EBAY: FREEDOM OF LEECH, NOT FREEDOM OF SPEACH

EBAY is under no legal obligation to question how some slimeball in Poland, Ukraine or Sri Lanka can own the rights to 100 of the top selling books of 2017. "How come you're offering PDF and PUB and MOBI editions of all these books, when they can ONLY be purchased LEGALLY in that form on Amazon which owns Kindle format or Barnes & Noble who owns Nook format?"

That's a question...NEVER asked of an EBAY seller.

HOWEVER, if anyone points out an EBAY crook and questions why that crook is still selling, if anyone points out how stupid their "phone support" personnel can be, if anyone even expresses any displeasure with how EBAY runs their kingdom, they might find themselves unable to post to "the community" anymore:

You see, while "FREEDOM OF SPEECH" applies to most everyone, it doesn't apply to an EBAY user, who has basically signed away all rights in order to use the site. The "fine print" on the USER AGREEMENT basically says that EBAY can do just about anything outside of sticking a fist down your throat and pulling your heart out to transplant to one of their heartless CEO's.

The interesting thing is that while EBAY and their twisted step-sister PAYPAL can technically remove any auction or block any seller or buyer from using their site, they tend to reserve this power. They use it on those who point out when they are wearing no clothes and engaging in naked greed and perversion. This is often one and the same, as when they happily take money from sellers who offer up fake nudes on celebrities. Ripping off authors seems to give them the same sexual thrill as seeing fake gang-rape images of Emma Watson sold in their so-called "adult" section.

The rule on EBAY and PAYPAL is the same as in Nazi Germany. Be polite. Be respectful. If you say or write a word they don't like, then you will jump through hoops, or be ignored, or be shut out, barring intervention from the Better Business Bureau or a lawsuit.

John Lennon once sang that "Woman is the Nigger of the World." One might say that on EBAY, "Authors are the Jews of Ebay Nazis." It doesn't scan, but it's pretty accurate. Authors can come crawling on their knees, DMCA in hand, and say, "Please, please allow me to make a living and not have somebody in Ukraine steal from me." OH, OK. Now file another DMCA when the seller does it a day later. And another.

The seller will, of course, be allowed to rip off any other Jews who either don't know that eBay allows such abuse, or are afraid of being hacked for standing up for their rights, or figure it's a stacked deck and it's 'whack-a-mole.' Or rather, whack-a-Jew.

The Jews in Nazi Germany were effectively banned from writing about their plight. Concentration camps, the Germans officially declared, were actually resorts where Jews enjoyed swimming and tennis. Or something like that. The EBAY community, where complaints are censored, has no idea that EBAY cares so little about copyright, and so often allows parasites and career criminals to flourish at the literal expense of honest people.

"Hey Everybody, Steal Books via EBAY! Fuck the Authors! EBAY IS ON THE SIDE OF THE THIEVES!"

Hooooooray!

It's like gang rape. It's like running wild in a department store during a blackout.

It's...BOOTLEGGING ON EBAY.

There are over a dozen different weasels chewing on this particular book...one of them has made $4,000. Ha ha. You know, some authors NEVER make that much in either the royalty or the advance? Ha ha ha. An illiterate did it in about 30 days:

Woo hoo! Why pay for a download at Amazon? Bozo Bezos doesn't need the money. As for the publishers, they are all fat cats, right? If they cared, they'd send in a DMCA and knock this crap off. Nahhhhh. BARGAINS! BARGAINS!

People want to read about how to END ALZHEIMERS. As for crapathy, that's chronic. Does the author know he's lost over $4,000 in royalties? Does the publisher care? Is eBay asking these parasites for their licensing agreements? Hell, eBay cares so LITTLE that even if a bootlegger flat out says "This is a bootleg, I'll send you a link in less than 12 hours via a Google cloud," they won't stop it. Not right away. Maybe in four or five days. Maybe if you "report item" for several weeks in a row. See, book duping is a VERY LOW PRIORITY on EBAY.

