My ebook is being illegally distributed - what do I do?

You "could" do some kind of code, or password, or membership area, or even use dl guard. This has been brought up several times on here. If hackers want it, they can get it. It sucks, but just focus on those that will pay for it. You arent going to get rid of the hackers.

I feel your pain though,

Mary

You might want to take that link off here as you are just promoting it by posting it, and will definitely have more people take the freebie.

Mary Green

I developed a software in Visual Basic that read the machine's Windows serial number, and it is unlocked only with a license code based on this serial. The problem is that non-computer-savy clients will complain and it creates more work in the customer support area.
Regards!
Vicente
TranslationToSpanish.com

Good point about the link. I'll take it off.

Dana, welcome to the world of IM. It sucks, I know. It happens to all of
us. And tracking down these bozos is very time consuming to boot.

I use DLGuard and it helps, but if somebody wants to take your book after
they buy it and put it up on their web site and sell it, there isn't a lot you
can do short of reporting them to their host and hope that their account
gets shut down.

Sorry you have to see the seedy side of this business.

Thanks, Steve & everyone else. I am sure it's inevitable; for all I know it's been going on for a while and I just found out about it. I will try to encrypt future books so I can at least make it more difficult for people.

Dana, have you contacted them and asked them to remove it, tell them that if you don't you will take legal action.

I had this happen with one of my products once and I sent them an email stating that I was the owner of the product and that they are distributing it illegally. I stated that if it wasn't removed that I would take further action.

They removed it straight away.

Nothing you can do at all when you distribute your saleable product in PDF format.

What you discovered is the tip of the iceberg.

What you should do in future is place your content within Membership software because of the multitude of benefits which outweigh PDF on every level you can possibly think of.

Hi, Im back. I just wanted to see what everyone is saying. I have to agree that the membership script is probably the best idea. Otherwise the product is passed around between friends and such online. It is a great idea.

Mary Green

There's no obvious way to contact the site owners - not surprisingly! I'll do some more digigng when I get back - have to run out for a few hours.

This also happens to the big marketers where their $500+ stuff ends up on the net. I guess a way of looking at it is feeling sorry for the bozos(spelt?) who haven't got the brains to make it on their own steam. They're just jumping from one buck to the next whereas you will be able to have the brains and knowledge to build a long term, profitable business. I used to get annoyed when I saw people stealing my articles and making content out of my ebooks but now I just try and laugh at them - not sure if that helps but like Steven said (reading between the lines) you can waste a lot of time chasing these knuckleheads (love that American expression) and instead use the time to go and make even more money.

Beers,
Phil

It's astounding to me that people openly do this - which actually makes me think it's probably someone overseas, who knows they're beyond the reach of the law. i saw a bunch of other ebooks on there as well.

You know what REALLY annoys me? I charge seven freaking dollars for that ebook! I deliberately priced it really low - I've had a LOT of people to tell me to raise my prices - it's astounding to me that people would help rip off a seven dollar ebook.

Dana, I wouldn't worry too much about losing sales through thievery. Those people are not going to buy your product in any case.

It's the price we all pay for selling easily distributable products. It's easy to love the low-cost, no support, "no shipping" download model, until that easy distribution flows in unintended ways. It's part of the cost of doing business this way, IMO.

I would just concentrate on the group that will buy from you.

Good luck! and I'm really sorry your product is being distributed.

If microsoft can't prevent pirated copies of their products, we are spinning our wheels trying to protect ours IMHO.
Pirated Software, pirated music downloads, movies, Xerox copied manuals.

It is not 3rd world foriegn theives.
Look on any college campus and you will find peer to peer sharing.
Look at a local business with 5 computers running Microsoft Word, but only one legal copy and no site license.

Sorry to hear that Dana

Yeah, I'm sure I know the site you're talking about. They had one of mine and some other Warriors stuff as well.

Dana,

From every experience good or bad always take a lesson learned. Now for future products try protecting the download using a script i use possession defender, others use dlgaurd.

Also integrate some form of sign up in the e book some thing like get the latest version click here. This way is some one does pass it on illegally you have some form of link to get them to sign up to your list. Play them at their own game...

Also if using pdf protect the book from being copy and paste. You could also password protect it but there is nothing from them giving away the password.

Dana this product will never let this happen again to you I recoommend
this highly. I know your pain and I know your angry, this happen to me
also when I first went to launch my first book Ranking In The Top Ten

Get this product it will protect you it was created by the late
Cory Rudl
eBook Publishing Software: Make money online with eBook Pro

My Best
Frank Gorka

Since loss is just a fact of doing business, both online and offline, I guess the best you can do is give yourself a huge pat on the back for having something that is so revered that it was worth stealing

I have mixed emotions on providing affiliate links in products that people have paid for, but if done tacitly, you might be able to make it work so that people don't feel like they're being sold after they've paid money.

Interesting - I got a PM right now from someone who said that he is the administrator of that site - said that he removed it, and that he wasn't the one that posted it.

I went to the link where it was up before and it now says this:

"This product was removed from this site because of the author's complaint, if you want it don't search it elsewhere, just buy it from the link above
Twitter Gold Rush"

Honestly I'm not tech savvy enough to understand all this; I'm sure since I didn't protect the product in the first place it's too late to stop dishonest people from accessing it illegally.

Sevenish does have a good point that people who steal weren't going to pay me for anything in the first place.

