Slashdot Mirror
How To Set Up a Pirate EBook Store In Google Play Books
Nate the greatest writes: Most ebook pirates simply upload ebooks to one of many pirate sites, but the entrepreneurial ones have opened storefronts in Google Play Books. They invent an author's name, and then upload dozens if not hundreds of pirated ebooks under that name, The names can range from Devad Akbak to Ispanyolca, but the really clever pirates choose a legit sounding name like Bestsellers — Books USA Press or Fort Press and then start selling ebooks.
Thanks to Google's indifference, the pirates can continue to sell ebooks no matter how many times copyright holders might complain. If Google takes a pirated ebook down in response to a DMCA notice, the pirates simply upload another copy of the same title.
Thanks to Google's indifference, the pirates can continue to sell ebooks no matter how many times copyright holders might complain. If Google takes a pirated ebook down in response to a DMCA notice, the pirates simply upload another copy of the same title.
Unless every single pirated work is free on their store, Google is in for a massive lawsuit and probably criminal charges for profiting on copyright violations.
You'd think Google would know that they're gonna attract a certain crowd with "bugs" like that. I guess it's too late to protect those that have already purchased the eBooks, or do they get a refund. Maybe I should rtfa.
When the EU told Microsoft they would have to provide users with the option of not installing IE as a browser, Steve Ballmer put on a deer-in-the-headlights look and sputtered "I don't know how to do that".
Amazing how un-smart these world dominators get when they're told the law requires them to do something they'd rather not do.
Slashdot is now sanctioning crimes and giving instructions on how to commit them?
Someone might have a point about the wisdom of copyright law but there's no doubt that it *is* against the law.
The DMCA safe harbor protects them as long as they take it down immediately on request, and google is big enough to weather any lawsuit. Now if you or I were running an app store...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I would have thought that the original author must have had DRM on the original copy of the ebook, and yet these pirate copies also have DRM.
So what happened here? Did the original author not use DRM on the original book, or did the pirate break the DRM so that they could distribute?
As a regular YouTube uploader and "Channel Partner", I often find my videos have been copied and re-uploaded (with monetization) by "pirates".
There are now obviously scripts out there that can be run to automatically create a new channel which consists of nothing but re-uploads of other people's popular videos.
On countless occasions I have laboriously filled out YT's copyright complaint form, listing a dozen or more instances where a single channel has pilfered my hard work. I always get the standard response "the offending content has been removed" -- but the channels are often still operating. What happened to the "three strikes" for copyright infringement?
And just as importantly... since *my* videos were clearly being leveraged by someone else to generate revenue... what happens to that money?
I bet Google still charges the advertiser but no doubt they won't be paying the pirate -- so do they just pocket this money without the need to pay a share to the genuine copyright holder? It would seem so.
This probably explains why they have made NO EFFORT at all to circumvent these script-created channels that contain nothing but other people's content re-uploaded in clear violation of YouTube's Terms of Service.
What an earner for Google -- no wonder they don't bother enforcing their "three strikes" policy on channels for which they effectively get to keep *ALL* the ad revenues and no wonder they don't flag (for inspection) new channels which suddenly appear and upload several hundred videos within 24 hours.
Do no evil? Yeah... right!
I didn't know this would actually work. Now /. has given me the idea I'll try it out and see if someone is really stupid enough to buy an ebook instead of downloading it from usenet / bittorrent / mobilism / ...
Considering that the world is full of libraries, who gives a shit?
There seems to be a required step missing: filing a lawsuit against the infringing publisher. If they're selling the books (as opposed to giving them away free), the kind of volume described should amount to enough money to make a lawsuit feasible. And once you have a John Doe lawsuit filed, based on the initial evidence (as described it should be trivial to provide in the complaint a list of books you hold the copyright on that this publisher is publishing without authorization) you can justifiably ask Google in a subpoena for information pointing to the real identity of the publisher. If money's involved Google has some sort of real financial information about the defendant, otherwise they couldn't send the defendant their money. Google may blow off demands that just make a claim, but they won't just ignore a subpoena that lays out Play store items from this publisher matched to your copyright registrations for those items.
