Piracy - i.e. theft

[Marc Joan]

Excerpts from some FB posts I saw, for info / warning:

"On September 9, someone bought my latest book via Amazon and returned it within a few hours. I knew what would happen next, and sure enough today I received an alert that my book is available for download (and payment for it will be made to the thief) on a site called Mobilism. Mobilism will not remove anything that has been stolen and offered through them. They get around all that by saying everything offered in their "forum" is not on THEIR servers but on other sites. So now someone else is getting paid for work that took me 20 years and well over a thousand dollars to produce"

"I would join blasty.co [that IS .co , not .com ], a legit site/service which destroys links to these pirate sites -- with full cooperation of Google etc. If someone does a search for your title, the link to the pirate will not appear. It whitelists legit sites like Amazon and other genuine retailers. Free at present, but eventually there will undoubtedly be a fee"

The internet needs to be better policed...

 

[Brian Clegg]

For a long time I tried to do something about these pirate sites - I receive several notifications a day from Google alerts and the like. But I've decided it really doesn't matter than much. All the evidence is that book piracy has relatively little impact on actual sales, because (unlike music) there tend to be significantly different populations of those who download pirated books and those who pay. These days I tend to look on it as a kind of marketing cost. After all, is someone downloads a pirate copy of one of my books and likes it, they could always buy a copy in the future...

 

[Marc Joan]

For a long time I tried to do something about these pirate sites - I receive several notifications a day from Google alerts and the like. But I've decided it really doesn't matter than much. All the evidence is that book piracy has relatively little impact on actual sales, because (unlike music) there tend to be significantly different populations of those who download pirated books and those who pay. These days I tend to look on it as a kind of marketing cost. After all, is someone downloads a pirate copy of one of my books and likes it, they could always buy a copy in the future...

Good points. But I'd still be outraged if it happened to me!

 

[Patricia D]

Being named 2015's best mystery by the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition did little for sales of my first book, but piracy skyrocketed. Some sites comply when asked to take a book down, but they put it right back up. An author's time is better spent working on their next book. Sigh.

 

[James Marinero]

Shrinkage is the term. @Brian Clegg makes a good point about the different audiences.

 

[James Marinero]

I just remembered an occasion last year when an article I had written on project management (my original profession) had been ripped off one of my websites and used as a professional original piece by an upstart project manager on LinkedIn - my carefully crafted graphics as well! I was incandescent, issued a DMCA notice to Linkedin and also posted an acerbic comment under the article. Acerbic? Well, I said she was a thief. My blood pressure has gone up just remembering the occasion. I then completely disengaged from the issue.

 

[Marc Joan]

Yup, I had a similar instance from my professional life. I published a white paper on a recondite technical issue, which was lifted in its entirety and placed on the website of an Indian company working in the same space. My lawyers advised that the costs of pursuit would be prohibitive. I stopped publishing white papers.

 

[AgentPete]

Based in Ukraine, courtesy of one Andrey Reznikov. Using CLOUDFLARE for CDN, prob the first people I'd speak to, since they provide him with online continuity and protection from DoS attacks. Let the m'f* expose himself fully to the internet...

Unlike most of these alerts I get - and i get several every day - this one does seem to be the real deal, i.e. he's openly pirating ebooks.

Get a big publisher to do your dirty work for you. Join the site, get incontrovertible evidence of piracy (H. Potter would be good) and dump into into the lap of the publisher concerned.

 

[KG Christopher]

I just remembered an occasion last year when an article I had written on project management (my original profession) had been ripped off one of my websites and used as a professional original piece by an upstart project manager on LinkedIn - my carefully crafted graphics as well! I was incandescent, issued a DMCA notice to Linkedin and also posted an acerbic comment under the article. Acerbic? Well, I said she was a thief. My blood pressure has gone up just remembering the occasion. I then completely disengaged from the issue.

This has happened to me so many times on stack overflow, providing details answers on technical issues, based on over 20 years experience, only to see someone else cut and paste my solutions without even a link back, so I just tend to keep quiet a lot more. I notice that empty vessels really do make the loudest noise on the Interweb.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Yep. I had an organisation contact me about modifying one of 'their' teaching resources a couple of years ago. They sent me the file. It was mine, stripped of my business name, and emblazoned with their own.

I had never sold the resource--I gave it away for free to teachers--but to see credit for it reassigned pissed me off. Word of mouth is critical in the business, and having my resources circulating was one of the main ways I got business.

I had to wait a few days before I could reply without screaming at them. Then I bit my tongue, agreed to do the job, and charged the crap out of them to do the work.

 

[Patricia D]

It happened to me, too, in my previous life as an economic development consultant. People will steal - that's a sad fact of life - and intellectual property is a ripe area. As others have noted, it is rarely worth an individual's time and money to go after the thief. Until the big publishing companies get wholeheartedly into this fray, I don't think it's going to stop or even slow down. Remember Napster.

 

[Bernard Stacey]

On a slightly different note, I was surprised today to see that a short story book I released last year as a sort of stocking filler on Amazon (cost - a couple of quid) now has a 'used copy' for sale via the Amazon site by a UK company for over £24! Flattering, but I really think they're being a tad optimistic!