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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.
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.
Keep in mind that by that point IE was being used by Microsoft for a whole lot more than browsing the web. Significant parts of IE was being used for file display / file browser and a whole lot more. IE was intertwined throughout the Windows operating system and thus simply removing it would have been very difficult. At the same time, I'm sure MS could have found a way to not install the users client that displayed web pages.
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/
You are aware that every form of ebook DRM is completely broken and serves no purpose other than to annoy legitimate purchasers, right?
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 / ...
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?