Sunday, June 27, 2010

If Microsoft and Cisco can take down pirate sites, why can't RWA

Not just RWA. If RWA, SFWA, Authors' Guild and others would work together, we would make better progress.


"Dear Scott Turow, Allison Kelley, John Scalzi,

Thank you very much for everything your organizations do to defend authors' copyrights against copyright infringement. We very much appreciate having an address to which to send our complaints, and the comfort of knowing that you compile a database of the most egregious "pirates" and pirate sites.

Despite small triumphs, ignorance persists among honest readers; lies about the legality of "sharing" go unchallenged, and the problem is getting much worse.

Please Scott Turow, Allison Kelley, John Scalzi will you talk to one another, set up one powerhouse task force, meet regularly, share resources, engage your members, give authors one central "Go To" address where we can submit complaints, report piracy sites, blogs and yahoogroups, cc our individual take-down notices.

One forceful industry voice could shut down an entire account and insist on a hosting site complying with their own TOS where their TOS has been repeatedly violated, instead of individual authors taking down one file at a time.

Thank you.

Rowena Cherry"