re all constantly questioning nowadays even outside of fandom.
One thing is for sure: There’s no denying the impact that AO3 has had on fandom and its ability to be able to create works openly and without worry no matter the content. With it, the community has been able to grow safely and produce a number of works that have even gone on to live other lives through other means. Without it, there’s a chance that our time creating original stories with existing characters might be at risk yet again. The question is: How much are fans willing to bet for two to four weeks of comfort? It looks like they’re going all in, and it’ll be interesting to see who is holding the cards at the end.
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Source: Entertainment
