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AUTHOR ALERT! Your e-books are being pirated!

Ian Keldon

Ian Keldon

Fleet Captain
I'm part of an effort to get a pirate e-book site called <Removed by moderator> shut down. On a hunch, I did a search on their site and got a TON of hits for Trek books and authors.

I figured it would be easier to post this here so you could spread the word among yourselves faster than I could track you down individually.

The effected authors and books are (as of today):

  • Nathan Archer Ragnarok
  • John Gregory Betancourt Incident at Arbuk
  • Carolyn Clowes The Pandora Principle
  • Greg Cox The Rings of Time
  • AC Crispin Yesterday's Son, Time for Yesterday
  • Peter David Fire on High, Martyr, New Frontier Omnibus, A Rock and a Hard Place
  • Diane Duane Sand And Stars
  • David Dvorkin The Captain's Honor
  • Michael Jan Friedman Pantheon, A Call to Darkness
  • Christie Golden The Murdered Sun, Endgame
  • LA Graf Caretaker
  • Karen Haber Bless the Beasts
  • Daffyd Hugh The Final Fury
  • SN Lewit Cybersong
  • Vonda McIntyre Duty, Honor, Redemption
  • Charles G McGraw Ghost of a Chance
  • Kristine Rusch Treaty's Law, Thin Air
  • Dean Weasly Smith Vectors, The Soldiers of Fear, The Rings of Tautee, The Long Night, The Escape, By the Book, Echoes
  • Judith Reeves-Stevens Worlds in Collision
  • Andrew Robinson A Stitch in Time
  • James Swallow Cast No Shadow
  • Jerri Taylor Pathways, Mosaic
  • Dayton Ward That Which Divides
  • Susan Wright Violations

also The Hand of Kahless (contains Kahless and The Final Reflection by Michael Jan Friedman and John Ford, respectively)

search results found here <Removed by moderator>
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sho said:
See here: http://www.simonandschuster.biz/online_piracy_report

Honestly I'd prefer if this thread were nuked because you're essentially giving that site more clicks right now.
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The authors need to know...if THEY complain (and do so loudly and publicly) it will be much more effective than if some otherwise anonymous report comes in off the net.

And the issue needs exposure so that people can flood the site with denounciations and tie up their functions.

The counter-movement has already managed to get Amazon, Paypal, and a couple of other places to cut them off cold, but they persist.
 
I guess I don't share your optimism that increasing the site's popularity by linking to it will add more aid to your cause than pirates to their audience. I also don't follow your logic that S&S' legal department will be more likely to act if they receive complaints by their authors than by you: S&S interest in this matter is to protect their sales, and they don't exactly need to be motivated to do so.

Frankly, if you weren't a regular poster here this thread would have all the trappings of actually wanting to promote the site under the mere guise of decrying its existence.
 
On the one hand, I can see where you might think that, but that place needs to be flamed and trolled and spammed back into the stone age until the law catches up with the owner, who is openly defiant against all the criticism.
 
If the owner is defiant against the criticism, what good would more criticism do? It seems to me it would be better to address the problem through proper legal channels.
 
Ian Keldon said:
On the one hand, I can see where you might think that, but that place needs to be flamed and trolled and spammed back into the stone age until the law catches up with the owner, who is openly defiant against all the criticism.
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Be that as it may, this is not the place to do it. Links removed. If an author wants the links, they can PM you and ask for it and you can deliver them that way.
 
Weird hobby...

It might be worth also removing the title from the first post, removing the links is nice and all, but all someone has to do is Google the title and it's the first search result.

Really oddly random selection of Trek books too, mostly older titles, the opposite of what you'd normally expect.
 
Christopher said:
If the owner is defiant against the criticism, what good would more criticism do? It seems to me it would be better to address the problem through proper legal channels.
Click to expand...

And that process is ongoing, as are efforts to expand the number of complaints through the publishers.

It's been the experience so far that it takes names with power saying something to get through to this guy and the sites that he uses for his dirty work. Most of those I'm working with are small-press and indie-press authors and a few self-pubbers. Places like FB basically ignore people like that. But if someone with a name and a rep (like the authors here) complain, it's been our experience that they sit up and take notice.

We're also trying to get a groundswell of sentiment growing in the literary community to change the very culture of reading that seems to be directly or indirectly supporting book piracy.

This garbanzo tries to paint himself as some sort of heroic freedom fighter and philanthropist, and he gets cred for that in some circles.

