Pirate Site Owner Launches GoFundMe Campaign to Raise Funds to Defend a Piracy Suit
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 last nerve.
McCrea has recently been getting a lot of media attention for his current pirate site, eBook Bike (not to be confused with his defunct audiobook pirate site). He’s become quite notorious, so much so that he is now afraid of being sued.
McCrea has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise a defense fund. He lies multiple times in the brief description.
"Let me be clear: At no point have I uploaded content I didn’t own to Ebook Bike," he writes "and I have always ensured that copyrighted material wouldn’t be uploaded (using the same methods and techniques used by YouTube, Facebook, and others)."
That is an utter falsehood; I just (in the past couple minutes) downloaded A Memory Called Empire and Mike Resnick’s Soothsayer. Both books were complete (and both are in copyright, obviously).
McCrea goes on to say "The DMCA is very clear about safe harbour protections and we have jumped through all those hoops. Yet I am still getting sued. What are the point of laws if they can be ignored? "
Yeah, the thing about the DMCA is that it is a US law that provides a safe harbor for US sites. McCrea is Canadian, and thus the DMCA does not apply to him.
McCrea had previously made a similar claim about the DMCA (this is in fact why I dislike him) but he is simply lying to us here. The DMCA only affords US sites a modicum of protection, and no one else. While virtually all sites and hosting companies around the world will respond to DMCA notices, they only do so as a convenience and not because the DMCA applies to them.
Canada has its own version of the DMCA, which went into effect in 2015. It only offers a safe harbor for ISPs so long as they forward takedown notices to accused infringers, and the law offers no protection to McCrea as the operator of a pirate site.
In legal terms, McCrea’s ass has been hanging in the breeze for as long as he has operated his pirate sites, and it is a wonder that it has taken this long for someone to sue him.
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