Dealing with Piracy
Since one of my Indie friends is now facing this problem, I thought it would be a great post for the site!
What do you do when you find your book being shared illegally online?!
No matter what your occupation is, if it’s digital, there is a huge chance you’ll find yourself staring at pirated files of your work at some point. Piracy stinks, but it’s everywhere. So what should you do if you find your book being shared?
The best route, is to file a DMCA notice. But to who? Well, I’ll tell you who, if it were me. I wouldn’t waste my time contacting that website owner. I would be contacting what ever site the actual file is being shared from. Chances are if you find the link on ThisIsMySite.com the file isn’t actually being hosted there. So contacting that site owner, would only remove that post, the file would still be live and available on how many sites you don’t know about ?
My Pap, bless his heart, told me once “Why spend all day pickin at the petals, when you could just nip it in the bud?” Of course, he was talking about me being lazy and always taking the long way about doin’ my chores. Eventually, that advice “clicked” for me and that philosophy has stayed with me my entire life.
I have to tell you, it works better here than in most situations.
That site you find your file on is more than likely linking to a file sharing site like 4shared, rapidshare, or yousendit. So by going to the file host, you are taking the pirated file completely offline, instead of just off that one site you found it on. Effectively, “nipping it in the bud.”
You could contact who ever posted the link, and spend a few days lecturing them about how what they did was wrong, but really,do you need that stress? I’m not saying just let it go. I would also kind of keep an eye on that site and see if they re-uploaded the file. If they did, I would send a DMCA notice to the hosting provider of their site which could/would result in them losing their website all together.
OK, so you need to write a DMCA but have no idea what to say. I found this handy dandy DMCA GENERATOR over on the SFWA website!
Now that you have the DMCA, where do you send it? Here are some helpful links to get you going in the right direction. Each site has different specifications on filing a complaint, so be sure to read them each carefully. These are the file sharing sites that I had to deal with most often in my digital scrapbooking business. Most are pretty quick to remove the files. Rapidshare, however, well you will need to be very firm in “tone€ or it will take months to get the file removed.
4shared: simply go to the file page on 4shared and click on REPORT ABUSE in the upper right hand corner.
RapidShare: https://www.rapidshare.com/#!help/help_abuse
YouSendIt: http://www.yousendit.com/aboutus/legal/copyright
If you do decide to contact the poster of the file, keep your wits. Keep in mind that some people are new to the internet and don’t realize sharing files is wrong. Some people know what they are doing is wrong and just don’t care. But ALL of them, if contacted, are going to say they didn’t “know€ it was wrong. It’s important to remain professional in all correspondence. You wouldn’t want to give THEM a harassment case against YOU.
I hope this article is helpful in some way. Feel free to comment or contact me!