Climate change. Book theft. What, ANYONE worry? Woo Hoo! BARGAIN EBOOKS! WHEEEEEEEE!

IFRRO is SO concerned with...IVORIAN AUTHORS? REALLY? We need the BPPB

TWITTER exposes apathy.

I mean, there are asshole organizations who get grant money, or something, and they want to show that they're doing something. So they TWEET about some utterly useless topic, and NOBODY gives a rat's ass.

Isn't this lovely? It reminds me of an ACTUAL NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE: "Nose Flute Used to Awaken Tongans."

As the late, and now obscure Jack Paar used to say, "I KID YOU NOT."

Somehow the New York Times thought it was important to run a NEWS ITEM about how Tongans are awakened.

Likewise, some group called the IFRRO is making good money running a "full house" seminar for..."authors" who happen to be from the Ivory Coast. Lovely. "Give us a grant, we are doing GOOD work..."

How very fortunate for the IFRRO that IVORIAN AUTHORS have some place to go for a lunch. What CLEAN tablecloths. What a nice way to spend some time away from Boko Haram, Kim Jong-Un, Ebola and little things like Internet piracy.

Good for the IFFRO. But why is this organization narrowly concerned with IVORIAN AUTHORS and not ALL AUTHORS?

The IFFRO Tweeted something or other about copyright. Does this mean that they have concerns BEYOND the world of IVORIAN AUTHORS?? You can't tell from the number of LIKES this one got:

Who are YOU, Michael Healy, and how did you get the attention of the IFFRO, and why is it so meaningless? People seem to have a good time sitting down in front of clean table cloths, don't they? They LOVE having meetings. They LOVE flying to places and having conferences. Meanwhile, some jerk on eBay sells 500 (yes, 500) bootlegs of ONE title at $8 each. YOU do the math.

Why isn't there an RIAA for the book publishing world? There are bootleggers on the Net, and on eBAY, who routinely steal from EVERY book publisher. Just as the major record labels don't always go after a torrent or a forum, but rely on the RIAA, individual authors and publishers should have a BIG GUN to blast away a parasite who abuses everybody.

Where is the BPPB? That's BOOK PUBLISHERS PIRACY BRIGADE? There should be an organization to tell the smug pricks over at eBay, "Suspend this seller. This seller has NO agreement with ANY publisher, and WE SO STATE."

As it is, if a seller is bootlegging 100 authors, and five of them complain, eBay will shrug and say, "Well, the other 95 authors MIGHT have agreements with this Sri Lankan slimeball. We don't know. And we are under NO legal obligation to find out." That's why the BPPB is needed. It's needed to say "On behalf of ALL the major publishers, we don't ASK for, we DEMAND a takedown."

Yeah, IFRRO, how fortunate for you and your IVORIAN authors. It's time for the so-called intelligent and smart authors and publishers to use a few letters of the alphabet in a way that will do a LOT of good. Like, the BPPB. THE BOOK PUBLISEHRS PIRACY BRIGADE.

Ask me to be a part of it, and I'll say YES. Because CRAPATHY stops HERE.

AN EBAY PRICK HAS MADE $400 off Senator Al Franken. EASY MONEY

WHY DOESN"T EBAY GET RID OF THIS PARASITE BOOTLEGGER? WHY IS PAYPAL ALLOWING THIS?

Worse than the Al Franken bootleg job, which is over 50 illegal copies sold, THIS PARASITE has sold over 500 copies of some book titles. THAT'S GRAND LARCENY. Authors are lucky to get $2 profit per book. THIS PRICK gets $8.00 and only has to toss a dollar to co-conspirators EBAY and PAYPAL. Yes, EBAY and PAYPAL aid and abet theft.

They take the big fat Nazi Sct. Schultz approach:"We know nnnnnothing! And we are NOT going to ask."

