[File sharing] Docstoc

Wait, what?! Like, they have it up for sale without your permission, and you're not getting paid? Are you serious?

I have no answer for you, but maybe you should contact a lawyer. That's straight up BS!!!!

Send a DMCA takedown notice. By law, US websites have to respond to DMCA notices, whereas they can just ignore a contact from the author.

Here's instructions on how to do it.

As the holder of the collective copyright on the issue in which your story appeared, whoever is in charge of the magazine should also send one.

- Victoria

Is it wrong of me that I wondered who would spend $6.95 on a short story?

Lady MacBeth, you can set up Google Alerts (google Google Alerts ) for key phrases such as the title or parts of the story, and you'll be emailed whenever they appear online.

Lady MacBeth said:

Victoria, I am Canadian. Does this still apply? Also, the website has a DMCA Complaint Form. Should I fill this out or send a separate letter?

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Anyone can send a DMCA notice.

Yes, use the complaint form. The fact that they have one suggests that they host a lot of pirated content, but also that they do take action on infringement complaints. Good luck.

- Victoria

What's their URL?

Lady MacBeth said:

www dot proquest dot com

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Huh? What does ProQuest (a company that sells databases to libraries) have to do with this docstoc.com filesharing site?

/me is confusled.

Lady MacBeth said:

I have no idea, but that is who provided the document to docstoc. The original contract I signed with the magazine allowed for no electronic rights. I emailed the editor to alert him in case other writers might be affected, but have received no response. The magazine is affliated with a university. Could that be it? If so, how can they sell my story separately from the publication without my consent? They bought first rights. Nothing more.

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ProQuest is a legit company (full disclosure: I work for a competitor).

If they included the journal that your story was in in one of their databases (and they almost certainly bought rights for the entire backfile of the journal, or back as far as a particular date -- several years worth of full issues, not just your story), it's because they purchased the rights from the journal's publisher.

It sounds like the magazine you sold the story to may have sold the electronic rights, even though you didn't grant them. Or might there have been a clause that allowed them to include your piece in an electronic version of the journal?

And then someone illegally copied it from ProQuest to put on the file-sharing site.

Edited again to add: May I ask the name of the journal your story was included in? You can PM me if you don't want to post it here.

You might want to ask who is in charge of licensing for the magazine the story was in, and contact that person, rather than the editor (who may not be involved in that aspect of it)

Also, you might consider contacting ProQuest, and ask about their licensing agreement with that publisher, as a contributor who never sold the publisher electronic rights. I have no idea how they'd respond, but it's worth asking about.

Oh, one more thing. If there are a lot of ProQuest articles on that docstoc.com site, especially coming from a single account, that's something ProQuest is more likely to take a notice to than a complaint about a single article.

Completely aside from the fact that the magazine shouldn't have sold electronic rights it didn't own (which ProQuest will likely say is between you and the publisher), ProQuest is not going to be happy to hear that someone is selling PDFs from their system on a file-sharing site.

I'd say it's lawyer time.

The DMCA complaint I filed was dismissed because docstoc has a partnering agreement with ProQuest. They insist on their website that I go through ProQuest to have it removed, but ProQuest is not responding to my emails.

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A DMCA notice is part of a producedure that protects Docstoc from being sued by you.

So if you have provided Docstoc with a valid DMCA notice, then if Docstoc chooses not to take it down (perhaps because of some other agreement) then Docstoc is no longer protected by the 'safe harbor' provisions of the DMCA - they have accepted full liability for the copyright infringement.

You are under no obligation to deal with anyone else - you can go ahead and sue them .. if that's what you want to do.

Good luck,

Mac

Lady MacBeth said:

Just an update...

After I threatened legal action, docstoc.com finally removed my story yesterday.

What an ordeal!

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Yay! Glad they finally took it down. I'm sorry you had to go through such trouble.

Of course, now I feel silly having insisted that ProQuest couldn't have given the stories to docstoc themselves. As someone working for a company in the same industry, I know that the mass licensing model that they and we use doesn't automatically transfer to individual sales such as docstoc.com has. I assumed they wouldn't have sent stuff to docstoc en masse, since therin lies a path frought with landmines with regard to licencing and *cough* copyright issues.

So I figured it must have been "some kid" that uploaded the files without their knowledge. And I figured that since fair is fair, I'd point this out even though proquest are a competitor



Yeah.

I'll refrain from further comment, since I can hardly claim to be unbiased wrt their business decisions.