This past Saturday I discovered a website offering my newest ebook, Carried by Grace, for free.
What a shock! Piracy of my ebooks is something I never expected.
It’s bad enough getting robbed at home (a 4-time occurrence for me, ugh), but now people are attempting to rob me online. Hackers and thieves—I dare not get started on that topic.
This particular site offered quite a number of other ebooks for free download. Though I can’t say for sure, I suspect I was not his/her only victim.
I immediately looked for contact information on the site so I could send an email to tell them to cease and desist or legal action would follow. To my chagrin, there was no contact info on the site. What was I to do now?
I notified my publisher to ask for her help as well as posted a plea on a Facebook writers group I belong to. Then I went back to the website and did more research.
I searched through the page’s web code, but couldn’t find anything. So I turned to Google.
Gotta love Google search.
The offending site was a site.google.com website, which was a point in my favor. I filled out a report via Google’s support page to report the violation, and am happy to say that the site has already been disabled.
So you don’t have to spend time searching for recourse like I did, here is the page I finally found to report my problem to Google. https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?rd=2#ts=1115655 This relates to site.google.com websites only.
As authors (or soon-to-be authors), we must be diligent to ensure our copyrights. Cyber theft is rampant.
Sites that may be of help:
- US Copyright Office: http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-infringement.html
- TakeDown Piracy: http://takedownpiracy.com/tips/
- Google’s Support page for infringement of videos posted on YouTube, https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807622?hl=en
This is most certainly a legal arena of which I know little about. Quite often a quick email to the offender can remedy the situation. If it doesn’t, consulting a lawyer might be the next recourse, short of allowing the offender to continue.
Some people are okay with this sort of piracy. After all, they say, it gets my book out there. That is an individual choice. My books are a major source of my income, and I don’t like pirates robbing me.
Has this happened to you? If so, how did you remedy the situation?
Related posts:
5 Ways to Use Google Alerts
How to Discover You’re Being Copied
Debra,
Thank you once again for practical information for authors. I am sorry you had to deal with the pirate. You deserve to be paid for your work especially since it is your livelihood.
I have no doubt he/she would say I’m cheating him out of his source of income. Glad you found the info helpful. I sure hope you never get pirated.