[announcement] Leakers, practices going forward

Leakers have always been a problem for creators. I've always maintained a temporary exclusivity period so there's less of a need for me to monitor reposts of my work long term. It's less of a deal to me if someone reposts a work that's already public.

But, as of late, the leakers have been exceptionally brazen and aggressive. Stuff I post here is getting reposted and leaked within 24 hours. This is despite watermarking my work and putting a "DO NOT DISTRIBUTE" message on it. (Hell, this happened tonight even.)

One case from about 2 weeks ago, the guy claimed the (infamous) site he was using to access my work was just a 'booru.' I don't know if he was bullshitting me or if he was just that stupid, but the site he mentioned was literally dedicated to leaks, and doxxes anyone who files a DMCA. Their server location prevents the site from being taken down for copyright.

So, I'm mostly on my own on how to address this. I have a few ideas:

Going forward, I'm going to be a bit more aggressive with watermarking, and gifs/animations/sets will require an extra step or two to access, particularly if I think there is a leak risk. Smaller stuff won't see many changes. For the most part, this will mean only showing a still or preview of the animation or set in the post itself, while the full thing is available in a zip via the attachments. By doing so, it won't show up as a preview on the problematic site, which'll be a layer of deterrence. The downside, it becomes harder to view my Patreon / Substar page like a gallery, with the images viewable without downloading.

Users won't be able to access the work without the bigger watermark from Patreon/Substar directly, but they will be uploaded to the archives when they are updated at the start of each month. (Watermarks will still exist but they'll be less intrusive on the Mega archive, as they currently are.)

Hopefully, this will be enough. If I continue to have leaker problems, then the most extreme solution is to only post things to the archives, and direct people to the pinned post to access them. This, I understand, is cumbersome cause of the amount of clicking / navigating that needs to be done, and I don't want to inconvenience legitimate followers more than I have to.

I could potentially also make more direct on-site access a higher tier reward--scrapers tend to only go for the minimum pledge necessary. If doing so, I'd make this a weekly recap for, say, the $10+ tier that includes every post from the week, in addition to them being able to access the typical posts.

If anyone has other ideas on how to address this, I'm open to suggestions. I'm just very tired. I don't want to make people jump through hoops, and I don't want to have to either, but I don't know what else I can do.

TL;DR: Going forward, notable image sets and animations will be accessible via zips on each post, rather than directly in the gallery view, which will only contain previews. Watermarks are going to be more prominent for zipped works and previews. Posts in the archives will otherwise be as they currently are.