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Plagiarism, Piracy, And The Dark Net

Readers and Writers alike tend to have strong opinions on the topic of piracy. If we're not careful, we'll spiral into a useless rage debate. I'm going to withhold my personal opinions until the end of this chapter. Instead of trying to change your mind (whichever side you're on), I am interested in clearing up some common misconceptions about online book theft.

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Plagiarism

A plagiarist is probably the worst type of book thief. This is a criminal who steals intellectual property and takes credit for it, as well as profiting off it. They cause legal headaches for authors.

A few years ago, there was a scare going around Wattpad when some popular works were found plagiarized on Amazon, being sold under false author names. In other words, someone ripped the text of their books from Wattpad, chapter by chapter, and then reformatted those chapters into an ebook file format. The plagiarist created fake author profiles on Amazon, slapped together new covers, and then sold other people's stolen books in order to make a quick buck.

Reprehensible.

But is there a foolproof way to stop it from happening?

A lot of people seem to share a delusion that there must be some elusive cyber security measure that can stop a determined thief.

Look. Citibank, Equifax, JP Morgan, and the United States Internal Revenue Service have all been successfully hacked and stolen from, within the last few years. Cyber security is a multibillion dollar industry, yet thieves are constantly innovating. Listen to a few episodes of the podcast Darknet Diaries, and you'll get a sense of what's going on in the world of hacking for theft and profit.

Wattpad, like any tech company, has incentives to take security seriously. They made straightforward copy/paste operations impossible; a bare minimum measure that I'm sure all authors appreciate. But anyone who is computer savvy can tell you that words are easier to steal than money. Places such as Wattpad, DeviantArt, and other portfolio or fiction sites are wonderful, but the downside is that they look like giant piggy-banks full of intellectual property to some types of thieves. It is inevitable that these sites will be targeted. The more popular a site is, the more targeted it is.

That doesn't mean that you, as an author, are guaranteed to become a victim of plagiarism. If your online books are popular enough to be a target of intellectual property theft—or if you think they're at risk of that—you can take one or more of these precautions:

     1) Insert a paragraph of security text in random places of the online version of your novels. Something like: "This paragraph only exists in the online serialized edition. If you see this in an eReader edition, then this is stolen intellectual property. Please report it to the true author [contact/name]."

     2) Register your books with the Copyright Office of your country.

     3) Only post partial segments of your novels online.

None of these measures is 100% foolproof. But remember, a plagiarist is interested in profiting off popular works, not in reading books. They're unlikely to find and delete the security text before they upload and sell the stolen book. Also, Amazon is generally known to respond to cease-and-desist takedown notices from authors.

As with any career or dream, one takes risks. For me, the benefits of serializing on a platform with millions of readers outweighs the danger of getting plagiarized. I hope I never have cause to change my mind about that. 

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The Dark Net, as it relates to books

If you do a casual internet search for a specific book + torrent, you will stumble across phishing scams and sketchy sites full of malware. These sketchy, scammy sites supposedly offer a selection of ebooks or audiobooks. They're trying to collect your money, or your credit card information, or else they want to use your computer for nefarious purposes.

Many of these low quality "free ebook" or "free audiobook" sites will also throw in some classics and some bestsellers, just to add a veneer of legitimacy, which sweetens the bait. They might lazily mirror a legit retailer or app. Some publishers and authors have learned to combat this type of piracy by uploading fake PDFs of their books.

There is a separate strata of usenet groups and sites which are hidden from web browsers. Some of these sites might be funded by scams or shell corporations, while others are funded by hacker organizations. Sites like these are known, collectively, as the dark net. Users of the dark net might get their hands on legit copies of ebooks or audiobooks. However, they tend to be a niche demographic; they are unlikely to be seeking your book in particular. 

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Piracy happens. You might wonder what motivates someone to pirate ebooks or audiobooks rather than going to a library or making a purchase. A book thief can be anyone: a student, a corporate executive, a mom, a retiree. Here are some common motives:

     1) They habitually seek free entertainment.

     2) They truly believe in the slogan "information wants to be free."

     3) They're heavy readers, but they're on a tight budget or they lack an allowance. Maybe they live in an area without a library, or they crave obscure fiction which is unavailable at their local library.

     4) They live in a country where the cost of an ebook is equivalent to a week's wages.

     5) They live in a country where Amazon and other online retailers are unavailable, heavily curated, or banned/illegal.

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Personal opinion time.

Widespread piracy presents a problem for creators. It's unfair. We should be paid for our work.

However, I think that argument lacks context or nuance. It should be reexamined from a macroeconomic perspective.

Why does a basketball star get paid millions, whereas an EMT worker (Emergency Medical Technician) gets paid a low wage? Is that fair? Does the sports star deserve more money than the caregiver who saves people's lives on a regular basis? This is a classic example of unfairness with no easy way to "fix" it, because the reasons behind the difference in salaries are varied and complex.

Here's a more relevant example: Why does an indie author get paid 70% royalties by distributing their ebooks through Amazon, whereas an indie filmmaker gets zero royalties by distributing their episodes through YouTube? Is that fair? I don't think so. Yet there are indie filmmakers giving away entire seasons of their shows for free on YouTube.

There are indie musicians vying for listeners on SoundCloud by giving their songs away for free. There are indie artists creating web comics which they update every week, for free. What do you think drives those creators to give away so much of their hard work?

Twenty years ago, indie authors were in the same boat as indie filmmakers and indie artists are today.

A new market opened up and everything changed.

Those changes are both good and bad. Indie authors can now earn the equivalent of a full-time salary without needing to pay for a supportive infrastructure of agents, designers, publicists, retail intermediaries, and so forth. But ... well, yeah. There's a lot of us. Visibility is a hurdle. Successful indie authors spend a huge chunk of their budget on advertising.

Voracious readers who pirate are rare birds. Not only are they rare, but I'm sure many of them are members of book clubs, and/or they write book reviews. As I mentioned above, some of them have limited access to libraries or bookstores. They are still voracious readers, and they talk about books—a lot. They're likely active on social media, or in reader circles.

So personally, I don't see book pirates as an existential threat to authors. I think the loss of a few cents in terms of weekly profit is worth the potential of word-of-mouth gain. A few dollars is less than what most full-time indie authors spend on weekly advertising. 

I know this is a controversial opinion. Good thing I didn't post it on Facebook. Have at me in the comments! I am all for reexamining my arguments.