This auction doesn't say "I am sending you a bootleg." It doesn't say "You will get a download link." It MERELY tells you that you'll get a digital copy of a book that is ONLY available, LEGALLY, from outfits like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. There's NO way over 100 best-sellers have been licensed to this thief.

Is eBay going to contact the thief and ask to see documentation? Hell no. Under the DMCA laws of the land, they are not required to do anything but respond to a copyright owner's complaint. THEN they'll remove the auction and let the seller abuse the other 100 sellers. Meaning, if Al Franken sends a VeRO (verified rights owner) complaint in, they'll say, "OK, Senator, but this doesn't prove that the seller doesn't have permission from the other 100 authors, and WE WON'T ASK.

WHO are some of the other authors?

The new RUTH WARE is out...and BOOTLEGGED by this crud. Authors need to join the VERO program. I'm with VERO. Publishers need to understand how serious EBAY bootlegging is. IT'S SERIOUS. Dozens of copies that could've been SOLD are being STOLE'D. What's the message, Simon and Shyster, that you have money to waste? That tossing $250,000 to Milo was not a freak incident, but an example of a rich fat-cat publisher not being concerned with piracy or morality? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS:

How do you allow DOZENS of bootlegs to interfere with actual sales, when in ONE MINUTE this auction could be stopped?

Where are the bright, professional, AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS to get together and deputize someone to check a list like this, and shut it ALL down on behalf of ALL publishers? The RIAA does it on behalf of ALL record labels. Why are PUBLISHERS being so FUCKING STUPID? WHY?

Yes, ridiculous moronic are the people at BANTAM, DOUBLEDAY, DELL, RANDOM HOUSE, and the other major publishing offices who sit back and let ONE prick steal ALL their books. ONE HUNDRED TITLES at the moment.

What needs to be done, after Al has worked to help good ol' hip Bernie Sanders push a bill through, is to get some senators to draft one that REMOVES THE LOOPHOLE that EBAY and PAYPAL have been using.

When a VERO complaint comes in, that should be the red flag that makes EBAY and PAYPAL request more documentation from the seller on the rest of the items being sold. As in: "You were caught copying Al Franken's book. We have good reason to believe you don't have permission to sell Rowling or Martin or the others. SHOW US YOUR LICENSING."

Allowing a big bullying Internet site like EBAY to prosper at the literal expense of copyright owners is UNACCEPTABLE.

EBAY to PIRATED AUTHORS - "NOT SO FAST" but here's how to SPEED IT UP

If you are an author or a publisher, the BEST thing you can do to stop eBay piracy is REPORT IT.

Do it by DMCA. Become a "VeRO rep" (like me) and then you can take ONE minute to peel off a few auction numbers and send it to the eBay email address for VeRO. For more info start here:

http://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/listing/create-effective-listings/vero-program.html#m17-1-tb2

Basically, you print out and sign a form stating you own copyright or intellectual property. You can do this for yourself or any authors you know. Once it's official that you rep yourself or someone else, you simply email auction numbers when you come across them. Some internet "sheriffs" make a fortune off this. They charge $2 or $5 or more to take that minute to type in EBOOK or PDF on eBay and add a name or a book title.

The other alternative, which is often used by fans, is to click "REPORT ITEM" and scroll to LISTINGS VIOLATION and then DIGITAL DELIVERY. But...some crafty sellers don't blatantly say "I will send you a download link" so eBay does the Sgt. Schultz routine: "We know nnnnnuthing. We see nnnnnuthing."

Worse, sellers who DO explain that this is "digital delivery" or a link is sent by download or email, don't necessarily get stopped right away. Why? I got off the phone with eBay today, and basically, it's a case of priorities. If somebody is selling guns, drugs or used underwear, THAT is the priority. If somebody says in an ad, "I have plenty more stuff, come to my website and leave eBay out of it," THAT is a MAJOR priority.

Spending time knocking off weasels who steal from authors? Meh. Maybe one or two people handle those complaints, and they can get backed up. Or, they might glance at an auction and NOT notice "I will send this by email" in small letters.

