Ebook Theft - It Really Happens!
I recently came into contact with an ebook author who found out in a round about way that copies of her ebooks were being given away without her permission. (To protect her privacy, I won't be mentioning her name or giving out any information that could reveal her identity.) When the author found out about her ebooks being unlawfully distributed, she immediately contacted an intellectual property rights attorney in the state where the offense occurred to find out what her options for recourse were.
The attorney's response was that he could write a cease and desist letter... and that to do the necessary research, compile the letter and follow up would cost approximately $2,000.00 US. If they ended up going to court, the cost could easily add up to $15,000.00 - $20,000.00 US(!) There would be no guarantee that the ebook author would be able to recover any of her legal fees or be rewarded any settlement money.
Because the ebook author had no idea how many copies were given away, it was a difficult decision for her to make as to whether spending the money for legal representation was worth it or not. In the end, she decided to go ahead and pay the $2,000.00 US to have the attorney do the cease and desist letter with hopes that she would be able to reach a settlement with the offending party without going to court.
I am not telling you this in order to use it as a scare tactic, but to show you that ebook theft is something that really happens. Thieves take advantage of the fact that they will probably get away with unlawfully distributing copies of ebooks because the legal fees are too costly for most small business owners to take legal action.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I'll keep you posted!
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Labels: ebook security, ebook theft
2 Comments:
Hi Viki,
For the last few days I have been diligently searching for the very best software for publishing ebooks and ways to secure them against theft. In my search, I ran into your name several times, so I assume you are somewhat of an experienced if not expert person in this regard.
I have found many different programs for ebooks, but find a huge disadvantage with all those that force us to convert our Word document into an html file, where is truly complicates the ability of the linked table of contents and the pagination, especially when printing.
Therefore, I have decided, that PDF is really the best, but PDF has zero security protection against theft. So I start my search for ways to protect PDF files and found numerous answers, most of which wanted to sell me the protection for a $70 or so per thousand copies protected. That doesn't sound too bad, if you sell only 1000 copies, its 7 cents per copy, but what if you sell a million copies, that you just paid $70,000...ouch.
Then I found Virtual Vault, they have a 30-day trial for only $2.95 and afterwords, its only $29.95 per month for unlimited number of books or software and unlimited number of copies protected. I would be very interested in your thoughts on this matter. Here is the link to Virtual Vault. http://www.marketerschoice.com/app/?Clk=2097230
Lynn
Hi Lynn,
The Virtual Vault is the ebook software that I promote on my web site, www.ebook-security.com. I have used it since it was first released in 2004. To the best of my knowledge, it is the most affordable ebook security solution for PDF files.
The major advantages are:
-it's very easy to use and easy to set up
- it works with many of the popular payment processors (PayPal, Clickbank, etc.)
- it's very affordable
- there's no limit to the amount of files you can secure and distribute
- it really works!
The major disadvantage is that it doesn't work on Mac computers.
If you decide to give it a whirl, I'd love to hear how it works out for you!
Thank you for taking the time to post on my blog!
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