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It Was Bound To Happen... My Ebook is Being Downloaded Illegally!

by Christophe Young
24 replies
Well I have to say, it took a long time for it to happen but yesterday I got a Google Alert for my product title and I followed the link to a forum that specializes in distributing pirated copies of products in my niche.

I had to register to get into the forum and I noticed a thread where some A-hole had posted several different links to my ebook on "mirror" free file sharing sites.

What to do?

I found a good DMCA letter template (thanks E Brian Rose), and wrote it up filling it in with my information.

So far I sent it to the forum moderators, (although I doubt that will do anything as even the Mods over there are posting links to pirated copies) and then I sent the letter to all the file sharing sites. There's a total of four of them and all have the same cut and paste verbiage about how to send DMCA letters. Hopefully sending this letter will get it deleted off their servers.

I did a whois search for the forum host and the registration is listed as private. Is there any way to issue a DMCA to the host in this case? I noticed the registrar is Godaddy but don't know if there's any use in issuing a DMCA to them.

I'm not so concerned about this little circle of thieves having access to my work as there's no way they were going to purchase it anyway.

What DOES concern me is a Google search I did where this site comes up on the first page when searching for my product. That is a BIG problem! Does anyone have any experience with issuing a DMCA to Google to get it de-indexed?

Unfortunate that this crap goes on, but hopefully I can curb it to some extent.

Thanks for any help on this issue.
#bound #downloaded #ebook #happen #illegally
  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    Yes, I have had luck getting sites deindexed from Google. It's always worth a try. I believe there's a link in Google Webmaster tools to do this.
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  • Profile picture of the author RHert
    Send the host company a DMCA. They should take it down as it's illegal for them to leave it up once they know.
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  • Profile picture of the author Christophe Young
    Ah Suzanne, you're always the go to guru in these matters.

    I think this is the link:

    https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...-notice?pli=1&

    Will issue the DMCA right away.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bob Ford
    Here's a link to a Google tool that guides you through the process of reporting content that you believe should be removed from Google's services.

    Google Help

    I'm about to launch my own ebook and what's happening to you concerns me. I hate the very idea of having my stuff stollen.

    I wish you well.

    BF
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    • Profile picture of the author J Bold
      Originally Posted by Bob Ford View Post

      Here's a link to a Google tool that guides you through the process of reporting content that you believe should be removed from Google's services.

      Google Help

      I'm about to launch my own ebook and what's happening to you concerns me. I hate the very idea of having my stuff stollen.

      I wish you well.

      BF
      I think the bigger concern will be making enough sales of your ebook for people to even care to steal it.

      If a lot of people are wanting to steal your ebook it means you are doing something right. It means you're making money!

      In my opinion, finding that your ebook is being pirated all over the place is good news! Most likely it means you've made a lot of sales.
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      • Profile picture of the author Don Luis
        Banned
        Don't waste your time and energy going after these thieves. They are like many-headed hydras; cut off one head and more will take its place. It's a losing battle as many people will tell you. However, don't consider it as a loss since these pirates aren't going to be your customers anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author mattflynn
    What is even worse, is there are sites where they steal downloadable products like ebooks and use them to sell memberships on their own sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author AKang47
      Originally Posted by mattflynn View Post

      What is even worse, is there are sites where they steal downloadable products like ebooks and use them to sell memberships on their own sites.
      Ugh, no respect at all. I hate people who do this kinda stuff.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zesh
    Also try reporting to admin of the main forums and get them to take it off. This is bad and shows people do not respect hard work.

    good luck
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  • Profile picture of the author Christophe Young
    im personnaly download a lot pirated copies my self becuase i have dont have the money to pay for every fake stuf out there
    Really? Well, as long as you have a good reason. Unbelievable! :rolleyes:

    So far two of the filesharing sites have removed the files. Waiting to hear back from the others.

