Earlier today, I was alerted by @FloridaLegal via Twitter than a full copy of my ebook, Bartending: Memoirs of an Apple Genius was for download, free go charge, on a website named “Ebookee.”
The site describes itself this way:
EBOOKEE is a search engine of ebooks on the Internet (Hotfile Megaupload Mediafire Fileserve Rapidshare) and does not upload or store any files on its server. Please contact the content providers to delete files if any and email us, we’ll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
This afternoon, I sent a DMCA takedown request to the site, per their template. It took just a few moments, and the email was sent.
I then noticed the paragraph at the bottom of this page that reads:
The administrator of this site (Ebookee.org) cannot be held responsible for what its users post, or any other actions of its users.
I expect to hear back by mid-week.
The .epub and .mobi files were posted at FilePost.com. That site has an online form that can be used for takedown notices, so I filled that out and submitted it.
Again, I expect to hear back in a few days. 2012–06–25 Update: The files have been removed, after a prompt email back from their support team.
I really don’t know how I feel about all of this. It’s easy to be mad at such services for being a source to find and host pirated content.
In reality, there are lots of sites that can be used to find pirated content. To help fight this on their services, Google has an online form that can be used to request information be removed from the company’s web search tools and more.
If something is published on the Intenet, it can be re-posted, re-packaged or even out-right pirated. I can have these files taken down, just to have them pop back up elsewhere.
At $3, my book isn’t a lot of money, but it’s clear there are some people who don’t want to pay for it. Hell, even 99¢ apps are pirated. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, and the cat probably won’t ever win, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting for my content.
Of course, it took me about 5 minutes to alert the two sites about the violation. What if it took an hour? Two hours? At what point does fighting piracy become a bigger expense than the piracy itself?