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Bootleg Literotica Anthologies in the Kindle Store

O

OlympiaPress

Virgin
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Jun 1, 2010
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Hey Literotians, just wanted to get folks' attention, 'cuz the same thing happened to me a couple years back, and it takes a while to undo.

There's a seller in the Amazon Kindle store who's listing "Stories By Anonymous Authors." Guess which authors he's talking about?

http://www.amazon.com/Sexy-Hot-Tale...55J8/ref=pd_ts_kinc_12?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text

I've searched through this site for any mention of "Anthology," saw no "Barbara Hot," but did visit a few tales I recognized. Dude's fairly sophisticated in terms of how he uses Amazon's DTP store, and been accelerating his infringements of y'all. I think there were 4 more in just the past couple weeks. Also, some Portuguese.

http://www.amazon.com/s?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Barbara Hot

Short-term, thing to do is have the infringing works pulled down. As close to immediately as possible. Just have one or more authors click the link at the bottom, and Amazon will take care of it.

Longer-term, given the gent's success, you guys should look into doing your own "Best of Literotica" anthology, and let me know if you wanted to tack on a print edition or something.

Good luck.

David Moynihan
Disruptive Publishing
http://www.olympiapress.com
http://www.silkpagoda.com
http://www.munseys.com
http://www.blackmask.com (forthcoming)
 
You or someone needs to send a PM to Laurel. Laurel and Manu are very good about taking care of such things when it's brought to their attention.
 
How would an individual author find out which, if any of his or her stories are included? Outside of buying the book, that is. :confused: Literally hundreds of my dirty stories have been pirated and are being used around the internet to entice people to join paysites.
 
Boxlicker101 said:
How would an individual author find out which, if any of his or her stories are included? Outside of buying the book, that is. :confused: Literally hundreds of my dirty stories have been pirated and are being used around the internet to entice people to join paysites.
Click to expand...

Volume 1, Sexy Hot Tales contains (according to Amazon and pasted directly from the link provided in the OP):


Product Description
Selected Erotic Stories with Pictures

Get ready for some of the wildest sex talesever! From the hot girl next door to co-eds on a mission, these beautiful women are always ready for sex!
All stories are written in good english with at least 3 pages long.

Stories on Volume 1:
1. Making Copies
2. Fiance's Forbidden Dessert
3. Auctioned Ass
4. A story about my sister Alex and myself
5. Wild 1st Anal Sex After Party
6. Assfucking On-Duty At The Ski Resort
7. Mistress T
8. The Meeting
9. The Beaver hunt
10. The Perfect Teacher
11. My Gang Bang Gang
12. The Decision
13. Desert Stop
14. Cat Man Dues
15. Night Terror
16. Cognac
17. The Lonely Office
18. I Cheated With The Secretary
19. Shopping Day
20. A Yank in the outhouse
21. College stripper
22. Between the Bridesmaid

Recognize any?
 
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We definitely want to take this scammer down. Does anyone have a copy of any/all of these bootlegged ebooks? We can buy them, but I hate to pay the scammer for stolen content.

Once we have a definitive list of which stories are stolen, we can have our lawyer file the required paperwork to hopefully get this person's account banned from Amazon.

In the meantime, if any authors recognize their stories, I recommend that you click the link on the book page and make a report as well. Generally speaking, with big companies like Amazon, the more squeaky we are, the faster they will work to fix the problem.

Thanks again for alerting us! :)
 
I think it's likely/possible that the photos are stolen as well, if this person is stealing stories. I'll see if we can track down the picture owners and alert them as well.
 
I didn't recognize any titles of mine. There may be a story under a different title, and I would have no way of knowing. :(
 
I'm posting right after Weird Harold - it's an honor. :D

Doing a quick check on the cover art for one of the books, I found the following:
http://www.amazon.com/Sexy-Hot-Tales-Pictures-ebook/dp/B003M68WH2

Looks a bit like an image from Wasteland.com here:
http://www.wastelandblog.com/aff/bdsm-fetish_301.html
http://secure.spicecash.com/gallhit.php?wastelandblog,289,1,2,0

So, it's very likely that this person is stealing everything. I'll alert Wasteland and maybe they'll file a complaint as well.
 
