Piracy Archives | The Digital Reader

The Problem with eBook Piracy Spam

17 April, 201917 April, 2019DMCA, Piracy15 Comments

Try this experiment. Go to Amazon and pull up any book, any book at all as long as it has been out for at least a few months. Then, search...

Pirate Site Owner Launches GoFundMe Campaign to Raise Funds to Defend a Piracy Suit

28 March, 20194 April, 2019Piracy8 Comments

I have disliked Travis McCrea ever since he claimed his earlier ebook site, The Ultimate eBook Library, was protected by the DMCA, but now he is getting on my...

Anti-Piracy Service Blasty is Back Online After a Week’s Downtime

22 March, 201924 March, 2019Intellectual Property, Piracy4 Comments

Since 2015 Blasty has been offering an anti-piracy service where they automatically scanned the web for pirated copies of an author's work and gave authors the option of automatically...

Amazon is Still Selling Pirated POD Textbooks

14 February, 201914 February, 2019Amazon, Piracy, POD4 Comments

Over the past three years I have reported no fewer than four times about Amazon's ongoing problem with counterfeit and pirated books in its POD service, Createspace. Here is...

The Writers’ Union of Canada Condemns The Internet Archive’s Pirate Site, “The Open Library”

23 January, 201923 January, 2019Intellectual Property, Piracy4 Comments

Hard on the heels of news that the UK Society of Authors condemning the Internet Archive for piracy comes an announcement from The Writers’ Union of Canada expressing a similar...

Calibre is Being Used to Run 1,800 Online Content Servers – including De Facto Pirate Servers

11 December, 201817 December, 2018calibre, PiracyLeave a comment

Calibre is a widely used ebook library tool that can convert ebooks to and from just about any format and help you load said ebook on to just about...

Are POD Publishers Pirating Your Book on Amazon?

18 September, 201819 September, 2018Piracy, POD4 Comments

While programs like Google Books are performing a great public service by scanning rare public domain books and making them available, sometimes in-copyright books are also scanned and inadvertently...

EU Screws Up Copyright Ruling on Student’s Presentation

10 August, 201817 April, 2019Intellectual Property, Piracy6 Comments

One of the few bright spots in US copyright law (along with DMCA Safe Harbors) is the legal principle of fair use - the idea that under certain conditions...

Internet Archive Wants You to Turn Your Site Into a Pirate Site

13 May, 20189 June, 2018Piracy, The Authors Guild4 Comments

The Open Library is a free web library slash pirate site run by the Internet Archive. It lends ebooks, and can be used by anyone online. A recent update...

Amazon’s CreateSpace Provides a Safe Haven for Textbook Scams, Money Laundering, and Rampant Piracy

13 April, 201813 April, 2018Amazon, Piracy, POD13 Comments

Amazon is destroying the Kindle Store from the inside out by letting broken algorithms run the show, punishing innocents while letting major scammers off scot-free. Createspace, in comparison, would...

Online Piracy Is More Popular Than Ever … Says Company That Sells Anti-Piracy Services

26 March, 201826 March, 2018Piracy6 Comments

Piracy is such a huge problem that several industries reported record revenues last year. TorrentFreak brings us news of a new global piracy report from Muso that shows record...

Internet Archive Ignores DMCA Notices

22 February, 201822 February, 2018Piracy11 Comments

Edit: The first version of the title of this post was considerably more incendiary than intended. I changed the title about 15 seconds after publishing this post, and I...

Infringement Lawsuit Filed Over “The Shape of Water”

22 February, 20184 March, 2018PiracyOne Comment

There used to be a time where the passing similarities between two works only interested academics and aficionados. Now it is grounds for claims of copyright infringement. The Hollywood...

FairPlay Canada’s Proposed Website-Blocking System Faces Fierce Opposition

6 February, 20188 February, 2018Piracy6 Comments

The data shows that blocking pirate sites causes more harm than good, but that hasn't stopped Canadian media companies from demanding that their government implement a website blacklist. A...

Google Is Now Accepting Indie Authors into Play Books (Sometimes, And Only If You Ask Nice)

9 November, 201725 June, 2018Google Books, Google Play, Piracy, Self-Pub9 Comments

When Google closed its publisher portal two and a half years ago in response to massive ebook piracy, they said the move was temporary so they could "improve our content management...

Category: Piracy