I’m a big believer in sharing information: for example, over the last five years I’ve written 400+ posts that are available on this site for free. I’ve found countless solutions to my own questions on other people’s blogs, also for free. However, I think that there’s a place for copyrighted work too; when applied correctly, copyrights allow authors and content creators to earn a living, and to keep on writing and creating because of the income that their copyrighted work generates.
File-sharing sites like Scribd and Slideshare (and others; I’m just using these as examples because I’ve found my copyrighted work on them…) have a complicated relationship with copyright law. In one sense, these types of sites are a great way to get your own work out there: put up an interesting presentation, and tons of people might find it. It might go viral, and you might get a book deal out of it. But, at least in my experience, these sites do essentially nothing to prevent people from posting other people’s copyrighted work.
Case in point: this morning I got an e-mail from a kind colleague who let me know that someone had posted one of my books on Slideshare. Yep, there it was, including my copyright notice, which appears on the first page of the book. To Slideshare’s credit, they immediately removed the book when I notified them, but presumably they’re not planning to reimburse me for the 1,333 times that the book had already been viewed. A few years ago, someone posted one of my books on Scribd with similar results: it was taken down after someone alerted me, but it had already been viewed over a thousand times.
A few thoughts here:
- I see that these types of sites have legitimate uses. But it disturbs me that they cannot take the minimal amount of time it would require to prevent these very flagrant copyright violations. Posting someone else’s entire book isn’t a grey area: my copyright notice was on the first page of the file on Slideshare.
- It disturbs me that translators would do this to each other: I know the username of the person who posted my book, and it’s a translator.
- Violating someone’s copyright is stealing. That’s all there is to it. Especially when you post an independent author’s book, you are not taking money from a huge corporation, you are taking money from an individual who buys groceries and pays the mortgage with that money. It’s not the new media model: it’s theft.
- If you want free information, there is lots of it out there. Go crazy with it. If you find works that are licensed under terms such as the GNU GPL, you can even sell them, as long as you license them under the original terms. But don’t steal copyrighted stuff and think that you’re doing something noble by posting it online for free. If the author wanted their book to be freely available, they wouldn’t have to look hard for a way to make it happen.
Just for fun (!), let’s put some numbers on this situation. The retail value of 1,333 copies of my book is $26,646; certainly a decent chunk of money by anyone’s standards. But of course I don’t earn the retail value in royalties, nor would all of those 1,333 people have actually bought a legitimate copy of the book. My royalties amount to between $3.50 and $10.00 per copy, depending on where the person buys the book. And let’s say that only 10% of those people would have actually purchased the book, so I would have sold 133 copies. If we take an average royalty of $5.00 per copy, that’s $665. So, dear copyright infringer, if you’re reading this and you want to make things right, I’d say that an appropriate restitution would be approximately that amount. And Slideshare, if you want to make things right, start at least minimally vetting the uploads on your site for copyright violations.
You have my 100% support and agreement Corinne.
Appalling and shameful! Have you contacted the translator who put it there? At least to let them know you know who they are. Is there anything else you can do?
One of my family members wrote a book (400 pages) on a technical subject, and I found it on Scribd. When he contacted them about it, they initially didn’t want to take it down, because he was only the author, and they said the copyright that had been infringed belonged to the publisher. Technically true, but unhelpful! Scribd did take the book down after less than 4 weeks from first notification, but it was a technical book in a series from a well-known publisher – surely their vetting procedures should have found it?
Duncan
I’m not a legal expert, but regarding the reimbursement: This would have to come from the translator who uploaded the file, not from the website where it was uploaded to. I know, that’s still a bit of a grey area and heavily debated, but if you know the translator’s name, the case is black-and-white. Even if you don’t want to go for it, you could (and should) at least send a formal first-strike warning to that person. Make them aware of the consequences! You don’t get that chance very often because most of the time it happens anonymously. So, if you get the chance, seize it!
Thanks for raising this issue, Corinne.
Might I suggest that you send the link to this blogpost to the translator who so cluelessly violated your copyright?
No cover message necessary except for a simple “I’m glad you liked my [book]; did you know it was copyright?”
I use that msg occasionally when translation agencies (and sometimes translators, too) cut & paste pages from of a set of client brochures I’ve written onto their websites — essentially they are using text that was created for bona fide translator associations to educate clients *as their own private website copy*.
Offenders’ reaction is always edifying: if a flustered apology (“Sooo sorry, didn’t realize that was your text; I’ve taken it down!”) we move on. If the response is blustering (“Why should I believe you? Who says it’s your text?” things get a little heavier. [I usually respond: well, the copyright notice on the inside back page, for example?].
To sum up: reminders of copyright issues can awaken the devious or simply clueless.
From now on, I think I’ll include a link to your blogpost with my little hey-there-we-‘ve-got-a-problem-here notice, should the occasion rise. Thanks!