It's like those politicians who claim military heroism but never even put on a uniform. Didn't this fool think someone would notice? There is such a thing as public records, after all.
 
voluptuary_manque said:
It's like those politicians who claim military heroism but never even put on a uniform. Didn't this fool think someone would notice? There is such a thing as public records, after all.
Click to expand...

I imagine he just didn't care. The reward/risk ratio in the pirating market is just so high that they don't really give a damn. At best, they make some very easy money. At worst, they're slapped on the wrist and have their stuff confiscated. The material was never theirs in the first place, so it's no big deal.

New pirated material, new screen name, and they're back in business the next day at a new location.
 
Another few updates:

1. Found another image that they took for cover art, and it's from a magazine in Brazil, making us suspect this person could be in Brazil or from there - maybe:
This ebook:
http://www.amazon.com/Sexy-Hot-Tales-Pictures-ebook/dp/B003MC5F58/
Uses an image from here:
http://erooups.com/2010/03/03/hot_and_sexy_ring_girls_from_brazil_in_the_sexy_magazine_18_pics.html

2. We have been in contact with the friendly people over at Smash Words, trying to get the ebooks with stolen content removed from their site as well. So far, the Smash Words support people have been very friendly and they assured us that they are 100% against anything that infringes upon real author's copyrights. Here is the scammer's account over there:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Legatus

I also wanted to comment on the idea that this scammer will just reappear as soon as he/she gets banned. I agree that it's possible (maybe even likely), but on the other hand he/she needs to have a bank account or Pay Pal account to get paid by these ebook companies. So, it's not like a forum spammer that just needs an email address. This person will have to put in some effort if they want to start over once they are shut down. Hopefully, once they realize that Lit authors are serious about copyright, they will move on and realize that crime doesn't pay. :)
 
It seems like they would've changed the titles and character names. Someone would have to have a copy of the text they're selling.
 
Epmd607 said:
It seems like they would've changed the titles and character names. Someone would have to have a copy of the text they're selling.
Click to expand...

I certainly hope they changed the titles. The titles given don't seem to be for stories worth stealing. :D
 
Looks like Smash Words - who've been very friendly and responsive - have already removed the bootlegged books. Amazon have also replied and we are working with them to try to get the books that feature stolen content removed from there as well.

Again, we encourage any author who recognized their work in any of these books to contact us and contact Amazon.
 
Still working to get Amazon to remove the above ebooks. If you notice your stories in any of the bootleg books, please report the theft to Amazon, as mentioned previously.

Along with that update, we have a new possible story thief putting out ebooks in the Kindle store on Amazon. Nifty.org has reported that there is an Amazon author by the name of Max Harden who is stealing stories and publishing them as eBooks. Here is his page on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/s?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Max harden

There are 111 stories/books in the store by this author, so please have a look and post here if you notice any stories that you know are stolen from Literotica authors.

It looks like we are going to need to get into a habit of checking the Amazon Kindle store and we'll need to create a system for quickly DMCA-ing the people who are stealing stories. In the past, it was websites who were at the forefront of theft, but it's increasingly looking like Amazon's Kindle store may be the future home of copyright thieves. We love Kindle as much as anyone, but a few bad apples seem to be trying to ruin the good things going on over there.

Again, if you notice any of your stories - or stories by other Literotica authors - being published by the two authors listed above, or any other Kindle authors, please post with specific information here.

Thanks and sorry to bother you! :)
 
No problem at all, Manu.

The question I have, is there any way to read an excerpt or something from a story. I looked through the titles and a couple could be works I've seen that have been renamed. No way to tell much from just names.
 
I have had to fight copyright infringement before, but the latest fight was a hard lesson learned about posting work online.

As it turned out, the person selling my work was in Russia, and as you can imagine, "impossible to get your hands on." We went after hosting sites, with some success, but that can be a never ending chase. The Russian still has my work.

Enforcing copyrights is expensive. In my opinion, it is not worth pursuing legal action unless you are already making a fair amount of money on that particular work, or the infringing party is making enough that you might, at minimum, recover legal costs.

Luckily, at least in my experience, most often a letter to hosting sites is sufficient. Printed media is a whole other ballgame.

The moral of the story is: if you post work on the Internet, consider it given away.

This is an opinion. I am not giving legal advice.
 
One other thing...

If you do intend to market your writing, absolutely, positively register it with the USPTO, before you make it available to the public.
 
You should google lines from your stories regularly. That's one way of checking on this sort of thing.
 
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