Shame on Astalatalk! Shame Shame!

This morning I visited one of my favorite loops only to learn that Astalatalk (formerly Astalavista, a popular ebook pirate site has hit a new low. So yeah, they get my SHAME ON YOU award!

Most of us are aware that many publishers do 'charity' books where the proceeds for sales go to help a cause such as breast cancer research, a bereaved family, or any number of things. Authors give of their time and talent and work hand-in-hand with their publisher to see the monies involved go where they are meant. Apparently, one of these charity books showed up at Astalatalk. They have a chat board and someone actually asked for the book and someone else popped on to say they had it and would upload it for her.

Shame, shame, shame.


The author of the charity book posted to their message board saying...there must be a special place reserved in hell for people like YOU who would steal from a charity. (I'm paraphrasing here, but you get the drift). So it's not enough these people give not a minutes' thought to stealing from an author or a publisher but now they do THIS. Outrageous!

Recently my own publisher, Ellora's Cave, released a series of books where the proceeds go to a family who lost their daughter in a fire. Nothing makes up for their catastrophic loss but the money should help some with expenses that were acrued during this agonizing time. To think that someone would steal from them is appalling. So authors, if you have a charity book floating around out there, please check to make sure someone isn't stealing from your chosen charity.

What is this world coming to?

Plundering the Pirates

Just before I went to bed last night, I was scrolling through the news reports on line and found a story that was very interesting. A 34 year old mom of four was found guilty of copyright infringment by a federal court for sharing music files on Kazaa. This was the second federal trial for the Minnesota housewife, who in February of 2005 downloaded 1700 copyrighted songs to Kazaa. A suit was filed against her by the Recording Industry of America. She'd shared the songs of Gloria Estefan, Sheryl Crow (one of my personal faves), Green Day, and many others.

Now this was her second trial. In the first, she was found guilty and fined over $200,00 but because the judge hadn't instructed the jury properly, the judgment was thrown out and a new trial was ordered.

Honestly, she should've take the first verdict and gone home because the jury did NOT like this thief in the second federal trial. This time the judge made his instructions to the jury very clear saying.. the act of downloading copyrighted sound recordings or distributing them to other users on peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa, without a license from the owners, are copyright violations.

Bottom line!


When the jury heard the story, they found her guilty and fined her a whopping $1.92 million (roughly $80,000 per song). Will the recording artists and their companies ever get that money from a Minnesota housewife? Unlikely. But in the end, that's not the point. A blow, in my opinion, was struck for all of us who have been systematically ripped off every time we see one of our books listed on these pirate sites. Our issues are roughly the same as those in the music industry. Thieves are stealing from us.

Lately the loops are burning up with talk of new pirate sites that steal our work and give it away for free. Many of us believe chasing them down doesn't do a whole lot of good because they pop right back up again.

Thing is, this is a huge blow to those who steal our work and put it on these file sharing sites. Another thing that might help? Many of these pirate sites transfer virus' onto computers. I'm betting if we got the word out about this, people would think twice before infecting their computers. I mean really, would you want to risk that when you could buy the roughly $5 book straight from the publishers site? I sure wouldn't.

Here's a copy of the link if you'd be interested in reading about the judgment.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_music_downloading

Ahoy Maties! Thar Be Pirates Aboard!

The pirate invasion began for me a few days ago when I got an email from our very own Anne who said she'd found one of my books on a Pirating site! You know the kind. The ones who steal authors books and offer them either FREE or for sale, cutting the author and publisher completely OUT as for as money.

Went to the site and lo and behold...there I was biggern Dallas offered as a free download. Talk about steamed! Later I hit some author loops and found this same addy was being talked about by the other authors and it seemed this same woman had not only one file sharing blog but many. Curious about what she had going on, I pulled some of them up and was appalled at the number of authors who were being systematically ripped off. In some cases, the entire collections of some longtime writers were offered free of charge.

I did my part by notifying two of my publishers who said they'd get right on it by sending out 'cease and desist' letters. I later learned that other authors were doing the same. Everyone pulled together and did what they could. Last night, I read this woman has posted a note to her blog saying she was 'shutting down' and didn't realize she was doing anything wrong. SNORT...yeah RIGHT! Of course, she knows she's doing wrong. It's STEALING. No doubt she'll be back up at a later date and, if not, plenty of others will take her place.

Guess what I'm getting at is, in this vast cyber-world in which we live, operate, and do business, it pays to be careful. If I stumble across another of these sites and see a friends book, you'd better believe, I'm letting her know. If I see hundreds of offerings of fellow writers from my own publisher, I'm reporting it whether my own book is listed there or not. The way I see it, we're all in this gig together.

Writing a book takes imagination, creativity, hard work and long hours. In my pre-writing days, I'd tear through a delicious book in an afternoon and sit there wondering how many weeks or months the author spent writing it. Now I KNOW. A lot of work, heart and soul goes into something like this and for someone to thoughtlessly GIVE IT AWAY steams me plenty.

So be on the lookout, Maties! Only through keeping an eye out for each other will be get through this stuff.

On a lighter note: Made for Mischief, my erotic regency at Resplendence Publishing is now available in PRINT. It can be purchased at Resplendence or at Amazon. I haven't picked up my author copies yet, but I'm getting my credit card warmed up now. Very exciting.