Karen Knows Best » Calling All Bloggers To Unite In The Fight Against Piracy…

Calling All Bloggers To Unite In The Fight Against Piracy…

Posted in Piracy really isn't cool Friday August 28, 2009

Talk about blatant piracy.

This fuckwit here, http://englishbookworm.blogspot.com/, has a whole host of books up, and he’s offering free e-book downloads to the public.

The following titles are included in his never-ending list:

Acts of Mercy – Mariah Stewart
The Neighbour – Lisa Gardner
Unbound – Kim Harrison, Jeaniene Frost, Melissa Marr
Alex Cross’s Trial – James Patterson
Hunting Ground – Patricia Briggs
Novel Collection, including works by Ava Rose Johnson, Catherine Coulter, Christine Feehan, JA Konrath, Kresley Cole,
Forbidden Fantasies – Lynn LaFleur

Now blogger is hard for just anybody to complain-they have to be the copyright holder.

But one thing that may at least give him pause or make things harder is paypal. He uses paypal to take ‘donations’ to buy more books for him to pirate.

Paypal’s user terms prohibit using their service for illegal purposes. Copyright infringement is illegal.

What people can do if they want to help:

Go to paypal. use this form.

Fill in the form.

His blog

http://englishbookworm.blogspot.com/

his email:

dasblueuk@gmail.com

In the comment box, just write the following:

This Paypal user is using his money to help him to continue buying books for him to upload to his website. In Paypal’s user agreement, it specifies that the service cannot be used for illegal activities, and copyright infringement is illegal. I hope you take appropriate action.

The more people who complain, the more likely we are to accomplish something, so please feel free to repost on your respective blogs.

Posted by Karen Scott · Trackback · 33 comments

33 Comments »

33 piped up to “Calling All Bloggers To Unite In The Fight Against Piracy…”

Carolyn Crane
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 7:26 pm

I did that. I also tried to contact google about this, but you have to be the original copyright holder to file a complaint. This is terrible!

Mariana
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Users can Flag the blog as Objectionable.

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?answer=42517&cbid=ppk2u4lkgz7s&src=cb&lev=answer

SarahT
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
3

Done. What a wanker.

Diana Castilleja
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

Ditto Sarah. Done.

Is there a way to flag his blog? He doesn’t have the nav bar installed on his.

Kassia Krozser
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 10:05 pm

Karen — Thanks for posting this. The blogger in question had disabled the “report this” button (for obvious reasons!), and I spent way too long this morning on the project of reporting this site to Google/Blogger. I didn’t think of the Paypal option. That’s an excellent idea.

Blogger and Scribd, among others, make it very difficult to combat piracy by requiring copyright owners to do the reporting. I would love it if others would help pressure them to create tools to allow for easier reporting and notification. It took me fifteen seconds to find pirated material on Scribd (and I wasn’t even trying!), but reporting it was a nightmare.

Cece
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
6

To report abuse to blogger but yes you have to be the copyright holder to report.

Asstard!

Arachne Jericho
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 10:26 pm

For copyright holders, here are step-by-step instructions for going from a Cease-and-Desist to a full-out DMCA violation, complete with templates.

http://www.devtopics.com/how-to-file-a-dmca-complaint/

This issue comes up in the world of blogging alone constantly; blog content “scrapers” and their spam blogs are considered trash by the blogging community.

You will find no end of sympathetic folks in the blogging world at large.

Irritated author
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 10:46 pm

One thing that might help get the message to blogger.

If you go to this link

It will take you to a page that explains how to report offensive bloggers. It offers no help, however at the bottom, it offers a question “was this helpful?” If you click no, a comment box pops up.

If enough people put the pirate’s blog in the comment box that he is pirating material and nobobdy at blogger is responding to author complaints? Blogger doesn’t want to look irresponsible. They are not responding to author complaints very well so it is not a lie.

Melissa
Posted: Aug 28th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
9

Thanks for the info –I’ve also sent my complaint in!
AztecLady
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 12:30 am
10

Complained as well. We’ll have to see if blogger takes any notice, though.

Tuscan Capo
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 12:36 am

Just complained. I also found the address at the following page; the user name is listed there as “Melissa”.
http://www.2baksa.net/user/29109/ if you search it on google and have it translated, too. Caution: this is a warez site and also appears to also be a porn site.

Mary Winter
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 12:45 am

Google is nasty difficult to report to. They have very specific information and they need EXACT links in order to take anything down. I reported someone who had an insane number of books, including mine. Since I used the “search” link on her blog, that wasn’t good enough for google and by the time I found out, she made her blog “friends only” so the links couldn’t be accessed to be reported.

Janet W
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 5:43 am

OK. Followed the template and complained. This is really disgusting: hope this takes him out of circulation!

Stephani Hecht
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 6:53 am

This jerk has five of my books on his blog. Karen, thanks for bringing this to our attention and thanks to all those who commented the advice on how to handle a complaint. I’ll be sure to file one right away.