I called up today, September 19th, to ask why DANNY boy is still around. He was reported weeks, if not MONTHS ago. He's sold 45 copies of the "Game of Thrones" set and by picking on rich assholes like George R.R. Martin and J.K. Rowling, as well as dead cult figures like J.R.R. Tolkein, DANNY boy has made plenty of beer money.

You think DANNY boy is concerned about failing bookstores or libraries? Or that if somebody is reading all of George R.R. Martin they aren't spending money on other authors? Hell, EBAY doesn't even care that much. They are LOSING money on this crap, too. If somebody gets all of Martin's books, or all of Stephen King (yes, DANNY BOY offers 72 King books for a mere $3) that person isn't spend $5.00 or $10.00 or more, to get the actual books. They come to eBay expecting to buy books, see a cheap download, and go for that instead.

45 copies of THIS title alone (and DANNY boy has many others). All he does is pocket $3.00 every time he sends an email with a link to a Google cloud. Easy money. Lots of beer for DANNY boy.

I pointed out that his ad is BLATANT. The response from eBay? A lot of "we can't comment due to privacy concerns" and a vague allowance that "yes, he's been reported many times. The complaints are being processed." Yes, but if the complaint was that a seller was offering her used underwear for sale, that auction, if reported, would end in 24 hours. Not 24 DAYS.

Again, it's priorities. Copyright? Copy wrong! Too bad, you author. Keep your day job. All you really do is type. Anybody can write a book. All books should be free. If libraries lend books, than everybody should either give them away, or sell them CHEAP. Like DANNY boy...

That ad is blatant. If you don't understand the header about EPUB and MOBI files (which you can ONLY buy legitimately from Barnes and Noble or Amazon, etc.) he's admitting he's sending these digital files via email. Sellers like this should be a priority. Get them OFF the site and send a message that unlike Russia, this country supports COPYRIGHT.

DANNY boy should leave Ireland and go to comfy Russia to play his game, and tally up his endless list of authors he's stealing from:

Yes, DANNY boy will eventually be suspended. This blog will report on it when it happens. In the meantime, he keeps ALL the money. He and his fellow parasites have learned that the consequences for stealing on the Internet are... just about NONE. PAYPAL doesn't refund the money to all the bidders when a guy like this gets suspended. DANNY boy gets no criminal record. He simply doesn't get to sell more bootlegs. Awwwww.

Bottom line: fans of authors should REPORT ITEM and get their friends to do the same. And authors and publishers need to be aware that most people don't know about sneaky torrents and private forums, but they DO know about eBay. When people go to eBay to browse for books to buy, they should NOT see bootleg downloads. VERO stoppage is the fastest way to get the crap OFF eBay. Hopefully in the future, if publishers apply some pressure, any "REPORT ITEM" complaint against piracy will be treated QUICKLY.

SIMON & SCHUSTER - PLAYING GAMES WHILE PIRATES STEAL 'EM BLIND

Here's a TWEET from the intellectual geniuses at Simon and Shuster:

Yes, taking a tip from Emma "Shit for Brains" Watson, who skipped around the underground in London leaving copies of Maya Angelou books around, S&S played a GAME today.

Today, some genius has declared, is "Hide a Book Day." As if anyone can look up from their cellphones to find one.

Ha ha ho ho hee hee. Merrily we leave some books lying around.

Simon and Schuster is run by, what, a bunch of dumb clucks? A bunch of dizzy girls and chorus boys? What's this "On the Town" crap?

This book company already wastes money on paying people to TWEET. They also pay them to romp around "hiding" books? But they don't have anyone sending DMCA's to vero@ebay.com? REALLY?

S&S has some fools TWEET on TWITTER to a following of almost NOBODY, but can't spare an INTERN to type in a new title and add "EBOOK" OR "PDF" or "KINDLE" to find EBAY piracy?

