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Therefore, if you see a Wattpad user posting ebooks that you know they did not write themselves, privately tell as many of the copyright owners (authors) as you can. Also tell them that Wattpad responds promptly and appropriately.
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I contacted Wattpad as I felt they may be inviting piracy and I wanted to know what they did to help prevent it. I also wanted to get a sense of whether they truly valued what authors do and that copyrights must be protected.
Below you'll find my email and their reply, which I have been given permission to share with those against piracy.
Cheryl wrote:
Hello, I am an author concerned with book (especially ebook) piracy. I belong to a couple of anti-piracy groups and we've seen other sites similar to yours fall into the category of becoming an illegal file-sharing site. Already, reports have come back to us that copyright protected material has been discovered on your site. This is a big concern to many authors.
I applaud you for mentioning the copyright issue in your Terms of Service and Content Guidelines page, but I believe you're going to need more than that. I would recommend you include a notice on all upload pages, perhaps even have the member click and "swear" that they OWN the copyright. Members need to be reminded of this constantly, especially young members who don't understand copyright laws.
Many people think that if they bought the book through legal channels, they own the right to distribute it and make copies.
One of my goals is to try to educate people about copyright laws and to discourage piracy. This is the goal of the groups I belong to as well.
My other suggestion is that you blog about this issue. Make sure your members understand they can submit their OWN writing, not someone else's. In fact, this should be clearly stated on every page a member sees during the upload process.
The authors against piracy and I will be monitoring websites like yours over the next few months. We'll be issuing take-down notices where applicable and be calling for members' accounts to be suspended. This is something else you could do to help prevent piracy; clearly state that suspension from the site and deletion of a member's works is the result if they're found to be in violation of copyright laws.
By you taking positive actions against piracy, you not only show your support against book piracy and support for the value of authors' works, you will help us to educate people and make their reading experience a pleasure and not one wrapped up in legalities or lawsuits.
All the best,
Cheryl Kaye Tardif, bestselling author
'Support Authors, Buy a Book!'
***
Wattpad CEO Allen Lau wrote:
Hi Cheryl,
Thanks for your message. I totally understand your concern. I would like to let you know that we have done quite a lot behind the scene, such as:
- We have implemented a content filter that blocks potentially copyright infringing material from uploading. We have received meta data from publishers, such as Penguin, Random House, Hachette etc. to help us identify these infringing uploads. Today, we have about 250,000 items in our filter and it is constantly improvement. It is not perfect (and it will never be) but I can share with you that we have generated more false alarms than misses (by design – just to err on the safe side).
- We have community volunteers (e.g. you may note the volunteer badge on this user http://www.wattpad.com/user/Just-Krissy) to help us police and report infringing content.
- We ran a program called “author-in-charge”, where authors/agents were granted access to remove infringing material directly (instead of going through the laborious DMCA process). We have discontinued this program recently since the number of take down notices we are receiving is very small (more details below).
- Restricting repeat offenders access... [Cheryl has removed a section that describes how Wattpad limits access as Goodreads is an open forum.:]BTW, we tried including a stronger message in the upload page but it has no effect whatsoever. Therefore, we revert to the one that you see since it is more “approachable” for our legitimate users.
With these measures, the number of take down notices that we received have reduced by 99% (down to just a handful per week). Currently, I am helping the Association of American Publishers or AAP (http://publishers.org/) to refine their anti-piracy best practices. Wattpad must be doing something right. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be invited :-)
We don’t normally publicly disclose the above as we fear that it would just attract more pirates if we do so. However, you can be assured that we are taking the piracy issues very seriously. We are not a file sharing site. We are a social network designed for writers and readers. Since our target audience are the writers, we have to do a very good job in addressing their needs, and piracy concern is one of those.
Once again, by no means what we have done is perfect. With our volume (more than 50,000 uploads per month) and the nature of user-generated content, it is impossible to guarantee that nothing is slipping through our fingers but we will certainly try our best. If you notice any copyright infringing material, please let us know and we will act on it asap.
On a side note, as a shameless book promoter and an author, I would strongly encourage you to create an account on Wattpad and share your free short stories with our millions of users. Wattpad is a great way to market an author socially and virally. Many publishers are encouraging their authors to do so. Needless to say, it will also help you to experience Wattpad and understand some of the items I mentioned in the above.
