Hi All,

I recently had an experience where several websites posted one of my e-books, without my permission. These sites let people download my e-book for free, which cost me a huge loss of income. You can read my entire story at my blog http://www.TheCreativesCorner.com

I hope you never have an experience like this.

Have Fun,
Jeff

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If you're interested in photography, stock images of Arizona and Fine Art Prints of Arizona, visit www.TheCreativesCorner.com

Oh, Jeff that's terrible.
I'm surprised that your copyright laws don't cover this.
Maybe the legislation hasn't caught up with the internet age yet.

Thanks.

It seem the government is always a few steps behind the real world.

Have Fun,
Jeff

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If you're interested in photography, stock images of Arizona and Fine Art Prints of Arizona, visit www.TheCreativesCorner.com

Jeff,

There is a common misconception about copyright, that the government gets involved. It never has. It is up to us to protect our own copyrights, which can get both difficult and expensive.

I would love to see some kind of government help when you run into people who reprint works without credit, and without repayment, to the creators of the work.

Not long ago, a tiny reprint publisher contacted me about reprinting some old books I'd done, most over 30 years ago. I asked him how he was going to get in touch with the original publisher, now absorbed by another publisher. His comment: "Oh, I don't usually bother. It's too much work to track them down." I know the absorbing company and gave him that, but it was too much work to go up or down the corporate ladder to get proper permission to publish the books.

There are far too many people today who believe their needs are both special and paramount. Just do it. No one will bother you. Mostly, they're right, about that last part, anyway. I love it when they're wrong. It gives a really different tone to today's whiners.

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Charlie Self
www.charlieselfonline.com

The way I understand it, if you label a work as copyrighted, and you haven't previously published it anywhere without that label, you are protected.

Registering it with LOC can get you an ISBN number, establish a date of existence, and probably make any needed litigation easier, but I don't think it really changes your legal rights. If I'm wrong on this, please enlighten me.

I agree with Jeff that government involvement is superfluous, the way the laws are currently written.

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Dan Heim, Desert Dweller
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." — Groucho Marx

It doesn't work that way. You have copyright from date of creation, label or no label. You do NOT get an ISBN when you register your copyright with the Library of Congress. It makes litigation easier and that's all. I suggest you Google ISBN for information on that. Those numbers are bought in blocks--note the word "bought"--and, IIRC, 10 is the fewest you can get. There are ways around that, as there's one outfit that buys and holds and assigns single ISBNs. I checked it out years ago, but can't recall details.

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Charlie Self
www.charlieselfonline.com

For an ISBN you go through http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/index.asp. An ISBN allows you to sell a book through a bookstore (they only deal with books that have an ISBN) as it allows them to track sales and inventory. They do sell single ISBN numbers now, for about $125.

Have Fun,
Jeff

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If you're interested in photography, stock images of Arizona and Fine Art Prints of Arizona, visit www.TheCreativesCorner.com

Hi Jeff,

Have you considered contacting the State's Attorney General's office and see if they can guide you to the right department to file a complaint? Perhaps there is something they can do to get an injunction against the sites that are stealing from you?

Also, if you did hire a lawyer to handle this, make sure to claim not only the loss of sales but also all legal fees, too. Many people forget to do that, win the case, and end up worse off than when they started.

And can you password protect and/or serialize your work so you can trace it back to a specific person?

Good luck.

Hi Khobar,

Thanks for the info, I'll look into it.

As for password protecting it, the owner could open it with their password, then copy the document from there into a new document with no protection. On person even went to the trouble of scanning a 200-page book, then put it on that site. Besides, there are so many cracking programs out there that passwords are just about useless. In five minutes I can find the password to any software product, including Microsoft products, or rip a movie from a password protected DVD with no problem. Your serialization idea is interesting.

Have Fun,
Jeff

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If you're interested in photography, stock images of Arizona and Fine Art Prints of Arizona, visit www.TheCreativesCorner.com

Agree! Government doesn't seems to care in almost every aspect. Even if they care, they never tried to put it into action. Just keep on writing! :D

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I'm not sure what kind of government intervention people wish for copyright violations. It's a tort, thus all suits are civil, not criminal. No felony, not even a misdemeanor, is involved.

I'm a liberal, but this strikes me as one of those places where government has no business beyond assigning copyright to original materials. Enforcement is up to the individual, just as it has always been.

I don't think it's a matter of government being behind the times, but uninterested might be a good description. I'd as soon not have to worry about some wart of a government creative rights attorney finding 16 words in succession that are like those in someone else's work.

There's another point, too: because these are not criminal violations, but civil torts, some kind of harm has to be proven, as seems possible in Jeff's case, but the time, effort and money to prosecute such a violation tends to keep such prosecutions to a minimum, where the bucks lost are appreciable. I think that's good: our courts do not need any more nickel and dime cases filling their calendars. Currently, it seems possible the writer's best bet is simply to hire a lawyer to write a "cease and desist" letter. From what I'm told, that often works. Sometimes it might also result in some kind of deal to make up losses.

One way or another, you gotta let them know they're caught, though, so the violation stops.

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Charlie Self
www.charlieselfonline.com

Unless, of course, it's material that's potentially "offensive"! I'm thinking of some recent goings-on in Japan where the Tokyo government has tried to make manga (comics) that it considers "suggestive" unavailable to kids under 18. As a result, some stores are now shelving all manga in the adults-only 18+ section...

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Georgia ("Gia") Manry
[url=http://georgiamanry.com]GeorgiaManry.com[/url]

It's a good idea, but they would use the YouTube defense. We don't put the material up, our visitors do, so it's not our fault if copyright protected material is on our site.

That doesn't fly with me thought. People could submit material that would have to be approved before it was posted. If that's too much work for YouTube, or any other site to do, then shut down the site.

On my blog, comments must be approved by me, just one person. In the past couple of years I've had to read over 5,000 comments, of which less than 200 were approved. That's how many spam comments I receive, mainly from Russia. If I can do that, then these other places should be able to do it too.

How hard can it be to tell the difference between a home made video and a clip from a movie or TV show? Or a book like mine with a big fat copyright symbol visible on those site's own image capture of my book?

Oh well, onward and upward.

Have Fun,
Jeff

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If you're interested in photography, stock images of Arizona and Fine Art Prints of Arizona, visit www.TheCreativesCorner.com

I'm not surprised. With some of the recent controversies over criminals being associated with violent and dirty hentai mangas (the perception of the general public), there's been some moral panic over manga and anime from time to time. The same thing happened with video games I think around the same period.

What I find odd is that they expect individuals to enforce their copyrights all the time, and yet you see cases like those of corporations like Disney constantly renewing their copyright on their characters in order to maintain control over them. Arguably, that helps hurt the creativity of workers not just in the US but also around the world.

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Jeff,

Did you ask Angela for help? I think she's written some letters to copyright offenders. Maybe you could check out the Warnings forum and see if any have been posted.

Kathy