3. Writers and publishers need to actively contact law enforcement agencies—individually and through organized groups—to encourage them to target book pirates, as well as other IP pirates. Then, these agencies will be more apt to add book piracy cases to others IP cases they are pursuing.
4. Writers and publishers might individually and as a group work with intellectual property attorneys to target the worst piracy offenders and seek compensation. This strategy might include seeking settlements from not only the owners of infringing websites, but also the users who upload and download content, with the size of the settlement depending on the extent of the piracy. Additionally, the worst offenders and those who won’t settle might be brought to trial for compensation as an example to discourage other pirates.
5. There is a need for an ombudsman to coordinate book piracy criminal cases, since there are now over a dozen law enforcement agencies pursuing piracy cases, sometimes individually and sometimes working together. The result is that a great many writers and publishers not only don’t know about these different agencies, but they can be easily confused about which agencies to contact and what to do. Thus, an ombudsman in the form of a central clearing house or coordinator for book piracy cases is needed to be a one-stop shop for any writers and publishers with piracy claims. Such an ombudsman could operate as a division of one of the many law enforcement agencies that already exist, or a new agency could be created to take on this role. To this end, new legislation is needed to create this ombudsman position, and the newly formed Stop Book Piracy Organization (https://www.facebook.com/Stopbookpiracy) will make it a mission to get such legislation passed by appealing to the House, Senate, and White House.
This book is designed to promote awareness and contribute to the anti–book piracy effort.
Appendix
Sending a Takedown Notice
To get your copy removed, or at least get evidence that you sought to remove it but it wasn’t removed, send out a takedown notice. If your material is removed, that will reduce the damages, although the service or website owner can still be liable for other damages, while the infringed-upon material was posted, distributed, and sold. And even if your material is not removed or replaced, at least you can show you tried, which can be further evidence that the service provider or website owner was not acting in good faith. This can contribute to damages you might get and any punishment for copyright infringement.
The steps to take in filing a takedown notice include:
1. Determine if the work is infringing, which may include checking with your publisher and any third-party distributors to make sure they didn’t upload the material.
2. Take screenshots or print out the infringing site, which will be helpful if there should be a later dispute about the infringement.
3. Identify the URL or URLs where your copyrighted material is posted, so you can include that in your takedown letter.
4. Obtain a DMCA notice template or use the letter below as a guide, and include the required information.
5. Locate the host of the site where the infringed-upon work is located, using a service such as Internic (http://www.internic.net), WhoIsHostingThis (http://www.whoishostingthis.com), or Domain Tools (http://www.domaintools.com).
6. Check the site where your copyrighted work is hosted and look for any contact information for the infringer or the host.
7. If you still are unable to get contact information for the website owner or service provider, check if the service provider hosting the site has registered with the US Copyright Office and provided the needed information there. Alternatively, send the notice to the website host’s abuse team.
8. After sending the notice, check that the work has been removed. Although it might be removed within a day, wait up to seventy-two hours. While some infringers and website hosts will send confirmations by email, many won’t, so you may need to monitor the removal process yourself.
9. If the work is not removed or access is not disabled, send a notice to each of the major search engines, since they will be likely to lower the site’s rankings or remove it entirely from the search engine.
Here, more specifically, is what to do in sending out a takedown notice and what to expect as a response of infringers and website-hosting services.
Ideally, send your takedown notice to the owner of the website service that is illegally posting and distributing or selling your material, and to the website hosting that service. If the owner combines legitimate and pirated material, usually uploaded from users on the site, the owner will commonly have posted contact information, and many will have a notice about their compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Some of these site owners will even have a form you can use to report illegal copy on the site. In such a case, the owner will generally act quickly to take your material down to comply with this act and avoid jeopardizing their ownership of the website.
Or even if the site primarily or only features pirated material, the owner may provide a contact email or form to send a removal request, and then you may get a reply, as I did, that the offending material was “removed” or the removal action was “done.” Even so, check back to see if this removal actually occurred, since it may not have—or in some cases, the site may be gone, if the owner fears or is subject to litigation or criminal action.
