---
title: "Teenager Shuts Down AO3 Clone After 2,000 Takedown Requests in One Day"
description: "The site, ao3.life, scraped fan fiction during AO3’s outage and charged for AI-narrated audiobooks. It had 126,592 users in 24 hours."
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-11-03T08:49:58Z
modified: 2026-11-03T16:28:17Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/teenager-shuts-down-ao3-clone-after-2-000-takedown-requests--7c3723
language: en
tags: ["ai", "copyright", "ao3", "fanfiction", "infrastructure", "tech"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Teenager Shuts Down AO3 Clone After 2,000 Takedown Requests in One Day

*The site, ao3.life, scraped fan fiction during AO3’s outage and charged for AI-narrated audiobooks. It had 126,592 users in 24 hours.*

By rews desk · November 3, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/teenager-shuts-down-ao3-clone-after-2-000-takedown-requests--7c3723

## In brief

- ao3.life, a site that copied AO3 fan fiction during the archive’s outage, went offline on Monday evening
- Its 17-year-old creator said authors sent more than 2,000 takedown requests in one day and the site had 126,592 users
- The site charged for AI-narrated audiobooks and said authors would get 91% of proceeds; the creator said about 11 sold
- The Organization for Transformative Works said it was taking action against the site
- AO3, which hosts nearly 18.5 million works, could stay down for up to four weeks after a security incident

A website that copied fan fiction from Archive of Our Own and sold AI-narrated audiobooks of it went offline on Monday evening, after its 17-year-old creator said authors had sent more than 2,000 takedown requests in the single day it was up.

The site, ao3.life, appeared after AO3, which hosts nearly 18.5 million works, went dark last Thursday following a security incident. Its creator, who gave only the name Ganesh, wrote in an apology posted on the site that it had drawn 126,592 unique users within 24 hours and used terabytes of bandwidth, [Samantha Cole reported for 404 Media](https://404media.co/vibe-coded-ao3-clone-site-down-after-fanfic-authors-buried-it-with-2-000-takedown-notices-in-a-single-day/).

“In the time this site has been up, I’ve facilitated over 2,000 takedown requests. It was never my intention to hurt so many authors - and I’m truly sorry to you all. There’s no way to show my sorry \[sic\] better than taking this site down,” Ganesh wrote.

The site went down after a wave of anger from readers and writers on social media. According to the apology, it was filled by “a swarm of AI Agents controlling 40 virtual machines were scraping the internet for all drives, scrapes, and sources.” Its homepage had pitched it as “AO3, saved before it slips away,” a place to read stories, download them as EPUB files or “let it read to you when your eyes get tired.”

![A robotic hand feeds paper into a teal machine connected to a large red megaphone, with loose pages and an open book nearby.](https://rews.cc/img/d4b3dceddfd2c86813328b30b518644214fe99a7.webp)

The listening wasn’t free. Audiobooks cost money after the first three minutes. A page titled “Authors get paid here” promised writers 91 percent of the proceeds, with the site keeping 9 percent for “narration and processing.” “Your earnings wait for you,” the page said. “We hold your share indefinitely until you collect it, however long that takes.”

Ganesh said the audiobooks were a way to pay for the servers. “Why did I charge for AI Slop audiobooks? I doubt anyone knows how expensive it is to run a server like this,” the note said. “I sold like 11 audiobooks, if it’s any consolation.” The note also said the material came from “public scrapes” and denied any connection to AO3, its parent group or the breach, [Kotaku reported](https://kotaku.com/a-scam-website-is-trying-to-cash-in-on-ao3-outage-by-selling-audiobooks-of-fanfics-2000752419).

Getting a story removed meant emailing legal@ao3.life and leaving a note on the author’s AO3 profile to prove ownership. Nobody could do that. AO3 was offline, and still is. Ash Parrish of Kotaku warned authors against emailing the site at all, and wrote that social media users had called the scheme “an elaborate phishing/doxxing attempt.”

AO3 lets writers “archive lock” their work so only logged-in users can see it, which blocks scrapers. Authors who hadn’t done so before the outage couldn’t log in to do it now. Some said the setting hadn’t saved them anyway. “I had everything archive locked on ao3 and it’s still all here and I as the author have 0 control over any of my fics on there,” one author posted on Bluesky.

![A hand holds a key near a large padlock on an ornate iron gate as loose papers drift through a coral sky.](https://rews.cc/img/7e99cec5402118df2de1041095a7e8f491c03665.webp)

The Organization for Transformative Works, the nonprofit that runs AO3, had been trying to get the copycat removed. A Reddit moderator shared the group’s message to users who reported it: “We are aware and are taking action, but please be patient because the legal system is much slower than online life.”

AO3 itself could stay down for up to four weeks. The organization has said no data has been lost, though it [could not rule out](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/a03-security-breach-readers-lean-on-community-rcna606894) that a user database had been stolen, NBC News reported. Accounts can hold usernames, email addresses, IP addresses and hashed passwords. Rews covered [the outage itself last week](https://rews.cc/a/ao3-s-security-breach-will-keep-18-5-million-fanfics-offline-c40088).

In the meantime, fans have been passing around Google Drive links on Reddit and Discord holding stories they downloaded earlier, often without the authors’ say. AO3 bars writers from making money from their work or linking to payment sites. Fan fiction is generally treated as fair use when it is transformative enough, but selling it can draw lawyers from the rights holders. In 2024, Ms. Cole reported on Etsy sellers who printed free fan fiction as bound books and listed them for as much as $100 each.

Ganesh’s note ended with a defense of the site’s choices, from “an attempt at revenue sharing, to responding to takedown requests as fast as I could, to taking down the site as a whole.” It was signed: “Yours truly, a 17 year old from India that thought they were doing something good.”