The other day, out of the blue, I got an email from Karon Thackston of www.CopywritingCourse.com, informing me that one of her books and one of mine were being illegally made available as a free download from a particular rogue blogspot website. I had actually known for several weeks that some of my books were being offered as free downloads, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything I could do about it.

Luckily, Karen had some helpful facts. She said that authors and publishers can (and should) use the online DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint form for Blogger listed here: http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html when the author(s)/publisher(s) have not given permission to make that book available through the site in question. Once we make our complaints, Google contacts the offending site telling them to remove or disable access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers. Then, if the site does not comply, Google has the authority to shut that sucker down! Hooaaah!

Great info Karon!! For non-Blogger offenders, we recommend visiting the DMCA WikiPedia page to learn more about how we can all stamp out this kind of evil book pirating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act Once you identify an offender, you can contact the web host with a DMCA complaint and they must remove the information even if the site owner doesn’t.

To find out who the website host is, follow these instructions:

1. In Windows, press Start > Run > to open the Run dialog
2. Type in cmd and press Enter
3. Type in “ping domainname.com” (replacing the domainname with the name of the offending site) and the command  will return the IP number tied to the site.
4. Take that IP number and plug it into almost any Whois tool (I like using the Network Solutions WHOIS search at http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp) and the results should tell you who ultimately controls (hosts) that IP number. This is the Abuser.
5. Use the Abuser contact information to file a DMCA complaint asking the host to remove the pages/sites that are in copyright violation.

Needless to say, I contacted my books’ publishers immediately, and they gave the issue over to their lawyers who promptly got busy with the process of taking those ebook pirate websites down. Thankfully I have the luxury of having my publishers’ lawyers deal with this stuff, but not everyone does. I know a lot of authors who self-publish, and knowing how to tackle ebook piracy gives them the power over their copyrights they they deserve. Keep in mind that piracy isn’t just limited to the biggest and newest publications; all writing is in danger of being pirated…we’re talking EVERYTHING that’s EVER been PUBLISHED ONLINE, including old and outdated publications.

If you’re the author of a book or other publication that you hold the copyright to, you have the right to protect your work.  Thankfully, it’s now easier than ever to tackle the problem of electronic theft.  The government empowering web hosts to take down individual pages or entire sites instantly upon notification is also a powerful tool in our fight. With our ability to create search engine alerts (such as Google Alerts) and quickly file DMCA complaints in just seconds, we’ve come a long way.

Now get out there and help stop pirated ebooks!