Pirates on LJ

Today is a day when I would love to be in command of a hundred gun line of battle warship.  Why is it that on LJ, a site that will take down fanfiction communities without warning because they might contain adult content, a site like x_arigatou_x is allowed to continue to operate?  This is a pirate site, sharing illegal downloads of novels and manga it’s taken struggling, small press authors years to write.

This is not victimless ‘sharing’ of stuff that nobody will miss. This is stealing of an author’s life’s work and giving them nothing in return.  Here’s a post from Kirby Crow, who’s just found all her novels on the community

http://kirby-crow.livejournal.com/286094.html

Saying basically that she is going to stop writing ebooks at all because of this.  Small press authors are not making millions – we’re lucky if we make $1,000 a year out of a single novel. So 3000 members of a community downloading the novel for free is like watching three years of work go down the drain. Many of us who are supporting ourselves through writing simply won’t be able to afford to do it any more if people like the members of this community steal our stuff.

And the worst thing is that the maintainers of that community have answered her request to take the book down by telling her that there is nothing she can do to stop them, and uploading all her other books too!  When is LJ going to put a stop to what is clearly a community dedicated to doing something completely illegal?

I’ve tried to report the community, but the rules say that only the copyright holder can do so.  If you are a writer of ebooks or manga, it might be worth joining the community under an assumed name and checking to see if they have your books too.  If all the copyright holders of their material get together and file complaints we might yet be able to blow them out of the water.

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