AlitaBerserker

Foreword The Beware is labelled NSFW since some attached external links contain NSFW material, but no NSFW pictures will be directly embedded in the post itself. This Beware will be very long, so I decided to organize it into paragraphs to make it easier to understand what happened and how I uncovered the culprit since it's a crucial part of the required proof. Summary One of my Patrons has been re-uploading exclusive content from my Patreon page to the pirate site https://kemono.party/. He didn't have my consent, ne never asked for it nor did he ever tell me. When confronted he declared his act was deliberate. I am writing down this Beware to show, with all evidence I have, what happened to protect other artists like me from this user. Background I've been working with Castore93 for almost three years between Patreon rewards and commissions; I can say we've always been in good terms. He began supporting me through Patreon in November 2019 and as far as I know we never had any issue. (Proof screenshot below.) Kemono.party On January 13th, 2022 I came to know through a friend of mine the existance of kemono.party, an infamous pirate site collecting exclusive material from Patreon and other pay-to-view platforms like SubscribeStar. I sadly discovered my Patreon material was uploaded there too. I was determined to uncover who re-uploaded the material, but to do so I first needed to understand how kemono.party works and how they were able to get it in the first place. Kemono.party works by using a scraper, a piece of software which automatically parses webpages to collect data from them. In order to access protected content, the scraper needs some kind of access key. In the case of kemono.party, the scraper uses the session key from a Patreon account. This means that the user either volountarely gives the scraper access to their account's session key or the account is compromised. The upload happens automatically. Thus, the person responsible must have a Patreon account with access to my exclusive posts; either my account has been hacked or one of my Patrons has, volountarily or not, shared their session key. Finding the culprit My account couldn't have been hacked since I was able to see posts which weren't uploaded to kemono.party. I was fortunate enough to have exaclty three Patrons, all belonging to different tiers. The only way to identify the culprit would be posting a series of artworks limiting access to some specific tiers and seeing which of them would get reposted on kemono.party. I have three different tiers called "A precious gift", "Treasure" and "Jewel's waterfall". When posting a content on Patreon you can choose between some visibility options: You can make your post public so everyone can see it. You can make your post visible to "All patrons" regardless of their tier. You can make a post visible to one or more specific tiers. Selecting a lower tier only does not make the post visible to higher tiers. My three Patrons are Patron 1, Castore93 (Castore Devon on Patreon) and Patron 2. Patron 1 didn't join any tier, so they can only see "Public" and "All patrons" posts. Castore93 (Castore Devon) would be able to see "Public", "All patrons" and "Treasure" tier's posts. Patron 2 can see "Public", "All Patrons" and "Jewel's Waterfall" posts. After uploading each bait post I waited until I saw some of them appear on kemono.party. I made four bait posts: All Patron: it was a check to see if my content was stil being stolen. Selecting "A precious gift", "Treasure" and "Jewel's waterfall" tiers altogether. "Treasure" tier. "Jewel's waterfall" tier. Since nobody was part of the "A precious gift" tier it was no use testing it separately. Test no.1: all Patrons. It has been re-posted. My content was indeed still being stolen. Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/60897241 Test no.2: All tiers altogether. It has been re-posted. This excludes Patron 1 since they weren't part of any tier, thus unable to see the post. Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61104826 Doublecheck. Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61286834 3. Selected tiers only: "Treasure" tier. It has been reposted. Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61287322 Doublecheck. Kemono.party post: https://kemono.party/patreon/user/14947257/post/61287443 4. Selected tiers only: "Jewel's waterfall". It hasn't been reposted. Check & doublecheck. This excludes Patron 2. Notice how the posts from the "Jewel's waterfall" tier were shared in between "Treasure" posts in order to exclude any time factor. The confrontation It was clear from all the data collected the culprit was the Patron from the "Treasure" tier, Catore93 aka Castore Devon. It was still possible his account had been hacked and he wasn't aware of the situation. So I opted for a neutral approach and he himself confirmed this wasn't the case... On January 20th, 2022 I confronted him. Translation from Italian: Me: Do you know this site? https://kemono.party/ Castore93: I go there sometimes. Me: You do realize this material comes from your account, right? Castore93: But theoretically I think the site uploads content only when you add it, not by itself. I did add some stuff in the past. Me: Do you knwo this is copyright infringment and illegal, right? Castore93: I am curious to understand how it shows it has taken the material without me uploading it. About uploading stuff from Patreon (when I did it some time ago) about that I would have a certain personal point of view, you're not wrong obviously. (SIC) Me: The site connects to your account's session cookie, uploading does not depend from you. In any case you can keep whatever point of view you want as long as my pay-to-view material remains visible only to those who paid for it. Castore93: Ok so one time is all it takes. Later that day I posted a public Patreon journal explaining the situation and how I will be sharing my contents from now on to avoid similar theft. This post too appeared on kemono.party (as you can see from the previous screenshots), meaning Castore93's session cookie was still active on kemono.party. Taking down the material I wish to add this part to show what kind of assholes arise from such events. After contacting Patreon to ask for advice, they suggested me to send a DMCA takedown request to the site which is the typical course of action. However, the criminals running the site ever so smugly responded with... excuses... even if the site has a "DMCA" page with instructios on how to send a DMCA takedown notice. I don't feel like letting them win. I am now in the process of researching my options to deal with the situation. I will try to give updates in the comments about this if I find anything which might be useful to everyone. Conclusion I lost a considerable amout of time dealing with the whole situation, which is amounted to a lot of frustration not to mention the damage of having copyrighted material posted around without authorization. Please be aware of this user.

