[File search] General EBooks / General World

Thanks for the heads up. Nothing of mine there, but I've alerted a couple of friends.

Just something to keep in mind, not all the sites general ebooks have posted about your book lead to pirate sites. For example, my book Otaku leads to Smashwords. You can read the blurb and then it directs you to the Smashwords site to buy.

However, one of the links about my book Undercover Lover leads to a pirate site. So you have to send a take down notice to each individual pirate site.

Be careful too, some of the links will set off your virus programs.

My link goes to flixden.com from General, so I'd say that's a pirate site.

CaoPaux said:

Yeah, this is a search engine, not a file host. Their DMCA page: http://www.general-world.com/dmca

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I think some of the books are hosted there. You can read them on the site, at any rate.

Big money talks, any one considered a 'class action' type of suit. I am not a lawyer, know nothing about the law so not even sure if something like that works with written materials. But I do know most companies do not like the negative publicity such things as boycotts and class action suits shine on them

Piracy Warning: General-eBooks.com

I got a Google Alert and found my eBook, The Animals of London on this site with a "Get Book" button that goes to a pirated copy of my book on liversely.com. In a few seconds the URL in the browser changes to livedirsetsoftware.org. Instructions pop up for getting the download of my work. (BTW, I cut and pasted those site names so the unusual spellings are theirs).

I used the copyright infringement button and told General eBooks to remove the listing. Found two copies. Copied all the URLs and filed a DMCA.

The file hosting sites have no contact information and they have red Web of Trust warnings that could indicate malware, so I didn't enter those sites.

Here's the link for setting up Google Alerts: https://www.google.com/alerts#

I used the DMCA form through Google's webmaster's tools (requires being logged in to a Google account): https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice

I also left comments on each book listing on General-eBooks asking readers not to use the "Get Book" button because my work was pirated. A new eBook series I published this month was also stolen and offered on this site so I had to repeat the procedure and again some of the books had two listings each.

Now I have to file DMCAs for each title of the series. I'm wondering if there's a way to set up macros for this, or other automated methods? Lazarus was handy (Firefox add-on) because I could refill all the forms with one click. There should be a better way -- this is time-consuming.

If you check for your books, look under title and author. The new series didn't show up under the author name but I found all of them under the series title.

How do the rest of you deal with this? If I was making enough, I'd outsource this, but I'm new at epublishing and that's not in the budget. I'd planned to spend my day finishing the next book and instead I lost most of the day to dealing with being robbed, and chances are it won't stop the thieves. I've seen posting on Kindle Boards from authors who report their books are repeatedly offered on Google Play by pirates. The authors have to keep filing.

Any thoughts on ways to keep on this? Is there any software or a service? This was a huge hit against my enthusiasm for publishing.

Batspan said:

How do the rest of you deal with this? If I was making enough, I'd outsource this, but I'm new at epublishing and that's not in the budget.

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My book show up on new pirate sites every day--most disappear and reappear elsewhere faster than a whack-a-mole game. I've long since given up attempting to do anything about them, since people who download books from these sites are either: a) victims of credit-card phishing scams; or b) unlikely to have ever paid for books anyway.

My first two books are all over these sites. Doesn't bother me too much. As WriterBN said, I doubt people who DL books from these sites were ever likely to buy mine legitimately anyway.

WriterBN & RikWriter -- Thanks for the perspective. Yeah, people cool with supporting scrapers and pirates probably aren't going to become paying readers. Bummed me out because I've been working long hours to launch new eBook lines.

I had some responses on Kindle Boards that General eBooks takes the listings down when you tell them to -- there's a copyright infringement button on the listings. I hope that my comments on the site might reach people who don't realize the work is pirated.

The DMCA dashboard in Google Webmaster tools tracks the URLs that have my pirated work.

Yeah, I figure this is like the hydra. Whack-a-mole, too.

People who steal copyright will not apply the same argument when Robots take their jobs.

"Why would someone want to pay when I can get it cheaper / free."

Maybe our stuff getting nicked is fair game given what's coming.

Remember that these sites are not putting up other people's work for free out of some "Words should be unchained!" feeling. Users will be bitten sooner or later by scams or malware. Even if I had no money for books (eek, just writing that scares me!) I'd use library loans rather than these sites, out of self-preservation as much as morality.