Just for FUN, I took ONE MINUTE and typed in the name of EACH book in that TWEET photo. Guess what. There was an eBay seller who had EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM AS A BOOTLEG. The seller is robbing Simon and Schuster. Also, when people are reading bargain dupe downloads, they aren't in bookstores or libraries.

I could've posted all three books but one will do:

THE LYING GAME. Yeah. WHAT kind of games are the major publishers are playing. HIDE and SUCK?

It's not just Slime and Schuster.

Most book companies do NOT have a "REPORT PIRACY" link on their website.

I've reported links to the few book companies that DO have a "REPORT PIRACY" link, and gee, what a surprise, the eBay items were NEVER stopped.

Too much effort to monitor what's reported? Can't find an Intern to do the job?

As a VERO rep for over 15 years, I can tell you that you do NOT need a lawyer charging $200 an hour to stop bootlegs on eBay. You don't need Digimarc or Web Sheriff or some company that charges so much per takedown that it isn't worth it except to protect the latest titles for a few weeks.

ALL You need is an INTERN. A concerned person. Somebody willing to volunteer. Sending in takedowns is EASY. A person needs a brain, some time, and a signed document faxed to eBay that explains that the copyright owner has authorized the takedowns.

There is absolutely NO downside to this. Pirate scum in Sri Lanka and Croatia don't file countersuits. NOBODY does. The only reason Simon and Schuster's books are being bootlegged (or booklegged) by somebody named DOUBER2 is that they are 2 crapathetic to do a damn thing about it. It's crap. It's apathy. It's pathetic. It's CRAPATHETIC.

Simon and Schuster is sending a message: WE ARE RICH. WE ARE FILTHY RICH. WE HIRE PEOPLE TO PRANCE AROUND PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK WITH FREE BOOKS, INSTEAD OF HAVING SOMEBODY TAKE DOWN PIRACY.

Simon and Schuster, you'll recall, sent another message not too long ago:

WE ARE RICH. WE ARE FILTHY RICH. WE ARE GIVING A QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS TO A GAY PROVOCATEUR ASSHOLE: Milo Yiannopoulos. He's Piers Morgan if Piers Morgan had no testosterone and a fetish for pretending to be Ellen Degeneres:

To use a Piers Morgan catch-phrase, "IF I'M BEING HONEST..." I wouldn't give a damn if S&S published that guy's book and it was bootlegged all over the Internet. What I DO care about, is that bookstores and libraries are collapsing due to crapathy. I care that back-catalog authors are suffering, and that authors, never exactly well paid, are getting less advance money than ever.

Only a few "best seller" authors of purple prose, hack fiction, and "the same book I wrote I've written again as part of the series" make any money now. Non-fiction authors get nothing unless it's a celebrity writing a tell-all.

This is the BOOK industry, which is supposedly not run by the same drug addicts, jackasses and pinheads that have run the MUSIC industry into the ground and bankrupted almost every record store. Record companies thought that as long as Jay-Z and Mick Jagger sold a lot of copies, everything was all right? Obviously NOT. And like the Yankees buying a few players for $10 million and having no farm system, the record stores ignored new talent, didn't put their publicity machine behind deserving young artists, and the result is almost nobody rising above a few hundred streams on Spotify.

Bookstore owners, libraries and mid-catalog authors are all being hurt.

EBAY, where people go to get a good price on new books and used books, shouldn't be the place to get sidetracked by cheap download bastards.

Stephen King today Tweeted about how sick it is...that Trump Tweeted somebody's animated gif showing him knocking a golf ball into Hillary Clinton's back and knocking her down. He didn't Tweet about how sick it is that his books are being offered for low-ball prices on eBay. Stephen, a guy in Ireland offering 72 of your books for $3 as a download from a Google cloud. YOU and your publisher haven't stepped in. THAT is SICK.

George R.R. Martin - REALITY, WHAT A CONCEPT -- better to play with Toys and glom Topless Girls

We all know Bad Santa, aka George R.R. Martin.

