Damned Pirates?!?

I love Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner. Those are some super sexy pirates who can steal me away into their lair anytime. I doN'T love ebook pirates like the people who wrote this "policy" below. Ebook piracy affects all of you who are authors and hopeful authors. They adversely affect you as readers, too. How? If this happens enough, writers may give up writing and go into other lines of work. Your favorite author may be one of them. Publishers may very likely have to increase prices to cover the legal costs of combating pirates, etc. Why should any one work for free? Slavery was outlawed years ago and deemed unethical and unlawful. Robbery's also illegal. If someone were to come into your home and steal your television and all your electronics, you'd be upset and think the robber to be the lowest form of pond scum. You'd a police report and possibly other legal action. Copyright infringement is also stealing. Since when do the robbers have the legal or moral right to say they'll return stolen goods at their discretion? When caught, that is. The complaints and abuse policy by the company in question, is below in red. To me, it looks as if they get to decide whether or not to take down copyrighted material they don't own. They've got BIG, IRON balls. Legally, I think my attorneys and the legal system really has the final authority. At least I hope so. What do you think? For complaints or abuse by (blank).com customers.

To make sure we will investigate abuse reports effectively, we need you to give us sufficient information. If you have gathered the necessary information, you can send it using the form below.

Required information

Below you will find details of the information that is required in order to investigate abuse.

Please note that it will not always be possible to send a personalised request for more information if the required information is not provided.

All information should preferably be sent in normal text format (plain text).

Depending on the seriousness of the case, we may decide to cease our services to the user concerned. In cases where services are not ceased, we may decide, at our own discretion, (blank).com’s General Terms & Conditions.

Copyright infringement

To file a copyright infringement notification with us, you will need to send a written communication to us with all of the following information in it:

• your statement telling us that you have found data on our site which you believe infringes your copyrights, or any other right;
• detailed information about your (copy)right;
• the title of the content concerned and the full URL for its page;
• a detailed explanation about how the content infringes your (copy)right;
• your contact information, so that we can get in touch with you (email address is preferred).

We reserve the right to ignore your complaint, if you provide us with insufficient information. Ugh!!! The last line "We reserve the right to ignore your complaint" is what galls me! I've reported them to my publishers involved and my publisher confirmed this is definitely a pirate site. I just sent a cease and desist order to the pirate site and a formal notice to my publisher. If they persist, I will have my attorney from the day job pursue them and he is very very good, and this is not a threat but a promise. The pirates don't have to worry that I will not have the money to pursue them as legal representation is one of my free perks. I just found this comment that really sickens me by someone who obviously knows this is an illegal act. "Unfortunately, nowhere is safe as long as the author can sniff you out. What worries me most is how easy this website comes up during Google search. Just type the title of the book, for example." Thanks you very much Google Alerts for leading me to these pirates.

You'll also want to see what Amarinda Jones, Anika Hamilton, Anny Cook,
Barbara Huffert, Brynn Paulin, Bronwyn Green, Dakota Rebel, Kelly Kirch,
Molly Daniels, Sandra Cox, Regina Carlysle, and Cindy Spencer Pape
are up to, so make sure to visit them also. :)

Dumb Crook Stunt

It's time for a little levity around here. Something happened at my day job this past weekend that still has me chuckling and shaking my head. Not just me, but all of my co-workers. There was a theft - a weird one - at the day job. Somebody stole one of our mango trees. That's a little odd in itself that someone would dig up a tree and take it. But it gets stranger. This same person took the time and energy to replant a dead tree in its place. I can only think he figured we wouldn't notice our live tree was missing, that we would think our tree died in the space of a couple days. He didn't count on the fact that my employers know each and every tree and shrub and lamp post extremely well - or that we have very good security including security cameras that are actually on all the time. The cameras got video of the man doing the dirty deed and also of his license plate. Yep, the police got him. The crook is some man that lives in Boca. If you've ever heard of Boca, you'd know it's a really ritzy city in Florida. Why on earth would someone from Boca come all the way to another city to steal a tree from us? A charity no doubt who tries to use every penny to help the poor. I imagine the guy thought we were some dumb company that didn't have a clue what's what, that we were an easy mark. I imagine he's extremely sorry and feels very dumb about now. Why do people do such things???