What we want, by raising awareness, is for people (like you) with voices that really matter to get mad enough to not just deal with him through legal channels, but to also go after that rep.

The idea is to turn the image of book pirates like this guy from "romantic rogues" to "frakking scumbag thieves". Instead of smiling approvingly, we want the general public reaction to be to spit on people like this guy.

To do that, we need names with recognition and credibility to lead the way.

People like you.
 
Deano2099 said:
Weird hobby...

It might be worth also removing the title from the first post, removing the links is nice and all, but all someone has to do is Google the title and it's the first search result.

Really oddly random selection of Trek books too, mostly older titles, the opposite of what you'd normally expect.
Click to expand...

The scumbag in question seems to target mostly lesser authors who don't have as much "pull" to get books taken down (because they can't afford to push for prosecution and/or lawsuits).

I'm really surprised at the lukewarm response from the forum...I would have expected there to be a much more support for defending IP rights for authors.
 
^ I think you misunderstand. We care greatly about piracy, we just feel that referencing the site plays into its hands. Awareness and popularity is what they're after.
 
I do see what you're saying, Sho, but is it popularity when the publicity is of the "mob of authors with pitchforks showing up at your electronic door" variety?
 
Well, maybe not popularity in the strictest sense of the word, but certainly notoriety, and that works to drive clicks, too.

I mean, to be blunt, here is approximately how I expect this thread is going to be received:


  • About 70% of the readers of this thread are going to genuinely think it sucks that this site exists, but won't do anything because it's not immediately obvious what to do, or that the thing they could do (write the guy an email) is going to have any effect.
  • Of those 70%, a fearless half of them are going to give the site a look, try downloading a book, and be surprised how easy that was. Most are going to feel guilty and delete the file again. Some will keep it. Some of those who did delete it are at some point going to give into the temptation of the convenience and pirate a book there (humans are weak, and very good at repressing guilt).
  • 15% are going to download 2-3 books there and keep them.
  • 10% will immediately systematically download everything they find interesting, either because their collection drive kicks in or because they're worried you might actually succeed in shutting it down any time soon.
  • 4% won't just do the above, but will also recommend the site to others.
  • About 1% or less are actually going to do something (i.e. write the guy an email - which won't really do much, especially if the guy fancies himself a rebel for a cause).
 
Ian Keldon said:
The scumbag in question seems to target mostly lesser authors who don't have as much "pull" to get books taken down (because they can't afford to push for prosecution and/or lawsuits).
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Why would the "pull" of the author be an issue? The publisher would have just as much of an interest in getting sites like this taken down, and Simon & Schuster have a mechanism for reporting piracy. I would also think that, with tie-in fiction, the owner of the franchise (in this case CBS) would have an interest in curbing piracy too.
 
^Absolutely. Any "pull" we authors have is inconsequential compared to the "pull" of the name Star Trek by itself, because that name is worth huge amounts of money. If CBS sees their intellectual property being pirated, they won't care whether it's written by a nobody like me or by William Shatner himself. They'll go after the pirate just as aggressively either way. They're the ones who'd be responsible for pursuing lawsuits or prosecution, since they're the ones whose property is being stolen.
 
Ian Keldon said:
I do see what you're saying, Sho, but is it popularity when the publicity is of the "mob of authors with pitchforks showing up at your electronic door" variety?
Click to expand...
Which would be fine if that is the majority of what people going there would do. But sadly, the majority of attention you'd get for the site would by putting a link in is going to be more people downloading the stuff. Even if the majority of the regulars on here are honest and decent, there's no way to know how many people who aren't posters are going to be stumbling across the link and then getting books off the site.
 
I did report a bogus entry at Amazon for Raise the Dawn and it did get taken down. Someone has put up a copy at Amazon.com for $2.99 DRM free.
 
Plus it's actually an established tactic some dodgy sites use to promote themselves to fans while looking legit. Not the case here, as the OP is a regular poster, but I've seen stuff where people go "Look at this site, how can it even exist? It has so much free stuff it should be shut down!" to drive traffic there.

I'd say the goal of attempting to change the culture is a good one (though not by eliminating ebooks), though targeting a single site is also fairly pointless. Pretty much every Trek book from the past 20 years (it seems, amusingly, bar one) has been shared all over the internet. Short of massive legislation, putting that genie back in the bottle site-by-site is impossible.
 
Also, you could basically enlist anyone who have ever written a Trek novel in the cause, because basically every novel published before last week is available as a bootleg, apparently. Even those that have never been published in ebook form, which means somebody is very busy at the scanner bed.
 
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