Book coverted to E-book without permission

[Lumberjack]

I came across this today. It is my book. https://mocalra.cf/blogs/downloader-di- ... 58313.html This appears to be a Norwegian company who has converted it to an e-book and is giving it away (provided one registers with them, presumably for a payment). The printed version sold out long ago, but I am still selling it as an E-book in PDF for Acrobat Reader. Can I do anything about this. without risking high legal costs? - I am in the UK -

[Lumberjack]

I have just discovered that the fees to join the site for "Free" downloads is either £7.25 per month, or £87 per year!

[AndyJ]

Hi LJ (or should I call you Robert from now on?),

Sorry to hear that. Under what terms did you publish your book, both in paper and ebook format? Was it perfectly clear that it was issued subject to copyright.

Irrespective of whether there was a clear copyright statement (it's not mandatory), you should contact the publishers and the Italian website and ask them to cease selling or offering their ebook version immediately as they are infringing your copyright. Although Norway is not a member of the EU, it is part of the European Economic Area and so must apply EU copyright law. Therefore you have the ability to make a claim in any EU country where the infringing work is made available (ie all of them, thanks to the internet), meaning that you could start a claim in the UK if necessary, even though this particular edition appears to be in Italian and therefore targetted at the Italian market. So you can certainly threaten the publishers with legal action, although I doubt if that will be necessary. Do some research on the company and see if you can discover how big their operation is. This should provide you with a guide as to the likelihood that they will settle without a fight. Then decide how you want to proceed. Do you want damages or do you want to negotiate a publishing deal whereby you receive royalties for all past and future sales of their version? The latter may prove more lucrative than the former, over time.

On that page you linked to, they appear to be selling the paper back book at 22, 66 € (roughly £19.95). Could they have obtained copies from your publishers, perhaps remaindered copies? They don't indicate that they are offering second hand copies. This part of the operation would only be legitimate if these were copies of the original book. However the fact that this appears to be an Italian language version indicates they are offering a re-print, that is to say, using the ebook version, suitably translated, to do print-on-demand hard copies. Obviously the latter would infringe your right to authorise publication.

Who were the publishers of your original hard copy book? They will be interested in this as they still have rights in the typographical layout of the first edition (see section 8 CDPA).

Depending on the value of any claim, it may be worth getting proper legal advice on this. That might cost you a couple of hundred pounds - not sure if that would constitute 'high legal costs'!

[AndyJ]

Hi LJ,

I've just done an ISBN lookup and discovered that your publishers were Shelterdeck. Is this your own imprint, as I can't find anything about them online?

[Lumberjack]

Hi Andy,
Thanks for full reply. Yes, I am Shelterdeck Publishing. I prepare the books myself, fully formatted on my home PC and then convert it to PDF, also on my PC. I send the complete files via We Transfer to the printers, and they print as many as I want, and deliver them to me, and I market them myself. Usually via Ebay, my blog, or various websites. But that book did extremely well and has been reprinted a number of times, and has an ISBN number. I did sell quite a number of them to a book seller, and one lot got lost being shipped overseas (by the bookseller), that is the only place I can think of where there are a large number of them. The e-book version that I continue to sell are the original PDF files that sell via Payhip. I have been with Payhip for a number of years, and they have always played fair and square with me for 38 different e-books. They were only published in English, the flyleaf is labelled Copyright 2014, together with my e-mail address. I took most of the 218 images, and the small number (less than 10) wre taken by others, I had obtained written permission from them and credited in the book. I didn't realise they were offering printed versions for £19.95, but the orignals were £13.99. I will look further into it as you suggest.
Many thanks
Robert

[Lumberjack]

Hi Andy,
I am getting more confused than ever now. It is on a number of other sites as well, this time in French. It has also picked up another ISBN number from somehwhere. They are both shown as:
Paperback: 154 pages
Publisher: Shelterdeck Publishing (28 Jan. 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0957158319
ISBN-13: 978-0957158313

The second one (ISBN-13) is the one I allocated to it, so I have no idea where the first one came from. Some other site is advertsing the printed version for over £1,000 a copy, so the whole thing is now getting beyond my comprehension
Robert

[Lumberjack]

It is unlikely I would get anywhere with this. I contacted them via their website, but got no reply. I eventually traced them to the Central African Republic! They do have a take-down DMCA form - but not worth getting involved!
Robert

[AndyJ]

Hi Robert,

The end user may well be in the Central African Republic, but the administrator for the TLD is in the Netherlands, so at least you may be able to get the page containing the details of your book taken down. The Whois lookup details are:

MOCALRA.CF

Organisation:
Centrafrique TLD B.V.
Dot CF administrator
P.O. Box 11774
1001 GT Amsterdam
Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 5315725
Fax: +31 20 5315721
E-mail: abuse: abuse@freenom.com, copyright infringement: copyright@freenom.com

There is a notice about copyright abuse:

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
If you want to report a case of copyright infringement, please send an email to copyright@freenom.com, and include the full name and address of your organization. Within 5 business days copyright infringement notices will be investigated.

Is this where you sent your email? Since there is a phone number, that might be worth a try. But ultimately, as you say, this may involve too much hassle, and it certainly won't get you much closer to any damages.

The only other thing I can suggest is reporting this to the IP Crime Unit run by the City of London Police, if only so that you have the satisfaction of knowing this operation is on their radar. I very much doubt if anything like a prosecution will follow, but it helps build up the bigger picture.

[Lumberjack]

Hi Andy,
Thanks for info. I hadn't got that e-mail, but sent it via their contact form. If anyone looks up the book on Google, they will find that my download version is actually cheaper than what they are offering, so I don't suppose it will affect sales. The printed version was reprinted numerous times before it petered out, but the e-book at half the price, continues to trickle out.
Thanks for
advice
Robert