Hope For A Copyright Small Claims Court

According to the Authors Guild, it costs approximately $150,000 for a copyright owner to take a copyright infringer to court.

As I pointed out in a recent post, as long as Copyright law on the internet provides that, if a Takedown notice is ignored, or if a counter-notice (even a bogus one, or a misinformed one) is filed in response to a takedown notice, the copyright infringing work will stay up and continue to make money for the pirate and the pirate's hosts for ever, unless the author can spare $150,000 to pursue a lawsuit.

The Authors Guild reports that a Congressman in Washington has promised to introduce a bill, perhaps to set up a small copyright claims court.

Read more on https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-hits-the-capitol/

In other copyright infringement news, my novella ebook Mating Net apparently remains illegally available--ignoring multiple Takedown notices from me-- on Mobilism.org and the alleged copyright infringer from Ontario, KellyKing29 has now apparently uploaded over 20,000 copyrighted ebooks to the site.

Of course, it could all be ransomeware!

A quick visit to the page http://booksmobile.org/viewtopic.php?f=1292&t=719315  will show you how "AdChoices" makes copyright infringement profitable for Mobilism and its users, displaying pitches from Sterling Heights Dodge Jeep  also Parkway Chrysler Dodge (astounding how Google knows what is close to my IP location, but cannot distinguish a pirate site by its content and traffic!)

Another pirate site newly on my radar is Memoirbook.top  http://memoirbook.top . This site has an interesting blurb on any page stating that their tactics will make publishers sad.  They appear to post book titles, but mix up the authors' names, so for instance, I might find that one of my titles has been authored by Daphne Du Maurier (but the cover art shows that it's my book by me).  You might find that you've downloaded ransomeware if you try to download an ebook.

Authors should know that the law does not require you to download potential ransomeware in order to have a good faith belief that your copyright has been infringed.


All the best,
Rowena Cherry