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mike bryon
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PostSubject: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyWed May 26, 2010 3:01 pm

I have found three of my titles on a blog which seems to invite file sharing. I guess this is copyright infringement but the process to report the abuse seems to have been made as difficult as possible and includes links to stories where people have been prosecuted for reporting abuse! You can view it at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] the others titles are linked to that page. I have asked my publisher whose job it is to police this abuse (if that is what it is). Does anyone have experience of dealing with this stuff.
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lin
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lin


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyWed May 26, 2010 3:26 pm

Looks like that page is gone.
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http://linrobinson.com
Shelagh
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Shelagh


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyWed May 26, 2010 3:34 pm

The page is there. Mike added a full stop at the end of the URL which broke the link. I edited out the period but here's the link again:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
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http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk
mike bryon
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Location : st vincent and the grenadines

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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 5:47 am

Thanks for fixing the link Shelagh. By the way my old Gateway computer died yesterday - no work lost but i really miss it.
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Shelagh
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Shelagh


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 6:49 am

Hi Mike,

Copyright infringement seems to be widespread on the web. There is also a great deal of complacency and reluctance to protect Internet users. The trend is to "share" as much information as possible with no concern for the original source. I support the use of shared links that lead to the origins of the information but I object to information being taken from one site and posted onto another without permission.
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http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk
lin
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lin


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 6:55 am

We've noticed that. :-)
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mike bryon
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Number of posts : 285
Registration date : 2010-02-10
Location : st vincent and the grenadines

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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 7:19 am

Shelagh
I agree that sources should be acknowledged otherwise you risk passing off others work as your own. Some people see intellectual property as a crime and consider stealing it a cultural right or art, which it is not. It’s already hard work earning a living from writing without people stealing it.
Am I correct that this blogger is offering my work for file sharing? Sorry to ask something that may be obvious. Is this something the blog host will recognize as abuse? Is a publisher responsible for policing this kind of thing? I have asked my publisher and will let you know what they say when I get a reply. But I would welcome the opinions of others here.
BW
Mike
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Shelagh
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Shelagh


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 7:35 am

This e-zine addresses the problem of plaigarism but not all bloggers follow these simple rules:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
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http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk
LC
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LC


Number of posts : 5044
Registration date : 2009-03-28

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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 7:44 am

Mike, textbooks are on bit torrent sites all over the world. Publishers have no control over it. Pdf files of my first text are on various U.S. sites. I've notified Cengage and didn't even receive a response. Their legal department does what it can; for instance, they notify eBay when instructor manuals show up (obviously placed there by instructors!), but they don't have unlimited resources to chase everything down.

A new textbook publisher, Flatworld Knowledge, thinks it can combat this by offering its texts free online and charge nominal sums for ordering them POD from Lulu. Maybe that model will take off, who knows.
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Al Stevens
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Al Stevens


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 7:48 am

The archive file for "How to Pass Advanced..." has been removed from rapidshare.

Rapidshare's conditions of use prohibit users from sharing unauthorized copyrighted files.

The blog is hosted by blogspot.com, which is owned by google.

To battle this kind of abuse, I would:

  1. File a complaint with rapidshare
  2. File a complaint with google
  3. Post a comment on the offending blog article

All three postings would promise legal action if the abuser does not cease and desist.
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http://alstevens.blogspot.com
LC
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 7:59 am

Lather, rinse, repeat ...they'll just show up on a Netherlands or Romanian site.
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lin
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lin


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 8:09 am

Quote :
Flatworld Knowledge, thinks it can combat this by offering its texts
free online and charge nominal sums for ordering them POD from Lulu

Fat chance. Especially when you can just save the online html file and convert it to pdf or mobi or Kindle or whatever in a few seconds.

Piracy is basically unstoppable. The only thing that kept people from just reading xerox copies of books and magazines was that it was more expensive than buying the original. Now that's no longer true.
It's a fact of life and some are figuring out how to deal with it, shifting models of publication.

I'd never thought about it before, but textbooks have to be the most vulnerable to this: overpriced, temporary, and required. Poster kids for piracy.

Another thing that occurs to me on that: the novelists and poets would keep writing and publishing even if there was no money in it. Textbook writers, much less likely.

On the other hand, working with the schools, textbook publishers could probably figure out a way to prevent this, but nothing that would work for the free market book sales.
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mike bryon
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Number of posts : 285
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Location : st vincent and the grenadines

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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 8:26 am

Thanks everyone for the good advice. I have received the following from the publisher:

“I have sent it on to our rights department they are looking into it now”.

If as it seems it is their job to police this (and they do it) then this might be another advantage of a traditional publisher over self publishing because I sure don’t want to spend my life doing it.

Lin which is it ‘Piracy is basically unstoppable’ or ‘Some are figuring out how to deal with it, shifting models of publication’?

BTW Google is starting to smell like a really bad egg. Recently, they were found collecting unsecure wifi traffic across Europe. If you see the report abuse procedure on blogspot.com it makes you feel like you are the criminal. It’s as if you went into a police station to explain how you were robbed and the officer read you your rights and tells you that you can be prosecuted for reporting a crime.
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mike bryon
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Number of posts : 285
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 8:37 am

“the novelists and poets would keep writing and publishing even if there was no money in it. Textbook writers, much less likely”.
Every type of writer will be forced to write for a hobby and keep a day job. Unless they are born with a silver spoon in their chops they will have to do something other than write to pay the bills.
God save us from all the one dimensional trust funded poets and novelists the future holds because they will be the only ones who will be able to afford to publish if intellectual property can’t be protected.
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lin
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 8:56 am

One parameter that goes seldom mentioned when discussing pirary, by the way, is this: there are lots of people who will pay the price for something rather than steal a free one.