KristieJ
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 3:20 pm

Karen – thanks for alerting us to this! I contacted both paypal and blogger. Hopefully it will help spike the bastards guns

Myra Willingham
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

I contacted blogger and PayPal as well. What nerve this bastard has to ask for donations! Does he also need a letter of marque to carry on his pirating?

pingback:
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 5:51 pm

Help Fight Piracy of E-Books | Monkey Bear Reviews

[...] copied and pasted Karen’s post here: Talk about blatant [...]

pingback:
Posted: Aug 29th, 2009 at 7:24 pm

Fight the Piracy of E-books « Books Like Breathing

[...] the Piracy of E-books Jump to Comments Karen Scott has posted about a certain dunderhead who is posting illegal downloads of e-books and asking for [...]

Edie
Posted: Aug 30th, 2009 at 2:24 am

Done. I hate these wankers with a passion.
Have also posted a link to this post on a couple of bookseller forums, so that should garner a few more complaints.

SonomaLass
Posted: Aug 30th, 2009 at 6:06 am

I’ve done both Paypal and Blogger complaints. Volume is all we can hope will get attention, I guess.

Mariana
Posted: Aug 31st, 2009 at 2:29 am

I was directed to this site when the Flag button has been hidden:

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2006/06/splog-with-navbar-disabled-ha.html

Not sure if it works, but it’s worth a try.

Anna
Posted: Aug 31st, 2009 at 7:52 am
22

Spread the word through my own blog. Thanks for the heads up, Karen.

pingback:
Posted: Aug 31st, 2009 at 10:37 am

The Monday Morning Stepback «

[...] Fighting ebook piracy. Karen Scott posted about this recently, and she has the right idea with reporting the pirates to Paypal, etc. [...]

Pipedreamergrey
Posted: Aug 31st, 2009 at 11:54 am

You do realize that this post of yours is drawing dozens if not hundreds of people to his blog and promoting his piracy, right? Allowing the site to pass into obscurity would have been far more effective than a letter campaign to Paypal, as he probably isn’t actually receiving any donations in the first place.

If you actually want to effectively protest his site remove this post, and encourage others to remove similar posts. You’re all just boosting his visibility!

Karen Scott
Posted: Aug 31st, 2009 at 12:12 pm

Author Comment

@Pipedreamergrey
That flimsy reason for not highlighting twats like this guy has been used before, I didn’t buy it then, and I’m not buying it now.

People looking for free book download sites online who have never heard of my blog will find him some how, and I’d feel better if he was just taken offline altogether, and if that means shining a torch at him for a little bit, then so be it.

Thanks for your shortsighted and unwanted advice though.

Marci
Posted: Aug 31st, 2009 at 4:23 pm

I just sent off an email to all of the publishers that I know of and alerted them to this “person”.

Hope it helps..

Marilynn Byerly
Posted: Aug 31st, 2009 at 9:08 pm

One of the best ways to take pirates down is to contact the authors themselves, particularly authors with major publishers. They will contact their publisher who will send their attack lawyers/pitbulls after them. He he.

I’ve helped bring down dozens of pirate sites over the last ten years, and I’ve found that behind-the-scene contacts with the publishers and authors affected is much more effective long term than public announcements which allow the pirates to move before the big guns come after them.

Mary Winter
Posted: Sep 1st, 2009 at 8:11 am

Has anyone gotten a response about this? I just saw that this arsepimple posted more books (including mine and some from my publishing company). I’ve sent reports to the two torrent sites he uses, advised the affected authors to do the same, and also will be sending complains to paypal and google in the morning.

Also, if anyone has any identifying information for this person, please let me know so I can a) make sure it isn’t one of our customers and b) see about billing them for lost royalties and revenue.

Thanks!!!!!

Newton
Posted: Sep 9th, 2009 at 9:01 pm

The asshole running this piracy shop has moved his site. It looks as if he’s making it into an exclusive club, of sorts, now that he’s getting a little heat. I wish there was more that could be done about this kind of blatant piracy than simply complaining. Why aren’t these thieves being prosecuted, for instance? I wonder about the motives of these people. There are quite a few more sites like this out there unfortunately. I know of three or four more sites that post new books in ebook form and the owners (thieves) seem quite proud of what they’re doing. With more people using ereaders, this is becoming quite a problem and an expensive one for authors and publishers.

tinku
Posted: Nov 9th, 2009 at 1:04 am

Something Interesting..
Copyright law says that when you buy a book, you own it. You can give it away, you can lend it, you can pass it on to your descendants or donate it to the local homeless shelter. Owning books has been around for longer than publishing books has.

Copyright law has always recognized your right to own your books. When copyright laws are made by elected officials, acting for the public good they always safeguard this right.

Thanks you so much for the publicity, so much so we have had to open 3 more blogs to satisfy demand, also we have upgraded out paypal accounts to rid ourselves of the 3000$ limit on donations.. you really have no idea do you.

We do buy all our books they don’t grow on trees or maybe some do, but! Copyright Law says we can do as we please with them as we are the owners.

Not one complaint from Google or Paypal they really do understand Copyright Law and detest publishers.

And you said it.. if you don’t like it you know what you can do!

tinku

Karen Scott
Posted: Nov 9th, 2009 at 7:47 am

Author Comment

Tinku, not only are you a thieving twat, you are also a massive liar. You’re just bitter because you were forced to hide away like the scummy rat that you are.

Now do me a favour and go away and fuck yourself, you Grade A Arsehole.

tinku
Posted: Dec 1st, 2009 at 1:28 pm

LOL another delinquent who doent understand copyright law, bitter nah! thanks for the publicity..