    Yes, seeing this as a sign that my work is becoming more popular is one way to look at it.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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    Originally Posted by chall vandenbergh View Post

    im personnaly download a lot pirated copies my self becuase i have dont have the money to pay for every fake stuf out there ( and believe me its a lot of people that sell a load of bull on this forum ) and its realy a pitty that people with good products need to suffer for this.
    What's even more astounding are the assmonkeys that come onto an internet marketing forum and tell the entire forum that they're nothing but a common thief. Funny, isn't it?
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  • Profile picture of the author Charles Jones
    you will get a better response and instant action by sending it to the webhost. My logos were on a site saying they did "design" for our site.....the were fired actually with explicit instructions to not use our name or anything related to my site.

    I found their webhost and sent the DCMA. It was gone within 48 hours...otherwise the webhost would have KILLED THE ENTIRE site domain.

    Good luck! And BTW, the only thing you can do is to be vigilant...there will always be piracy of digital goods...you just have to decide how much effort you want to put into it vs the return.
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  • Profile picture of the author nicnac03
    To be quite honest, don't even spend any sort of energy trying to get it taken down. A wise man once said "Focus on your gains, not your loses."

    We as humans get so angry when we feel violated in some way. A man who is making $100k in sales will drop everything and go after someone who stole a measley $500.

    "But yeah he freaking stole from me!"

    So what?

    Detach yourself from the anger and frustration and let it all go? Think abundant. Why waste time trying to chase this a$$hole down when that time could be better spent promoting your e-book, building your business, and getting way more sales in the process.

    If people want something for free, they'll find a way to get it. Besides, it's free publicity for you and your other higher end products.
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    • Profile picture of the author HeySal
      Originally Posted by nicnac03 View Post

      To be quite honest, don't even spend any sort of energy trying to get it taken down. A wise man once said "Focus on your gains, not your loses."

      We as humans get so angry when we feel violated in some way. A man who is making $100k in sales will drop everything and go after someone who stole a measley $500.

      "But yeah he freaking stole from me!"

      So what?

      Detach yourself from the anger and frustration and let it all go? Think abundant. Why waste time trying to chase this a$ down when that time could be better spent promoting your e-book, building your business, and getting way more sales in the process.

      If people want something for free, they'll find a way to get it. Besides, it's free publicity for you and your other higher end products.
      Would you please tell me where you live and where in your home you keep your cash? I'm sure you won't mind when I come over and take most of what you own.

      If people would stop thinking that it's no big damned deal that people are stealing hard work and income from others and do something about it, we'd have a lot fewer thieves to deal with. It is precisely your attitude that makes people think that stealing is not much of a problem.

      There's a lot of us that are just damned sick of seeing our livelihoods taken while people like you are chanting "so what". It's high time that people started protecting their work - en mass. No more free articles, no more free ebooks or software - either make your own or pay for what others make. Product makers don't owe you a damned thing. If you can't pay for what you want, that's not our fault. We make things so we can pay for what WE want. Not to check out who does and who doesn't have a drop of dignity or honesty.

      Instead of "look at it this way - you are getting publicity", which btw does NOT pay mortgages or groceries.............

      Let's look at it THIS way --
      Feel lucky when you steal on the Net and all that happens is your website and server gets ripped out from under your thieving ass. If I caught you doing the same thing in my home -- I'd shoot you -- with no hesitation and no remorse.
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      • Profile picture of the author ronaldmd
        Originally Posted by HeySal View Post

        Would you please tell me where you live and where in your home you keep your cash? I'm sure you won't mind when I come over and take most of what you own.

        If people would stop thinking that it's no big damned deal that people are stealing hard work and income from others and do something about it, we'd have a lot fewer thieves to deal with. It is precisely your attitude that makes people think that stealing is not much of a problem.

        There's a lot of us that are just damned sick of seeing our livelihoods taken while people like you are chanting "so what". It's high time that people started protecting their work - en mass. No more free articles, no more free ebooks or software - either make your own or pay for what others make. Product makers don't owe you a damned thing. If you can't pay for what you want, that's not our fault. We make things so we can pay for what WE want. Not to check out who does and who doesn't have a drop of dignity or honesty.