That number gets reduced when there's a perception that the price is a ripoff.
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lin
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lin


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 8:58 am

Quote :
God save us from all the one dimensional trust funded poets and
novelists the future holds because they will be the only ones who will
be able to afford to publish if intellectual property can’t be
protected.

Actually anybody can afford to publish. Right now, today. Especially ePublish.

And the people who don't worry about piracy and "leakage" and get into epublishing earlier will be ahead of the curve in building brands and figuring out how to make money off them.
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http://linrobinson.com
LC
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LC


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 9:51 am

lin wrote:
One parameter that goes seldom mentioned when discussing pirary, by the way, is this: there are lots of people who will pay the price for something rather than steal a free one.

That number gets reduced when there's a perception that the price is a ripoff.

Perception is a moving target, though. Some major publishers have challenged Amazon's $9.99 price point precisely because it conditions people -gives them the perception-that a book is only worth that. It's a race to the bottom. A novelist who used to post on WNet complained that her $10 novels were on piracy sites.

Perception may be flawed, too. For instance, you keep referring to textbooks as "overpriced" -what price should they be? Keep in mind their extraordinary R & D and marketing costs, which ordinary trade paperpacks don't have.
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LC
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LC


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 9:55 am

lin wrote:
And the people who don't worry about piracy and "leakage" and get into epublishing earlier will be ahead of the curve in building brands and figuring out how to make money off them.

Has anyone does this yet?
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mike bryon
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 11:25 am

My books are business or self help not text and mostly sell short of $10. My ultimate title offers over 1,000 psychometric questions advice and detailed explanations for under $10 at Amazon and was one of the ‘shared’ titles.
Its certainly not authors creating a sense of poor value. Amazon or the bookseller take 55%, the distributor 10% and the publisher the rest apart from the $1 they give to the author if they’re lucky.
If intellectual property can’t be protected then the publishing business model falls back to what? Advertising, sponsorship, vanity? We had better start telling agents and publishers how many times we can mention Colgate toothpaste in a book. Maybe we should write begging poems or novels, kind of like a begging letter only longer.
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mike bryon
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Number of posts : 285
Registration date : 2010-02-10
Location : st vincent and the grenadines

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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 2:07 pm

The rights department of my publisher have been in touch they use PA Piracy Portal to send out infringement notices and have instructed them. The following quote on the work of PA Piracy Portal comes from the publishers association website (and reports an article from the bookseller):
PA piracy portal issues 3,000 notices in year one
The Bookseller, 11th December 2009
The Publishers Association's copyright portal has sent 3,000 notices, reporting 5,000 cases of infringement, in the year it has existed.

Emma House, e-crime and international director at the PA, told delegates at yesterday's (10th) International Conference that there were now 51 publishers using the portal across academic, educational and trade sectors. A number of the companies come from outside the UK, she also said.

However, she said "responses [to the notices] vary", with some sites responding quickly and others failing to respond in a suitable manner. House cited Scribd as the site generating the most notifications, but said it was "most compliant", generally removing infringing material within 24 hours of the notification being sent. But RapidShare, which was the second most-frequent recipient of notices, was the "least compliant", House added.
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LC
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LC


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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 2:14 pm

mike bryon wrote:
My books are business or self help not text and mostly sell short of $10. ... Amazon or the bookseller take 55%, the distributor 10% and the publisher the rest apart from the $1 they give to the author if they’re lucky.

Do you get $1 on a book that retails for $10? If so, I need to renegotiate, that's better than what I get.
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mike bryon
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 2:36 pm

The books have a higher cover price than $10 but Amazon pass on a discount to the buyer so they get to buy the book for about $10 and I get my $1.

For most sales I get 15% of receipts . Receipts = what the seller pays the publisher which typically = 45% of the cover price. A £9.99 title = £4.50 receipt x 15% = about $1 US royalty (£1 = $1.458). As clear as mud I trust.
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Shelagh
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 2:38 pm

£4.50 receipt x 15% = 67.5p

$1 (@ $1.458 to £1) = 68.6p
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LC
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 3:05 pm

Ok, so you get 15% of net receipts, which roughly equates to $1 for a book Amazon pays $10 for? You don't have a sliding scale that relates to # of sales made? (e.g., start at 10, then 12, then 15)?
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lin
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PostSubject: Re: Rapidshare.com   Rapidshare.com EmptyThu May 27, 2010 3:33 pm

Quote :
you keep referring to textbooks as "overpriced" -what price should they be? Keep in mind their extraordinary R & D and marketing costs, which ordinary trade paperpacks don't have.
??????????
MARKETING COSTS for textbooks?????? You're kidding, right?
Instead of reaching thousands of people, all I have to do is get a couple hundred teachers to make kids buy them and I'm going to have more marketing costs???

The idea that there is more research in a textbook than a novel or something is highly questionable.
But that isn't the way a market works. If your costs are higher, and therefore you're selling something for thirty bucks instead of ten people won't buy it.
Unless they are forced to. In which case, they will more motivated to get if for free than somebody who is looking to buy a book for pleasure or as a gift to somebody.

This is something called "basic economics". There are textbooks about it.
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