He's a hero among pimply dweebs because they both dream about topless teenage girls (HBO's "Game of Thrones" has to include one in every episode). As the series progressed, things got more perverted, like the sado-masochsitic moment a nude woman was marched through a village...

Apparently HBO's series has prospered so well because nerds haven't the imagination to read about topless girls and visualize them. Or George is a shitty writer and can't paint the word-pictures.

George, like his books, is big and thick. On Twitter, he diddles while England burns.

There are some British people right now in burn wards. Why? Because some Muslim lunatic believes Allah likes the sight of disfigured White Christian faces. Because one religion has a disproportionate number of crazed followers who live in a fantasy world even more demented than "Game of Thrones."

Here are the last two Tweets from Georgie. One is September 13 and the other September 16. One is a pose with a Koala bear (no mention of the fact that they are endangered in Australia due to urban sprawl...that would be REALITY). The other is another of his fabulous fotos of his TOY collection (no mention of the attack on the tube station that sent dozens of innocent people to the hospital).

What's going on with this corpulent clown? It seems that the best way for him to continue writing his drivel, is to have no clue about reality, and never read a newspaper.

You can't argue with success, can you? He's reaching people just as clueless, who turn their backs on the real world and retreat into a fantasy where good and evil don't have nuclear weapons and don't set off explosions at Ariana Grande shows or tube stations. It's a world where pretty girls just a few years older than Jimmy Savile might like, wander around topless just to make sure HBO ratings stay erect.

Over here, the main objection is that neither George RR Martin, nor his smug moronic publishing cartel (Penguin Doubleday Dell Random House, etc. etc.) care about the piracy that hurts bookstores and libraries, neither of whom can survive only by selling THRONES books.

Just type in GAME OF THRONES and ebook or PDF or KINDLE and you get plenty of abuse which George and his publisher COULD stop in five minutes, but instead ignore.

OK, George would rather TWEET than DMCA. But he'd also rather TWEET about his toy collection than say something about the London attack? What do you call THAT?

.

How EBAY Cheats Authors and Steals Their Royalties : "We're SO Busy!"

Ebay actually has a rule against "digital delivery."

They seem to understand that being "just a venue" is not an excuse to allow bootlegging. If someone happens to notice an obvious book bootleg, all that's needed is to click the "report item" link, scroll around a few times to REPORT CATEGORY (listing practices) and under LISTING PRACTICES hit (digital delivery) and eBay gets the message.

Or do they?

Here's a rabid wombat who has sold 88 BOOTLEG copies of a Dale Carnegie book. That's money Dale's publisher will never see.

The ad copy is blatant about what this is. A DOWNLOAD that the happy winning bidder gets through a direct attachment or via a Google cloud download.

At the bottom of the ad, the thief has the gall to add, "Attention eBay, I am an authorised re-seller..." blah blah blah.

"REPORT ITEM" and, unfortunately, about a third of the time NOTHING HAPPENS.

Literally CALL THEM ON IT, and a sing-song voice from somewhere in the Far East explains, "Oh, we have MILLIONS of items on eBay, and it's just not possible to always respond."

Ebay is one of the biggest success stories on the Internet. They make a fortune. They just don't want to SPEND too much of it on removing auctions. They're claiming they simply have a limited number of employees, and if there's a high volume of complaints...TOO BAD.

The GOOD news? Ebay's negligence pays off for them. In this case, they got about 50 cents on each illegal download. And that's 88 of them. That can buy you a very nice lunch...on Dale's publisher.

Now realize THIS particular wombat has 20 or 40 other auctions going, and we're getting into petty larceny. Add that a seller like this often has several identities, and it becomes grand larceny.

Ebay's answer is, "try reporting the auction again."

Oh. One more thing. Ebay does not allow anyone to report an auction more than once. If you do, the request goes to the bottom of the queue. So you have to wait till the auction ends. If the seller is doing a 30 day auction with 10 copies available...well, TOO BAD.