        Instead of "look at it this way - you are getting publicity", which btw does NOT pay mortgages or groceries.............

        Let's look at it THIS way --
        Feel lucky when you steal on the Net and all that happens is your website and server gets ripped out from under your thieving ass. If I caught you doing the same thing in my home -- I'd shoot you -- with no hesitation and no remorse.
        I think it's like this. Of course it is not OK when your product gets stolen. What nicnac03 wanted to say was, even though you have prevented your product to be stolen, there would be another way for the thieves to steal your product because in internet, almost everyone could find whatever they wanted, thanks to google. So it would be better to focus on the way to make money more rather than wasting time chasing the end-less piracy. And I bet even when the OP has sent DMCA letter, pirates would still share his product. If not on that site, then another site.
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      • Profile picture of the author nicnac03
        Originally Posted by HeySal View Post

        Would you please tell me where you live and where in your home you keep your cash? I'm sure you won't mind when I come over and take most of what you own.

        If people would stop thinking that it's no big damned deal that people are stealing hard work and income from others and do something about it, we'd have a lot fewer thieves to deal with. It is precisely your attitude that makes people think that stealing is not much of a problem.

        There's a lot of us that are just damned sick of seeing our livelihoods taken while people like you are chanting "so what". It's high time that people started protecting their work - en mass. No more free articles, no more free ebooks or software - either make your own or pay for what others make. Product makers don't owe you a damned thing. If you can't pay for what you want, that's not our fault. We make things so we can pay for what WE want. Not to check out who does and who doesn't have a drop of dignity or honesty.

        Instead of "look at it this way - you are getting publicity", which btw does NOT pay mortgages or groceries.............

        Let's look at it THIS way --
        Feel lucky when you steal on the Net and all that happens is your website and server gets ripped out from under your thieving ass. If I caught you doing the same thing in my home -- I'd shoot you -- with no hesitation and no remorse.
        I sense a lot of anger in this post. My response? Again, have an abundance mentality. Of course you shouldn't totally ignore it but don't let what the thieves did consume you to the point where it causes you to divert most of your attention and resources towards tracking them down and "bringing them to justice". You have to look at the big picture. We're talking about a product you can duplicate in a second, not anything that's hard to recreate, such as a physical product.

        Avoid the urge to want to make things "fair". We've all learned at an early age that life isn't fair. Sh1t happens. The sooner you can move past your setbacks, the sooner you can get back on your path to getting what you truly want in your life.

        The only positive thing the OP can do in this situation to get the most gain is to simply move on and create even more great products that provide massive value to it's customers.

        Specifically, he could maybe open up an affiliate program for his product and fill the first few pages of Google with affiliate promotions (since "product name" review would be heavily promoted) and prevent the thieves from getting search engine traffic. Or he can simply just rank a bunch of web 2.0 properties for the chosen keyword and achieve the same result as I doubt the thieves will do any sort of backlinking.
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        • Profile picture of the author HeySal
          Originally Posted by nicnac03 View Post

          I sense a lot of anger in this post. My response? Again, have an abundance mentality. Of course you shouldn't totally ignore it but don't let what the thieves did consume you to the point where it causes you to divert most of your attention and resources towards tracking them down and "bringing them to justice". You have to look at the big picture. We're talking about a product you can duplicate in a second, not anything that's hard to recreate, such as a physical product.

          Avoid the urge to want to make things "fair". We've all learned at an early age that life isn't fair. Sh1t happens. The sooner you can move past your setbacks, the sooner you can get back on your path to getting what you truly want in your life.

          The only positive thing the OP can do in this situation to get the most gain is to simply move on and create even more great products that provide massive value to it's customers.