Sorry for my shameless promotion :-)
I look forward to seeing you joining Wattpad!
P.S. I always go the extra mile in helping Canadian writers (I am a Canadian too). If there is anything I can help, please let me know.
Regards,
Allen Lau
CEO and Co-founder
***
Cheryl wrote (and Allen replied after each question):
Hi Allen,
Thank you for sharing this information. It is great to see all the positive anti-piracy measure you're putting into place at Wattpad.
Are you accepting more community volunteers? And do you allow smaller publishers to submit meta data for filtering?
[AL:] Re: volunteers: Yes, we are recruiting volunteers constantly but we only open to active community members as they understand how the site works and the dynamics of the community.
[AL:]Re: Small publishers: It depends. There is an overhead to clean up the meta data etc. before we can add to the filter. We are a small team so practically speaking we can’t afford to open up the flood gate for everyone. However, if piracy of content from a particular publisher is becoming a recurring issue, then of course we will accept meta data from that particular publisher (regardless of its size).
May I share your email with the authors in my group? They would be quite interested to hear all that you are doing. It's a small group--nothing is shared publicly online, only through a Yahoogroup. We're a mix of authors and publishers.
[AL:] Certainly. None of what I shared is confidential. We just don’t want to make it too obvious on our site so that the pirates would know our tactics (and hence circumvent our system – it is a cat and mouse game). In fact, you are ENCOURAGED to help us to spread the word as we want all the writers and publishers out there to know what we have done. Again, we just don’t want to share this on our website because we don’t want the pirates to know this too easily.
I will check out Wattpad more closely, perhaps even join and share some of my material. I'll have to look into this next week.
[AL:] Please feel free to let me know if you have any question. BTW, we are going to launch a new program that can help publishers to market their titles. Here is a teaser. Please feel free to share:
http://links.wattpad.com/publisherpro...
Thank you again. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know what Wattpad is doing to help protect authors' rights.
[AL:] My pleasure!
All the best in success!
Cheryl Kaye Tardif
***
Final thoughts from Cheryl:
I find Allen to be very forthright and open to suggestions, so if you see something over at Wattpad, don't hesitate to contact him or report abuse.
http://www.wattpad.com
WattPad Content Guidelines (for posting)
Do not upload copyrighted material for which you do not own the rights to or have permission from the owner. If you are a copyright holder and believe any
user submitted content infringes on your copyright, you may notify us here or by email at report@wattpad.com Include a reference to the copyrighted work and
contact information of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner. We
will act promptly to investigate such claims.
WattPad TOS
As part of Wattpad.com's copyright policy, Wattpad.com may terminate user access to the Website if a user has been determined to be an infringer. To file a copyright infringement notification with us, you will need to send a communication to us with all of the following information in it, using this format:
1. Include a statement telling us that you have found a content on Wattpad.com which you believe infringes your copyright (for example, "I hereby confirm that I believe the story identified below infringes my copyright").
2. Tell us which country your copyright applies to.
3. Tell us the title of the content concerned and the full URL for its page.
4. Explain to us in what way that content infringes your copyright (e.g. the text is copied, the entire story is a copy of an original work made by you, etc.)
5. Identify the type (e.g. a book, a short story, a poem, etc.). and details of (e.g. title, publisher, dates, etc.) the copyright work which you own the rights in, and which you believe has been infringed. If this information is available on the internet, it is helpful to send us a link.
6. Let us have contact information so that we can get in touch with you (email address is preferred).
7. Let us have the contact information which we can pass on to the submitter of the content concerned, so that they can get in touch with you to resolve your complaint directly (email address is preferred).
8. Include the following statement: "I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted work described above is not authorized by the copyright owner (or by a third party who is legally entitled to do so on behalf of the copyright owner) and is not otherwise permitted by law. I swear that the information contained in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or have an exclusive right in law to bring infringement proceedings with respect to its use."
10. Sign the notice. If you are providing notice by e-mail, a scanned physical signature or a valid electronic signature will be accepted.
11. Send the notice, in English, to the following address:
Attn: Wattpad.com Copyright Infringement Notification
Email: report@wattpad.com
Here's a user who does not understand the meaning of "My Works" or else, this person is a schizophrenic who honestly believes that he or she is Cheyenne McCray and also Adrian Phoenix, and Carolyn Jewel, and Gayle Callen and many more as well.
[link now dead... therefore removed:]