DMCA::The Quandary, The Decision, The Weirdness of the whole concept.

DMCA::The Quandary, The Decision, The Weirdness of the whole concept.

---------I posted the first part of this elsewhere----------------------------
Periodically I search the web for anything Cripple-Mode and I'm always giddy to find things new pointing to my work.

I found this.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/100695125/J-L-Dobias-Cripple-Mode
-Hot-Electric(as of this writing the link had been deactivated.)

The person who posted this shared it on their twitter account with a link to the document.


It may be the book equivalent of certain music free sites.

Now I --am-- offering a special edition of this e-book on SmashWords so it's not like this is stealing business. (this is not that edition and I'm not sure if he made his own. If so he used the wrong cover and the full rights to that one don't belong to me.)
I don't know this person, yet. Looks to be my biggest fan.
I'm on the fence as to how to treat this. A major upset is that on SmashWords I can keep track of how many people download my book. (ie: I have the illusion of control.)

Hopefully other authors already are watching this site and others.

J.L.Dobias author and copyright holder of Cripple-Mode: Hot Electric.

---------------Since that time.------------------------------

Anyway I decided I can't sit on my hands so I filled out their DMCA required document and submitted it with a mostly polite request to take it down.

Within an hour it went down- to all appearances anyway. They submitted that the pertinent information is now in their copyright or copyleft filter database so this should not occur again.

I have no idea what happens to the poster though I did ask them to go gently as I have no intention of pursuing anything in that direction myself. This type of site is what I would term an attractive nuisance.

My decision was motivated mostly by the notion that no action sends the wrong message and there are other authors out there having this same problem and possibly some who have yet to discover it. And though there is a possibility there were a hundred some people who read my book from there I have no way of knowing how many read it and how many just took a quick look.

The bottom line is I did not expect this to happen the first year with my first novel.