Also, send your notice to the web-hosting company that is housing the infringing material. According to IP Watchdog owner, patent attorney Gene Quinn, these website service providers will almost always take action. That’s because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act “provides protection from copyright infringement lawsuits for service providers.” But this immunity from lawsuits only occurs if they take “reasonable and swift action to remedy an infringement once they are notified.” Accordingly, since the service providers don’t want to lose their immunity, “if you notify them of an ongoing infringement they will almost always order the website owner to take down the infringing material, or they will” (www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/07/06/sample-dmca-takedown-letter/id=4501).
To find out the information on the web-hosting company, you can learn through a WhoIs lookup provided by various services, including InterNic (http://www.internic.net/whois.html) and DomainTools (whois.domaintools.com). This search will tell you the name of the registrant, the administrator, and the tech organization, which may be the same, if the owner hosts its own service. If this is a private listing, the look-up will also provide you with an email address to contact the registrant, administrator, or technical organization through privatewhois.net. Additionally, you can use Domain Tools to learn the domain’s current name server, which indicates the domain host, or do a reverse WhoIs, where you can discover other domains owned by the same organization (http://reversewhois.domaintools.com). Plus, you can use a Registrant Alert to get notified whenever a person or company registers a new domain, has one transferred to them, or transfers a domain out of their control, which could be useful information when a pirate changes names or controls multiple websites (http://www.domaintools.com/monitor/registrant-alert). The advantage of determining the name server is that it indicates who is hosting the domain so you can then email that host directly.
For example, when I searched for one of my domains hosted on AccountSupport.com, I obtained the email addresses for the administrative, technical contact, and registration provider, who I could notify if one of their hosted domains had infringing copyrighted material. Plus you can get a more comprehensive domain report for a small fee ($49) in a PDF document, which includes one year of history, the name of the server, registrar, and IP address changes, the most recent website screenshot, the owner’s (registrant’s) name and email address, the IP location, and website traffic statistics.
Once you have this information on where to send your takedown notice, you can send out a notice which, according to the DMCA law, must contain these elements, as noted on Brainz (http://brainz.org/dmca-takedown-101), IPWatchdog (www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/07/06/sample-dmca-ta
kedown-letter/id=4501), and other sites:
1. A physical or electronic signature of the owner or a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
2. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if a single notification is used to cover multiple copyrighted works at a single online site, the notification should list all or a representative list of the works at that site.
3. Identification of the alleged infringing material that is to be removed or to which access is to be disabled, and reasonably sufficient information to permit the service provider to locate the material.
4. Information that is reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an email address at which the complaining party may be contacted.
5. A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright that is allegedly infringed.
You can write the letter in your own words, as long as it contains this essential information. For example, your letter might be something like this:
Dear ***********
My name is __________ and I am the _______ (title) of _____________ (company name). A website that your company hosts (according to WhoIs) is infringing on the copyright of my book (s) entitled: ________________________. This book (these books) was placed onto your servers without permission. The unauthorized and infringing copy(s) can be found at (website URL or URLs). Also, any other books or materials under my name should be removed.
I am sending you this letter as an official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and I am requesting that you remove this aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I also request that you immediately notify the owner of the website and advise them of their duty to remove this material immediately, and to cease any further posting of it on your server in the future.
I also want to advise you that as a service provider you are required by law to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under the DMCA, as a service provider, you are immune to a copyright lawsuit if you act with diligence to investigate and rectify any ongoing infringement, and if you do not, you will lose this immunity. Therefore, to remain immune from a copyright infringement action, you must investigate and then remove or otherwise disable access to the infringing material on your service, if the direct infringer using your hosting service does not immediately comply.