This has been my first bad experience in the world of commissions and I hope this will be the last beware I will have to share here. Everything began on 17th April 2018; I had started taking commissions some months before, so I was reeeeally naive about it and my English skills were terrible as well, so I apologize for the horrible grammar in my messages. At that time I didn't have any Terms of Service yet, but I had already started working with FyreDraygg (we are two artists working together. I keep public relations) I was in a Telegram Network made up of several channels where artists can show their price sheets and find clients; buyers can send requests in order to find the right artist for their needs. I saw this user requesting a couple of dragon designs (that's my field of specialty), so I contacted them. We started chatting and they seemed quite interested, so I asked them all the information I required to give them an initial quote to see if it was fine for them. They accepted and explicitly stated they were fine with the price; they sent me a lot of references and details about how they wanted the two pictures. Important for later: they asked us to complete this work very quickly. I told them that payment must be fulfilled after seeing the sketch. Initially I made a sketch, but wasn't very convinced about how it turned out: when I work with the kind of buyers I call "yes-men", meaning people who accept everything you show them without ever having any critique or preference to share, I try to use my personal taste to improve the quality of the work to a level I find at least acceptable. Thus, after talking to FyreDraygg, we made a second design and showed it to them. They (unsurprisingly) liked it and everything was still fine. After that, I pointed out that payment was then due. It was a very big order for me at the time and my queue was full, so I decided to proceed with lineart and coloring even if payment hadn't been received yet. (That was my fault, I know, and I've learned to avoid doing this, but this is besides the point of my beware) Then we asked for an email address to send the invoice to, they provided it and sent the invoice. After some days we kindly pushed them for payment, especially since they had asked us to be quick at the beginning and we wanted to complete this order asap. As I explained in a previous post, I believe that when a commission is placed, the buyer is responsible for setting the required funds aside so as to be always ready for payment, especially after confirming they can afford it. I was very annoyed, but kept this to myself. Eventually, no payment was received and we had to canceled the commission. I wasn't as professional as I'm trying to be now and I didn't have a lot of patience, I know, but this was already the umpteenth person who thought it's ok to be paying late for a commission they themselves rushed, because apparently it's fine to push the artist for work but heaven forbid having to pay on time. After all of this went down, this person sent another request on the market channel I first found them in, asking for another kind of work. Thus, I sent these screenshots to the admins of the channel and the user vanished from Telegram, deleting their account; so I don't have any information besides the old username and the Telegram id (I use Plus Messenger and ids are public) Username: @What_even_0 id: 429774297 

I opened this YCH auction for a 2 slot scene. Unfortunately I canceled the original post, this is the second one I have created after this happened. Nothing was changed, it's just to give an idea. [NSFW] Link to the auction This person commented on the previous one stating they wanted to auto-buy both slots. I directly sent them a private message via FurAffinity to receive the characters' references and information to send the payment. The buyer then replied giving me links to their characters' references and their email to send the invoice via Paypal (I'm censoring their email): Then I just gave them some information and sent the invoice: As stated in the auction rules, payment must be fulfilled 48h after the winner's last bid. Then, no payment has been received. This was one of my first auctions, so I decided to wait. The buyer didn't send me any note (as you can see I'm always quoting the same message), any payment delay communication, any withdrawal from the auction, anything. After a week I decided to send them a reminder: All the notes I sent (first and last are from different users) All the notes I received (first and last are from different users) Lastly, proof of no-payment: Needless to say, this person was directly thrown in our blacklist. As additional proof, I sold and completed this YCH to other buyers. [NSFW] Final result link Please be aware of this person when you consider working for them. Link to their FurAffinity page: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/luskfoxx

