An Illinois judge recently ruled that a file sharer had to pay $1.5 million to an adult entertainment company for illegally sharing adult movies. The file sharer had been charged with illegally sharing 10 -- that's right just 10 -- adult movies.
My God! Illegal file sharers have dozens of links to my ebooks in English and French and even to one of my audiobooks that they've made available.
Come on, Justice Department! How about giving us poor authors some respect and redress by going after those who offer illegal downloads of our ebooks! I could pay my mortgage every month if I had a sale instead of an illegal download being offered. Thankfully, since I retained MUSO to act on my behalf, I'm seeing less of these illegally shared files.
Hopeful Sign Of The Times
Still, I'm glad to see that some action is being taken against those who illegally profit this way. I'm seeing more and more of this.In fact, if you plug this search string into a browser: legal action against illegal file sharers, you can read about some of the action being taken by trade organizations.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade organization that represents recording industry distributors, has taken an active role in taking illegal downloaders to court, and they win hefty settlements. If only we could see this where books are concerned.
Why People Illegally Download Or Share Files
Why do people do this? Would they steal a Hostess Twinkie from a convenience store? Yet, the price of many ebooks that are illegally shared is less than a Twinkie. Would they steal a paperback book from WalMart?
Yet, many of these people who would loudly proclaim that, no, they wouldn't do that, are the very same people who illegally download books, music, movies, and whatever else they can get their mouse to click on.
My contacts at MUSO, a company that acts as your representative to send Takedown Notices to these, ahem, people, say that many people who illegally download "free" files usually get more than they bargain for -- viruses, trojans, malware, and nasty worms that can destroy their computers.
Good. Perhaps there is justice.
Takeaway Truth
Don't illegally download. Ebooks are dirt cheap. Music is cheap. So are movies. Sign up for a service like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime. Watch as many movies as you want for a low price per month. Tend to your karma. Live on the side of the angels. Be honest. Enable artists, like me and my friends, to make a living.
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