I appreciate everyone's sympathy and good advice. It's not the end of the world, but it is upsetting and annoying. The dark side of the internet, I guess.

it sounds like you still don't get it Dana... in so many words... it means you have hit the big time...

take this experience as having proved that your product/info is of such great value, people are willing to steal it and risk legal ramifications...

people don't go to the trouble of pirating junk info, so please take a step back, let that sink in and look at this an entirely different way... as a huge compliment and a justification that what you are producing has great value... so much so that people are willing to risk breaking the law to get it...


- Jared

if your ebook is being stolen, at least make sure you have some links to backed products in there...

Contact their hosting, and do a DCMA request asking for the site to be shut down.

If that doesn't work, go up the food chain of resellers until you find someone with enough balls to do what's right.

Comgratulations...er, I mean that sucks!

I guess there's only one more thing which shows you made it is when you see "Dana W is a scam artist" on top of hyperlink blue in Google PPC.



BTW BizBooks had a good point with having some links in there that will get you extra Paypal love.

Also be sure to invest in DLGuard or some alternative.

At least you know that way you've taken preventative measures from having people pass your download link around.

just do a google search for ways to protect your ebooks. I did a search and I'm currently going through the different programs to see which is best.

I'll let ya know a few good ones when im done searching.

Its Sad... but it keeps happening all the time.

You can use DLG, SMP or any other thing to make it complicated, but once they have the ebook, they are going to share it with others.

The world of Warez is very ruthless, and unfortunately much smarter than us in terms of technology. You can get a thousand locks, they'll still find keys to all.

So what do you do?

Move on... And focus on people who are honest and don't mess around with Warez... In this business, majority doesn't even know they exist.

I know how they work, but I never use them, so there are other people like me as well who fear copyrights and do not use these sites.

Fact is... They are never going to stop... They have forums and members are in millions... they just won't stop.

Every movie is therte on these sites, free of cost for you to download and watch.

Every software/script that is well known is there.

An ebook is just a PDF... Its so easy to share... they are unstoppable.

Sad but true... That is why I am more of a servicde provider even when it comes to creating products.

HINT: In a local market in India, you can find DVD's (Real, physical DVD's) for any product that is out there @ $3/DVD. Every big IM product is there... Most smal IM products are there.

People buy them all the time.. Who can fight it? Only the buyers... So as a buyer we must ensure we never use them. That's the best way to deal with piracy.

-Lakshay

What's the book about?

Sorry to hear that Dana. For software I have built out verification systems which helped keep out hackers, but with an ebook it is a different story. Like many have said, there will always be those dishonest people out there.

Hiya Dana...sorry to hear about your woes. Unfotunately, a part of the landscape; thieves and pirates everywhere. There is some good news, tho, lass. A quick Google search on "ebook security" landed me numerous options for security and protection. I tried to post them for you, but, being a new warrior, it wasn't permitted. I'm sure you'll find your way with that. Best of luck.

Hey Dana, instead of ebooks, perhaps you could do videos in the future in streaming format (undownloadable). This will eliminate the stealing.

It is really hard to protect ebook, data and even software which are transfered by electricle. I also encounted the same problem. and I can do nothing but keeping updating my data to make it the best.

HI Dana,

Sorry to hear this... I have had the same problem inthe past with a couple of my ebooks. I had set up a Google Alert on my product name and my own name and that is how I found it.

The first step is to contact the owner of the site that you see your book on. I did this in both cases and just sent an email letting them know that this was not a free ebook and that if they did not remove this ebook immediately I would take further action. In both cases this worked.

Do you know how your ebook got there? I guess it could either have been a customer, or someone could have found the ebook on your server somewhere if it is unprotected. If the latter, maybe something like DLGuard or EasyClickGuard would help you.

Cheers,
Suzanne

Dana,

It's going to happen and I understand the frustration (I've had the same thing happen in my industry.) The best thing I learned was to put in better bounce back offers, add an up-sell at the end of the book, and bonus materials mentioned in the book that they could only get in membership.

Your materials still need to be good and have value on their own, but does everything it can to get the reader to contact you for something. You'll build your list and make legitimate sales.

Some of the people downloading those eBooks don't know they are stealing (many know exactly what they are doing), however, if you have solid bounce back offers you can at least capture some of the readers in other systems.

Best,

Justin

Dana,

Just about all the advice you need has already been
posted in this thread, aprt from maybe one more
important point..

Don't allow the chickenshit thieves spoil things for the
people who really matter.. your customers.

Please don't implement so many levels of protection that
your customers end up paying the price.

John

This is the PM that I got from the person who says he is the admin of the site:

Well let's say that it is some kind of service, I am just looking for traffic to my site.. Besides this information is not unique, I mean that I am collecting the content from various sites and I stated that "You may not use this site to distribute or download any material which you do not legally own and or have the rights to do so."

What else to say? I know that it's not cool for the authors of those eBooks but I started with the idea to post only the outdated books and then I saw a guy who was charging $10 monthly fee for access to the content which I started listing it for free.

Never mind I just want you to know that I am appreciating every ones work and I will remove ASAP the download information if the author of the given book says so.

Thank you for your understanding and I am really sorry for causing you this!

For the record, I don't think that authors of a stolen book should have to take it upon themselves to go police the internet and track down the black market sites where their stuff is being illegally downloaded and ASK that people stop stealing it.

I have just developed a product to protect ebooks and software from being downloaded illegaly from peoples servers, not only that but it also prevents search engines from indexing the product. Message me folks if you want to know more about it.

if they're still downloading if from your site then close that website down and open a different one.

Otherwise report it and use lawyers...