Hi. This is a story of two buyers who didn't pay us for our work. A little explanation before I start: I work together with FyreDraygg. I take care of public relations and make some types of commission; he doesn't talk to our buyers, but is always informed by me about everything he has to know. This is stated on our Terms of Service, automatically accepted when someone decides to commission us. That being said, let's start. Terri contacted us on 6 December 2018 asking for a Night in The Woods graphic (a type of commission FyreDraygg does) featuring four characters. (If you're unfamiliar with the platform it's Plus Messenger. It's Telegram with a different interface) (I know the correct total was 26€ (6,5 x 4 = 26€) when I wrote 24€, , I made a mistake, but I let that slide even after I noticed.) Then they proceeded sending us the character references. I gave them an indicative date as, per policy, we can't ensure any completion date. I also explained them FyreDraygg will work on their piece (even if they should have known reading our ToS or, simply, my FurAffinity page). We chatted a little bit, nothing relevant for this. They contacted me on 12 December 2018, 2 January 2019, 28-29 January 2019 and 7 April 2019 asking about the WIP. As I told them before, I have a proper channel where I send any update on any commission I'm working on, to let people know what I'm working on, but I still accept people asking me privately. Finally, on 22 May 2019 I send them the final picture; I know, we took so long, but again we give no guarantees about completion dates and this is clearly stated in our ToS. Then, problems arose. Again, as per our policy: "A situation where we finish our job and the client delays payment due to not having the required funds available is not at all acceptable and lands said client directly in the blacklist, along with us reporting such incidents to all market platforms." ...but I tried to be understanding: we took a lot of time and I've decided to be more patient in turn. I was still annoyed because it was just about 6€ per person, not a really large amount, but I kept this for myself. I just wanted to be payed, nothing else, I didn't care about judging other people's finances. Then I contacted them on 27 May 2019, 10 June 2019 and lastly 21 June 2019. It was becoming a large problem because I had to file my tax declaration and I needed this payment to be done asap. I also explained this problem to them. Then, they forwarded a message from another person (a friend who was taking part to this commission), apologizing and promising we will receive payment very soon (I'm censoring personal emails & Paypal addresses). Then, suddenly they asked to change the price because "2 of the characters weren't used at all". We had been graceful enough to decline charging them extra delay fees when offered, the commission was already dirt-cheap discounted to begin with and while we took a long time to deliver, this gave them plenty of time to notice they weren't using a character and telling us about it. Furthermore, after receiving the WIP, they had yet another chance to ask for changes, which they didn't and now, when pressed for payment, they magically discover issues with the work. They also complained about us not sending them any WIPs, which we clearly provided as a release candidate due to the nature of the work. Thus, since work on 4 characters had already been done, that work would have to be paid. We couldn't send any invoice via Paypal any earlier because we didn't have any email to send it to; the buyer seemed extremely reluctant to provide any such information and had to be solicited multiple times before complying. The invoice expiration date was set for 15 days after issuing (my email is a public business email, I don't feel the need to censor it) and Maxx promised to pay after Friday (it was June 21, then payment should have been sent after June 28). As you can see from the screenshot I took today it's still "on hold", while the second one (from another person) is paid. Just a comparison if you're not familiar with Italian. The invoice will technically expire tomorrow, but since we are way past any set deadlines, we figured we weren't going to receive any payment and decided to cancel this order, ban these buyers from our service and initiatives and report them to the proper platforms as stated in our ToS. I perfectly understand things can be hard in life, we took a lot of time to complete this piece, but on the other hand if a person commissions some work from someone else, they should keep the proper funds available by setting money aside from the start, not pay at their leisure and blaming it on the worker for completing their work at an inconvenient time. I also offered them to pay after a WIP because I know it could took more time than expected. And again, we're talking about 6€ per person; I don't think someone who struggles to set aside the price of a 12-pack of Pepsi should preoccupy themselves with ordering art, but that's just my personal opinion. These users contacted me on Telegram and, apart from personal emails, I don't have any other contact. I give you name, nickname and id because it's all I have directly; after some sleuthing I found Terri on FurAffinity. Terri J. Flippo, @ZoopLoopz, id: 642843923 http://www.furaffinity.net/user/turriboo Maxx "Wretch", @trashmutt, id: 353535756