Consider a regular bookstore. If you walked in and said "I hold the copyrights to those titles over there, and that publisher is pirating them.", what do you think the reaction of the bookstore would be? My guess is it'd be along the lines of "The publisher claims they're not. If you want us to stop doing business with that publisher, come back with a court order.". Your claims, however well-founded, aren't a legal determination, and the bookstore or even the distributor aren't the ones in our system charged with making that legal determination. It may suck, but consider the flip side: the publisher replies with a claim that they do have a contract with you and you're just trying to weasel out of it. Which would you rather do: argue the point once in front of a judge, or try to prove the absence of a contract to every single bookstore and distributor out there?
They were just saying this was true to resist antitrust actions. The Department of Justice said bundling IE was illegal "tying." Microsoft claimed that IE was an integral part of Windows and that it was impossible, for technical reasons, to unbundle it and allow competition on a level playing field from other browsers.
Edward Felten proved to Microsoft to be lying, in court, in 1998, in a live demo, by removing IE from Windows without breaking Windows.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Hollywood came into existence because they ran to someplace out of reach of the copyright holders on the east coast.
As I understand it, Hollywood was built on escaping Thomas Edison's patents, not copyrights.
Even Frozen is a rehash of an extremely old book.
Disney's Frozen is inspired by an H. C. Andersen short story older than 95 years. "The Snow Queen" first appeared in New Fairy Tales, published in 1845. The same is true of Disney's The Little Mermaid, based on an Andersen story from 1837. Or were you referring to Adam Green's Frozen (2010)?
If they're not going to respect other works I'm not going to respect them.
Disney respected Andersen by giving him and his heirs the requisite 95 years to make money from his story.
If you pirates to stop distributing your works, you need to go after the pirates. Google is not your mommy. It won't kiss you and make everything all right.
DMCA requires platforms to take down very specifically identified infringements. The same work uploaded by another user is not necessarily an infringement, so another notification is required on behalf of the rights owner. Not policing for infringement is not a sign of indifference on the behalf of the platform. Policing is not required of the platform because it is impossible for it to do so.
Thanks to Google's indifference, the pirates can continue to sell ebooks no matter how many times copyright holders might complain. .... If Google takes a pirated ebook down in response to a DMCA notice, the pirates simply upload another
Interesting... and woefully inconsistent with how Google handles copyright in other places.
One alleged copyright violation; innocent or not, on Youtube, and your account is crippled, you lose the ability to post videos more than 5 minutes and a bunch of other things.
Two strikes, and they take your channel down and ban you for a few weeks.
Three strikes, and you're gone forever.
All 3 strikes can be received from one video, or in a short period of time, for example when Microsoft goes back and starts randomly posting copyright strikes against anyone that posted videos mentioning Windows 8.
And there is no recourse..... your only way out is if the MPAA or RIAA or whoever was responsible for the strike decides to retract it.
On the other hand... Google play is fast and loose on copyright and just lets the real bad guys re-upload blatantly pirated books, really??
That should be very, very clear even to the dumbest person by now. The only thing that can be done is make sure content is good enough that enough people are willing to pay the legitimate author for it. That is actually quite enough, all the publishers and distributors are basically parasites these days, and something like 1000-5000 people that pay the author for the content are quite enough to get the author a reasonable income. Copyright infringement does not matter from that point onwards.
Monopolistic strategies always lose in the end, and deservedly so. After having screwed over the customers for a few decades, nobody likes the content-industry.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Somebody mark this as off topic please.
It is pure and blatant spam.
Do you remember that one time when someone found a trivially obvious way to abuse Google services to do something harmful, and Google took complaints seriously and addressed the problem?
I don't either.
Last I checked, it was still really easy to make a Google Group to use to send spam to people, but block them from sending complaints through the documented interface, because why would anyone at Google care?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/