          Specifically, he could maybe open up an affiliate program for his product and fill the first few pages of Google with affiliate promotions (since "product name" review would be heavily promoted) and prevent the thieves from getting search engine traffic. Or he can simply just rank a bunch of web 2.0 properties for the chosen keyword and achieve the same result as I doubt the thieves will do any sort of backlinking.
          Of course, you should not let it consume you. But there does need to be some fight in people to protect what is theirs. If you can get rid of a pirate site, do so. If pirate sites were going down as fast as they can get online, there wouldn't be many after awhile as even crooks don't like wasting their time.

          So let it consume you? No. Put links, etc. in your work so it may at least provide a tad of value when stolen? Oh yeah. Report a thief when you see one? Definitely. Expect the world to become all fluffy clouds and roses if you do? LMAO. Not gonna happen, but we don't need this place resembling the wild west either. Clean up what we can and keep on writing our products.

          A second issue to note is that if we can get rid of some of the more prevalent thieves on our own, we may be able to prevent the gov stepping in to do it themselves and that to me is a very worthy cause.
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          Sal
          When the Roads and Paths end, learn to guide yourself through the wilderness
          Beyond the Path

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  • Profile picture of the author andynathan
    That sucks! I am starting to create products more and more. Security is definitely something I am focusing on, because it is not huge now, because I really do not appreciate it when people steal the work that I spent so much time creating.
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  • Profile picture of the author trishacupra911
    Wow, that really sucks.

    It's inevitable, though - if it's a good quality product, people will share it. Sad but true.

    So, when you create an infoproduct, think about how you can add things to it so that if someone gets a free copy, they'll still want to visit your website and buy other stuff from you.

    The first four of the following things can be cropped off by someone who knows what they're doing, so they're more of a deterrent, or advertising for you.

    1. Put your URL on every page in the header or footer.

    2. Include pages about your business and at least one other product in the back, to encourage both your customers and those who got a free copy to buy something from you.

    3. Include a 'If you haven't already received my [freebie] and my weekly "XYZ" eZine, go here and sign up for it now' offer in the introduction or the back.

    4. Use a PDF Stamper plugin or service, which puts the purchaser's email address on every single page. Nobody wants to share their email address with everyone, so they'd have to go to the trouble of cropping the whole PDF.

    5. Use affiliate links if you mention genuinely-recommended products within the eBook, and/or link to other relevant products within the book itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Christophe Young
    Thanks for all the feedback.

    My feeling is that I'm not going to dedicate too much time to tracking down all these thieves and making sure they are brought to justice. We're talking about a forum in my niche and there seem to be several threads where one of them will post links to pirated versions of these products.

    It doesn't look like this is frowned upon over there either as others usually pop up in the thread with comments like; "thanks dude", "great job on the OCR", "don't forget to post the bonuses too."

    As I said before, I'm not concerned about that group accessing my ebook as they were likely not going to be customers anyway.

    There are however two links showing up on the first page of Google for my product name that point to that forum. And I'm trying to get them axed. I issued the DMCA to Google and there is a notice at the bottom of the search results saying the links have been removed, but they are still there today.

    I suppose it can be looked at as a milestone. Sales have been very good and once you get exposed on BH forums, you reach a new level. Still annoying though.
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Christophe Young View Post

      Thanks for all the feedback.

      My feeling is that I'm not going to dedicate too much time to tracking down all these thieves and making sure they are brought to justice. We're talking about a forum in my niche and there seem to be several threads where one of them will post links to pirated versions of these products.
      A couple of DMCAs take very little time once you have the first one filled out. Use it for the file sharing sites. You will have little to no success on the actual BH forums. They'll just laugh at you and are normally hosted outside of the US and don't give a rats ass about DMCAs.

      Ignore those who tell you to be flattered that your product is being stolen. It's not flattery. And it does affect your bottom line since they use BH techniques of outranking you for your own products.

      Sending a DMCA to Google is the best bet for offshore hosting sites. It works. I've done it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Doherty192
    Been there buddy. I sent dmca to the webhost...I got no response.
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