Ebook theft, part Two

Dana,

I'd be careful. He might be using a pen name here or on his blog.

Martin

Yeah, I totally hear you. I've seen my monthly backlinks listed on blogs and such an presented as if they were the blog owner's 'finds'. All the "good job, what great links" just make me mad. And I always comment, but comments are moderated. And I KNOW that my comment isn't going to be approved. It's really maddening, isn't it? And I don't find the "Well, it's the Internet. This stuff happens" comments very helpful.

I am going to contact a lawyer this time, and I really hate to go through the expense, but it's necessary.

I recognize that internet theft is a fact of life, but when it's shoved in my face like this, I feel obligated to take action.

Hi Dana

Make sure you tell him you're going to do that. It might have the desired effect without the associated expense.

Cheers,

Neil

You're the best!

And by the way he urges people to send him free ebooks and then says he has 46 free ebooks that he will email you right away if you give him your name and email address.

How much you want to bet that most if not all of them are stolen?

On the bright side, yay, I'm worth stealing from.

Just posted a comment on the blog saying I'm sure he didn't write those posts. Bet it doesn't get approved.

That's awesome! Since this guy is trying to build a following, hopefully, this will shame him into removing the book from his site.

The more I look at his site the more I'm sure that he's aware of what he's doing. When he urges people to send him free ebooks - I am SURE that he is not checking to make sure that the people who send him those ebooks actually own those ebooks.

So he gives away other people's work, using it to build his list and his reputation.

And he got a perfectly nice guy on Twitter linking to my illegally uploaded book, publicly saying check out this great Twitter resource - the guy immediately took the link down as soon as I tweeted about it - but he drags other people into this too.

Thank you so much!

I'm dying to know so I could notify the people who actually created the books, but the only way to find out is to give this guy my name & email address and then he emails them. God knows how many people he's given away my book to, and other people's books. And I accept that I can't completely stop it any more than brick and mortar stores can stop shoplifters, but at the same time - I need to do what I can, because I make my living, pay my bills, and feed my kids with my products.

Way to go! Although when I go to that site I want to see a parking page or some other indication that the whole thing is gone.

Good work Dana! That's one of the top excuses when thieves get busted...it wasn't me--I'm also the victim of the evil ghostwriter/designer/graphics guy/butler but never ever them. I'm sure he did this all on his own and didn't take it serious until you shut him down. Awesome job dealing with this pond scum!

Dana -1 Clarence - 0

Let's hope it stays that way.


The Crazy Internet Dude

Yeah, I spent an entire day posting on his blog, posting on Twitter, trying to get ahold of him...nothing...when I called his hosting service and got his site taken down...you wouldn't BELIEVE how fast I heard from him.

I'm a little late into this but You did the right thing Dana by contacting his host and keeping your cool.

I'm surprised his host didn't shut his site down.

The lowest I tell ya.

Well he made a "name" for himself alright, a name that any ligitimate marketer with morals would never hope to aquire.

Frank Bruno

Wouldn't that put the host in the position of being the publisher? And, as such, wouldn't that increase the host's liability for hosting sites? Whereas, such as it is, they only need to respond to a specific request and not check content that is not being challenged.

I'm all for getting thieves shut down, but let's be careful about doing things that would negatively impact legitimate websites as well.

Let's say that, for the sake of argument, that the site owner was scammed by a content writer. Let's say he hired John Doe to write some content. John Doe copied and pasted content from an eBook and sold it to the site owner. The site owner looks it over, checks it with Copyscape and, if the book is not indexed in search engines which is probably the case, doesn't find a match. So, he figures all is okay, pays the writer and puts the content on his site.

Along with that content, he has content from maybe dozens of other writers. But, John Doe is the only scammer here.

The eBook owner finds their stolen content and requests it be taken down. But, then the host demands that the site owner prove that he has the rights to use all of his remaining content? How will he do that? Fax or eMail over all the contracts and payment records he has of the various writers to show that he did indeed contract with those writers to produce his content? And, what about the content he created himself? How will he prove that he did that content himself?

John Doe himself might have provided the site owner with a contract of work.

And what does that really solve anyway? For a legitimate site owner, it results in lost time and perhaps lost income, all due to the "writer" who scammed him. And, odds are he's not going to be able to track down or possibly afford to go after the writer for damages.

On the other hand, a scam site owner could just fake all the documentation. After all, if he's not above stealing other people's work and claiming it as his own, he's no doubt not above faking documentation or doing whatever is necessary to claim he wrote the content or hired it out to other writers.

How do you prove you didn't plagiarize work that you didn't plagiarize?

I don't think we want to do things that would penalize legitimate web site owners, especially those that are trying to do the right thing to begin with. I mean, if a site owner has hired dozens of freelance writers to create content for him, but gets his entire site taken down because of the actions of just one of those writers, and then has to gather all his documentation from all his writers and all the content they created for him, and then prove to his web hosting company that he has the rights to that content, what do you think that's going to do to the freelance writing market? He might decide it's much less hassle to do his own writing or hire an in-house writer he can supervise, etc.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for punishing the thieves and scammers out there, but I don't want to do things that are just going to end up making more problems for legitimate site owners while really doing little to impact the thieves and scammers. As has been mentioned, these guys can just start up a new site under a new domain and be off and running again; meanwhile, the legitimate website owner that's tied to a particular domain name is hit with a double-whammy--first he gets scammed by a writer and then he gets his entire site down until he can prove he's innocent.