Book Theft

Concern for the number of full length books available at www.esnips.com became a topic at IPcentral on 27 March. I got in late on the discussion. The idea of full-length books (complete with illustrations and often without copyright information) being disseminated over the web is disturbing.

esnips is a variation on the Del.icio.us & YouTube theme, with individuals signing on for bandwidth to upload their interests to share with others. They have "communities" for a variety of interests. Sounds OK, and in the "Terms of Agreement" it clearly states that individuals must be sole owners of the material they present. Obviously, that has been ignored by many of the users. It is also being ignored by esnips.

On March 1 esnips redesigned their site. I hadn't previously visited, but comments in the IPcentral blog indicated some of the stolen books were listed on the front page of the site. No more. In fact, esnips doesn't list books in their "communities", as if they're hiding the actions of some of their members.

Hence my concern: these companies like Net Snippets, who owns esnips, list the appropriate politically- correct rules, yet they don't enforce them. The recent outrage begun by IPcentral, Romance Writers of America and individual authors hasn't seemed to tweak the management consciousness. A visit to their CEO blog shows no mention of the fury directed their way.

Some solutions
One enterprising author, cw, has joined the esnips community and visited the offending individual sites, leaving a message about their copyright infringement (quoted directly from the esnips "Terms of Service"). On cw's profile page are listed many legal alternatives for obtaining books. cw's post has received numerous comments, including several esnips book thieves who apologized and said they would remove their illegal listings.

Remove from esnips, perhaps, but merely post somewhere else?

So we're back to the site owners who make no attempts to marshal the users of their enterprise. These are the real culprits. I have seen the same on blog sites where Terms of Service state "no pornography", but a random surf will show many offensive sites. Blogs and esnips and YouTube all have a little button on somewhere on the site for surfers to "report abuse". It's time to start using those.

Anyone truly upset by the misuse of any URL should contact the IP owners and let them know. Ten minutes a day, reporting abuses in a site by one person could help send a message. The more people involved, the better.

cw's approach is also effective, albeit more time consuming. Let me know of other innovations that could help to curtail the theft of creative materials.