The Genii Forum

Good grief...

How many hours have y'all invested in DMCA takedown notices? Can anyone recommend a cost-effective service? Torrents and [seemingly] overseas "dealers" re-market pirated content like malignant cancers.

I'll never again publish an e-book. At least paper demands some effort on the part of these crooks...

John

Only websites in the US will take stuff down. That's my experience. You can't get stuff off torrent sites. However you are not losing many sales because of this. Kids collect stuff off torrent sites but don't read them--they just collect them.

I have successfully terminated pirate sellers on two of the largest Chinese retail platforms. Many other sites do obey DMCA takedowns. Some don't.

BTW paper copies do not protect you. Basically everything is already available digitally. The best way to counter that is to have your own digital edition available. That way the majority will purchase from an honest retailer and not be tempted to download a pirated version.

Generally speaking, my experience is consistent with Richard's... China & Hong Kong are proving problematic. In at least one case, though, the moron behind the site didn't even bother masking his identity on whois. I invoiced him a few grand for licensing fees. Of course, this will go nowhere - but it's fun trying.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. The people stealing them most likely will never watch or read the material they stole. The same people will never pay for your product in the first place. It's unfortunate that it happens but their is very little legal recourse. Even 'legitimate' sites like scribd.com are flooded constantly with illegal uploads.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread.

At least Scribd.com will pay attention to DMCA take-down notices. They have removed several of my works, usually doing so within 48 hours of receipt of the notice. The non-US pirate sites, not so much. The best I can hope for is that their hosting company (to whom the notice is directed) kicks them off. They just move to another site.

Brett McCarron wrote:Sorry to resurrect an old thread.

At least Scribd.com will pay attention to DMCA take-down notices. They have removed several of my works, usually doing so within 48 hours of receipt of the notice.

And then within a short period of time, they'll probably get uploaded again, perhaps by another person who previously downloaded them. Depressing, but true.

Kindle have something known as "digital rights management" (DRM) which is supposed to protect you from having your e-book copied. I have no idea how effective it is.

https://itstillworks.com/kindle-drm-17841.html

Really? I do know they still offer it as an option to their authors. Has anyone else had experience with this?

Sorry. I am not sure what you are trying to say. Perhaps someone will translate.

Longtimelurker wrote:

performer wrote:Really? I do know they still offer it as an option to their authors. Has anyone else had experience with this?

I try say 'DRM not work stop pirating' - every musics/vido/etc place stopping using maybe ten year since

Is English not your native language? Your posts are a bit confusing.

I bet he is trying to say that DRM hasn't worked for ten years! If that is the case then why is Amazon still offering it?

If anybody can work out how Amazon works, perhaps they'll post it here.

I think we all know that Digital Rights Management systems do not work. The movement has been away from them for a decade.

So why are Amazon Kindle still offering it to their authors?

performer wrote:So why are Amazon Kindle still offering it to their authors?

You may wish to refer to my most recent post, which in essence goes something like this:

If anybody can work out how Amazon works, perhaps they'll post it here.

I will have to read all this properly later when I have time. However, at first glance it seems that it is the readers and the copyists who are complaining rather than the authors.

Too bloody complicated to read all that. And the other stuff too. All I really need to know is whether if I activate this DRM thing whether it will to some degree or other dissuade people from copying my kindle books. I have already put a psychic curse on one Chinese site for stealing one of my books.

If I may, that is not what you need to know.

You need to know whether this copying of your kindle books is a) hurting your sales, b) is having no effect, or c) is helping them.

Based on everything I have seen, both inside and outside of magic, I think the answer is, most likely, either b or c. Not everyone agrees, and some don't care—they just can't stand if people are getting their work for free. But all the evidence I've seen suggests that the time you spend trying to stop pirating is entirely wasted, and may in fact hurt sales.

I tend to agree (but don't know for sure) that you are correct in your assessment. However, that was not my question. I want to know if this DRM guff will to some degree or other dissuade offenders from copying. I must say it is very exhausting putting psychic curses on people and I think my last one got a bit out of hand. It appears to have misfired and caused this coronavirus thing in China. I am getting a bit rusty with curses I am afraid.

performer wrote:...will to some degree or other dissuade offenders from copying...

Short answer: NO.
Longer answer: To some degree it would slow down some and likewise encourage others who are clever, while for the most part it would just inconvenience your good customers.

Why would it inconvenience my good customers?

DRM can annoy your customers because it makes it harder for them to do what they want to do with what they have paid for. I'll give you one example: I once bought a digital download of a big budget blockbuster movie from Amazon, but when I tried to watch it on my computer I kept getting an error saying my computer was HDCP compliant and I couldn't watch it. After googling a bit, I discovered that HDCP is a form of DRM that prevents you from watching movies that use it on your PC if you don't have a fancy enough monitor (the idea being that you can pirate the movie through your monitor and they don't want that).

I had two choices to solve the problem: I could either buy a couple-hundred dollar monitor OR I could go to a torrent site and have the movie downloaded from them within minutes. Those were my choices. So in this case, I was TRYING to be a paying customer, but their DRM scheme (hypothetically) pushed me to a pirate site. (I re-iterate, hypothetically... I admit nothing )

Some forms of DRM require you to connect to the internet to validate that you own a license to the material, and that can make it an inconvenience for people who try to consume it offline. Many types of DRM lock you to one platform. So you may buy a book on a Kindle, but if you later buy another eReader your book is locked to the Kindle and you can't use it anymore.

Eliminating DRM just makes it so much easier for your customers.

I avoid that nonsense altogether by only owning physical media of items I want to watch, listen to, or read.

Richard Kaufman wrote:I avoid that nonsense altogether by only owning physical media of items I want to watch, listen to, or read.

That doesn't completely avoid the nonsense. The process of watching a movie on a legally-owned DVD is so time-consuming and painful (stepping through FBI warnings, "Don't Copy This" screens, commercials, and Menus) that it is tempting (and probably faster) to download a torrent of the movie and watch it instead.

This is what I'm talking about.

(And Richard -- what ever happened to your Boing Boing posts?)

Bill Mullins wrote:

Richard Kaufman wrote:I avoid that nonsense altogether by only owning physical media of items I want to watch, listen to, or read.

That doesn't completely avoid the nonsense. The process of watching a movie on a legally-owned DVD is so time-consuming and painful (stepping through FBI warnings, "Don't Copy This" screens, commercials, and Menus) that it is tempting (and probably faster) to download a torrent of the movie and watch it instead.

That process is very annoying (anything Disney is particularly bad). However, I've noticed that at least Blu-ray Discs generally allow you to access the menu and skip the previews if you wish. Not sure why they are set differently than DVD's.