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Book pirating and what you can do to protect your work

Official FBI Book Piracy Info Here
Book piracy is the #1 bane of an author's existence. While the divide between traditional publishing and self publishing seems to be widening, there will always be one thing that joins us together...fighting book pirates and those people who download our books from these sites.

I posted about this last December with the basic DMCA notice and how to use it, but last week, Google's own Fusion Tables came under scrutiny, as a number of books were found there, being offered for free.

I sent four DMCA notices on behalf of Tirgearr Publishing to those involved with this database:

• Google/Fusion Tables

• The wesbite itself

• The server host who lets the website park on their server

• The domain registrant

Our complaint to Google was also registered by Google with Lumen, which shows up today as an active case. Lumen (see below) is one of the main go-to sites for DMCA cases. Perhaps this was why the links from that Google Fusion Table from last week no longer work. All of the offending site files have been removed. In this case, from over ten sites that had Amazon ASINs associated with them!

What do you do if you find your books listed on any book piracy site?

First: Read the law on the FBI's website. THEN --

1 - Contact the offending site with a DMCA copyright notice. * If you have ANY doubt about what email to use when trying to make contact with any website, just tack on abuse@ in front of any domain to get your DMCA notice through.

2 - Contact the site's server host with a DMCA copyright notice. You can find the server host easily through whois.domaintools.com.

3 - Contact the domain registrant with a DMCA copyright notice (they'll tell you they have nothing to do with page content, but it will force them to take more careful notice who's buying domains), also found on whois.domaintools.com.

4 - Contact Google with a DMCA copyright notice, because all of those pirate sites will come up on a Google search! If they block the pirate site, your books won't come up when a person searches for free books.

If your books come up on a Fusion Tables search, go here to have them removed and file your DMCA copyright notice:

https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/3337732

http://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_dmca?&product=fusiontables

5 - Contact Amazon!!! All of the pirate sites are getting their content from Amazon. How can you be sure? Easy. All of Amazon books are issued ASIN numbers which are proprietary to Amazon. All pirate sites list our books by their ASIN. Send Amazon an email indicating which sites are making your books available and your ASINs for each book. Amazon needs to be held accountable if there's a failing in their system.

Amazon emails:

ams-support@amazon.com - Amazon Marketing Services

kdp-compliance@amazon.com (KDP/ebook compliance)

kdp-support@amazon.com (Amazon Customer Service, for ebooks)

Or ring Amazon USA -- (00)1-206-266-2992 (24 hour number)

Unfortunately, these days, everyone can use certain programs to code and decode book formats. Even if these pirates are buying a copy of your book (which they're not if you offer them for free on Kindle Select or Kindle Unlimited!!!), they can decode the DRM protection in seconds through file conversion programs, then reload them in new formats to distribute on their sites.

While my books are being made available for free on pirate sites, I try having faith in the pirate that they're adding viruses and worms to my book files so that computers and devices of end users become corrupted...karma at its best. Really, no one gets anything for free, and pirates aren't in the business of not making money. You get a free book, but the worm they embed in the file is searching your computer for cookies and private data that can be harvested for future use...hello credit card scams!

That's my hope anyway. Download my pirated book and get hacked? Right on! You get what you deserve.
File a DMCA claim here

For authors wanting to file a Lumen DMCA report, log into Lumen Database and file your notice here.

And don't forget the other site above!

We did it last week and found ten sites shut down today. It works.

I'd like to think that book pirating will come to an end one day, but even if we can't, we can at least be diligent about protecting our work and hopefully slow down these offenders.

Please feel free to share this information with all of your friends, readers, and social media.


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