Duncan, is the series you are referring to published by O’Reilly? It seems that their books are widely pirated.
My impression of websites like Scribd (a more appropriate name might be STOLN or CRIBD!) is that their whole business model actually depends on people uploading copyrighted stuff and having (other) people pay a subscription fee to regularly skim off lots of “free” stuff.
And it works for everyone except the rights holder because the other three parties can justify it: the uploader says “I paid for this originally” or “I’m not using this at all, not even peeking”; the downloader says “Hey, I’m paying for this”; and the hosting site says “What, piracy? Shocking, we promise to take down any copyrighted material”.
So I think things will only change when the hosting site has to bear at least some liability. Having servers in other countries doesn’t make things easier to regulate. The “Kim Dotcom” story is a case in point – he made incredible amounts of money hosting “backups” of videos and music, and now I hear he’s even getting his data media back by order of the court.
Sorry to hear that, Corinne!
Unfortunately, these sites should be more careful as regards copyrighted material and, of course, should apply stricter rules, such us penalizing anyone who shares this kind of material. Obviously, they simply don’t care because, as wyrdsmyth says, their business model is not based on taking care of authors’ copyrighted work, but on users sharing information through their sites.
As Chris and Alina suggest, you should contact the translator to let him/her know about their inappropriate action.
Hello, I`m an American currently living in Colorado, but I have been living in Brazil for the last 10 years teaching English as a 2nd language. I am fluent in Portugese and my wife, Brazilian, is fluent in English. We make a great team for translations. I am not the greatest with internet where I have been trying to find how we can get employment as translators without success. Can you help me? Thanks, Steve Ward
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Welcome to Colorado! The Colorado Translators Association (www.cta-web.org) is a great resource in the area!
I looked up for your book on Slideshare and fortunately it seems to be gone for now. I hope you contacted the translator who had uploaded it and had a little talk about it.
File-sharing websites usually take action as long as possible, they probably know they would lose large amounts of their traffic if they didn’t allow any protected contents to be uploaded…
@ Anthony presumably in your first line you meant UNfortunately?!?! Otherwise I shall be obliged to send my seconds to challenge you to a duel for such dastardly impoliteness to a member of the fair sex!!
I think it’s amazing that anyone could intentionally violate copyrights like that so easily at thes places. And they don’t even catch on to it themselves but have to have these violations pointed out to them? Pretty lame. Makes you wonder about all the other violations people in your position never even find out about. I’d like to think that people used to be more honest but that probably wasn’t so. They certainly aren’t very honest now.
Sorry to hear that Corinne! These petty problems seem to exist everywhere intellectual property exists. I had someone copy my whole website design and even part of the text not very long ago and they just adapted it to their language. Luckily they removed it when I confronted them. I wrote a blog post about it too and there are some links to how you can check if someone is stealing your content: http://www.swedishtranslationservices.com/plagiarism-freelance-translation-business-2/
Hello, another Corinne getting ripped. I spell mine Corrine, and I ahve been facing an onslaught of copyright abuse and by companies and people who should know better 🙁 very discouraging. Just check out my hall of shame and what I discovered in one month, it had my head spinning.
An interesting and important issue, dear Corinne, and thanks for raising it. I think I also found your book on some Russian site last year, remember? I told you, but I am not sure it was removed. Was appalled me about this the most is the following. I found out about this copyright violation of your work from one of my translation students sent a message to all the other students saying something along the lines of: “Look! Free book!” I had to very sternly remind everyone that this was copyrighted material that happens to have been written by a fabulous and lovely person in the industry who is also one of my fantastic friends. I had recommended your book for this class, and there fellow translators-to-be steal it. Not a good thing! Of course, I have no way of checking if anyone kept the book (told them to delete it), but I hope they understood the message loud and clear: this is theft, clear and simple.
So yes, I am all for respecting copyrights, and certainly get quite upset when our book gets pirated as well! This is not that hard: if it’s copyrighted, you must pay for it before you can have it. It’s not free. Why would it be?
Argh, I meant –>WHAT appalled me the most… sorry.
Consider putting a highly visible note in any published work to the effect of “if you happen to have received this publication without paying for it, do consider making an appropriate donation to (me) at ___ “
Ah, an interesting idea, Richard!
Since Corinne’s original post, I’ve also been pondering solutions. And last month, when I found myself in the same room as an up-and-coming publisher of ebooks, I suggested that he and his company offer authors an extra service — a built in, once-a-month sweep of the web to identify copyright abusers of their clients’ work + demand that these guys *take it down*. He opined that it was not only possible but also relatively easy to integrate into their service offering. Now to see if it actually happens.
Here’s another take on copyright abuse, this time by Dan Ariely at http://danariely.com/2012/11/03/how-to-stop-illegal-downloads/
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