Saturday, August 29, 2009

Calling all bloggers to unite in the fight against piracy

I was just doing some blog hopping and came across this at Karen Scott's . I feel a lot of helplessness in the fight against piracy but this is one time we can do something! I'm just going to copy Karen's whole post since she did such a good job of it.

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.


I did as she asked and there is another suggestion in the comment section which I also followed

"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."

If we can only fight them one at a time - so be it - I'm all for it!!

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just reported this dunderhead on Paypal and Blogger. Hope it helps. If we keep bugging them, they might do something. I'm going to link to this post on Twitter, if you don't mind.

Kristie (J) said...

Bibliophile23 - NO!! Twitter is a GREAT idea. I'm new to it so I don't think of it that often.

Anonymous said...

Would you also mind if I posted about this on my blog as well? Plagiarism makes me grind my teeth in rage.

Kristie (J) said...

Nope - makes my teeth grind too. Make sure you mention Karen too. She's the one who came up with the idea of notifying PayPal.
The more this topic gets out - the better!!

Nikki said...

I complained to Paypal and blogger. I hope something is done about this.

Anonymous said...

thats not plaigarisim u moron

Anonymous said...

Wow, the person who cannot properly spell out the word "you" is calling me a moron. That's rich. If you don't have the courage to insult someone using your name, don't bother. It only makes YOU look like a moron.

Anonymous said...

*sigh* i KNEW someone would call me on that - I blame netbooks and the tiny keyboards :D

On the subject of piracy, dunno, I buy ebooks quite often (several a month when i can afford them) but I am a fast reader and cant afford to buy as many as I read. Why is offering downloadable books that much different than say borrowing from a library??
I could just go to the library and borrow the same stuff for free but happen to like reading on my netbook.

bibliophile23 said...

People tend to respond when you call them a moron. Especially when it is unprovoked and unnecessary.

Those books you borrow at the library are purchased or loaned for the library for the use of the public. Get it purchased or borrowed. Also, do you notice how when the two weeks are up, you give the book back? Do you return the e-book when you're done with it? No...that's the difference. You download books and distribute books, that are still in copyright by the way, for free. I could see if it was classics that have passed out of copyright but the books that were posted were new fiction. Stuff that the publishers and authors still own. The site owner is lucky that it is just a bunch of book bloggers complaining. It could be worse.

bibliophile23 said...

I also apologize to Kristie for responding on her blog but I couldn't help myself.

Comfort said...

Your library might not be doing it just yet, but that does not mean others are not.

I can't say I condone piracy of any sort (especially those that wear eye patches and sail the seas) but what the piracy caused in the music industry was better and easier music for everyone. The fat cats had to react and they did by dropping prices and allowing you to by singles instead of whole albums.

Just like the music companies, large publishing houses are pocketing too much. In fact in the fight against ebooks most major publishers want to give only a few dollars discount claiming thats all the printing side of it represents of the total book price. What rubbish! This sounds exactly like the music corporates original arguments against mp3 distribution.

The sooner the publishers start selling digital copies for realistic prices the sooner the piracy will stop.

Amazon and Google are leading the fight by basically offering a digital publishing house that authors can sell their books direct to the public.

There are literally hundreds of other sites out there with exactly the same stuff. It's not right.. but its a reality.

Anonymous said...

The pirate has move to here:
http://englishbookworms.blogspot.com

And is invite only now. I think the asshole who owns the site, his real name is Johnny Dorayme. He's a serial pirate.

Anonymous said...

Please complain here to google to have the piracy site removed:
http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html