I am sending you this notice in good faith with the reasonable belief that the rights I and my company own are being infringed. Under the penalty of perjury, I certify that the information contained in this notice is true and accurate and that I am the owner/have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyrights cited above.
If you wish to discuss this with me, you can contact me directly at the number or email address below.
Sincerely,
Your Name
Address
City, State, Zip Code
Phone
Email
You can also send a similar notification to the owner of the infringing website, although my email to several infringers was much shorter, and did evoke a response within a day that the infringement would cease. However, in one case the work wasn’t removed and in the other case, the site was closed down. Here’s a copy of my email to the site owners.
“This is to advise you that you do not have my permission or my publisher’s permission to upload any of my books and offer them for free. Please be advised that I am making a copy of your pages, and this is to request that you immediately remove any of my books from your site. You are interfering with my ability to make a living as a writer, as well as with the other writers whose books you have copied on your site and are offering for free. I am also bringing this to the attention of members of ASJA and other writers groups, as well as my attorney who will be in touch with you regarding the penalties for copyright infringement and other applicable offenses.”
Assuming you own the copyright, the usual result is one of the following: Your copyrighted material will be removed, the infringer will agree to remove the material but will not, or your request will be ignored. However, the site owner or service provider who receives a DMCA notice does have the option of filing a counter notice stating that the material was removed or disabled due to a mistake or misidentification, and that the service provider intends to restore the work that was taken down within ten to fourteen days. According to Brainz (http://brainz.org/dmca-takedown-101), such a counter notice is required to have these key elements:
1. A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber.
2. Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access was disabled.
3. A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
4. The subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification.
In the event you do get such a counter notice, to further pursue the infringement, you can turn to the courts to resolve the matter and obtain an injunction to keep the work offline. However, while you should be aware of this possibility of a counterclaim, if you own the copyright, the infringer and hosting service will not commonly respond with such a notice, because they have infringed on your work and will not attempt to deny it.
This takedown approach may seem like a daunting process, but once you have created one of these takedown notices, it is a routine process to send them to other infringers and website hosts. Or consider hiring an assistant, such as a student or intern, to send out these notices for you—certainly much less expensive than hiring a takedown service, when you have multiple books or there are multiple sites that are infringing on your copyright.
Sites with Pirated Books
The following sites have been identified as hosting pirated books, either because they only or mainly have such books, or include them along with legitimately posted books. Should you know of additional piracy sites, let us know, so we can include them in a future edition or in a piracy alert. The sites where I have found my pirated books are starred, along with the number of books in parentheses. Only active websites as of this writing are included, though some websites could be shut down by the time you contact them. If so, let us know, so we can remove them in the future. Contact information is included where available.
4shared
www.4shared.com
[email protected]
781-583-1451
Baen Free Library
www.baen.com/library
[email protected]
BitSnoop
www.bitsnoop.com
[email protected]
Bookyards
www.bookyards.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Box
www.box.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
877-729-4269
Chomikuj.pl
www.chomikuj.pl
Must log in to obtain contact information.
Crocko
www.crocko.com
&nbs
p; Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Deposit Files
www.depositfiles.com
[email protected]
Docstoc* (2)
www.docstoc.com
[email protected]
EBooks Download Free
www.ebooksdownloadfree.com
[email protected]
Filecloud.Io
www.filecloud.io
[email protected]
FileFactory
www.filefactory.com
Contact information not available.
FilePost
www.filepost.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Fileserve
www.fileserve.com
[email protected]
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Free Book Spot* (5)
www.freebookspot.es
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Free-eBooks
www.free-ebooks.net
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
FreeComputerBooks
www.freecomputerbooks.com
Contact information not available.
FreeTechBooks
www.freetechbooks.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Get Free eBooks
www.getfreeebooks.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Interfilm
www.interfilm.ru
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
iOffer
www.ioffer.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
KnowFree
www.knowfree.tradepub.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Letitbit
www.letitbit.com
Contact through website form. Contact information not available.
Internet Book Piracy Page 25