Pirating of Kindle eBooks

By , @Writing2Day

I just got done reading an article about an author who discovered that two of her eBooks have been stolen and are now selling on Amazon.  I don’t know why this particular form of theft had never occurred to me before.  I guess it just goes to show that if there is something that can be stolen, it will be stolen.I have been a victim of content theft on a much smaller scale.  When I had my online retail store, I kept receiving emails that were meant for another store.  So I started digging a little further into the site the emails were generated from, only to find that they had copied several pages of content that I had written directly from my website and pasted it into theirs.  Apparently they weren’t savvy enough to change the email links that they copied.  If not for this, I never would have known.

I guess I should have been flattered that someone found my content interesting enough to outright copy word for word.  Instead I was filled with a sense of outrage that someone had stolen my work and was pawning it off as their own.  I also had a competitor that watched our website and any time I promoted a new idea, they started doing it, too.  Again, I guess it was a form of flattery but it was very aggravating.

I can not imagine how I would feel if someone were to steal an entire book that I had created only to relist it and reap the profits for themselves.  In the case of my website content, a simple cease & desist letter was all it took (along with threat of legal action) for them to post their own content.  I guess artists of all types have been dealing with piracy for years, but it certainly gives one a little trepidation about what we publish on the web.  If I post the opening scene (as I have) to my novel will someone steal it and use it as their own?  Will I even know it’s happened?

I know from experience that crimes generated from the Internet can be very hard to prosecute as things can be done very anonymously and from countries all over the world.  When I had my online store we had to deal with crooks committing credit card fraud.  In several instances I called the local law enforcement to report that items that were purchased fraudulently from us were shipped to a residence in their jurisdiction.  One time we even had someone using different credit cards, making multiple purchases and shipping to the same location (fortunately I caught on before we shipped product).  For some reason nothing could be done about this.  Seemed to me if they were trying to pull this multiple times on my website, they were doing it other places as well.  I’m sure they had a whole treasure trove of fraudulent purchases at this address but the police would do nothing about it.

It will be interesting to see if Amazon takes this type of theft seriously and actually does something.  I’m not sure how they can stop it and perhaps they really don’t care since it puts money in their pocket, as well.  Is this going to stop me from electronically publishing my novel once it is complete?  No.  But it does give one pause for thought.

One Response to “Pirating of Kindle eBooks”

  1. […] putting my manuscript out there as I go and having it stolen. About a year ago I did a post on the Pirating of Kind eBooks (people stealing other peoples work and republishing as their own eBook). And, I have been a […]

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