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Mar 21
Love6

How to file a DMCA takedown request to remove pirated ebooks from Google

By Blog

This week, I spent several hours dealing with sites that illegally post pirated copies of In 30 Minutes ebooks, allowing people to download them for free (or for an illicit fee, none of which goes back to the authors). Ebook piracy not only takes money away from the authors who created the content, pirate sites can sometimes outrank legitimate sources of ebooks on Google and other search engines. It’s almost impossible to remove the content from the torrent sites that host the pirated content, but there are ways to take the fight further up the food chain using a standard DMCA takedown request (DMCA stands for digital millennium copyright act):

  1. Filing a DMCA takedown request with the sites that link to the torrents
  2. Filing a DMCA takedown request with the hosting companies of the sites that link to the torrents
  3. Asking Google to remove references in Google Search by filing DMCA notices

I’m not going to go deeply into what the DMCA is or how it works, but for the sake of this post it gives limited legal rights to authors and publishers who have discovered unauthorized copies of their ebooks (ePub, mobi, or PDF) floating around the Internet. It can also be used to fight bogus “bloggers” who take pirated content and use the text and images for blog posts beyond what Fair Use would allow. Unfortunately, the DMCA can be abused, and I have actually seen cases of authors being hit by bogus DMCA claims by pirates for their own works, as if the pirates had created the ebook!

Why send a DMCA takedown request to Google?

This short tutorial concerns how authors can use a standard DMCA takedown request to fight ebook pirates. I’ve found it’s very difficult to ask the sites themselves to comply — even though many of them contain “DMCA” links which supposedly enable copyright holders to file a DMCA takedown request, half the time the pages lead to 404 errors or dead email addresses. The other half have working email addresses or Web forms, but many of them don’t result in takedowns either. Filing DMCA notices with the registrar or hosting company is also problematic — registrars want nothing to do with copyright disputes, and the hosting company is often hard to identify or claim they can’t do anything (this is particularly true for overseas domains).

That leaves Google. The idea here is if you can remove a reference to a pirate site from Google search, it not only reduces the likelihood of the pirated content being downloaded, it hits the offending site where it hurts by reducing traffic and advertising impressions.

The easy way to identify offending content is to search Google for the title of the book and scroll through the results. You can also set up a Google Alert to automatically mail newly indexed content that features the name of your book. Here’s what happened when I searched for the PDF edition of my quick Excel guide:

Google DMCA takedown request pirated ebooks

The first two results lead to sites that link to pirated copies. They feature unauthorized use of copyrighted content, including descriptions and cover images. They push down links to authorized sites where readers can purchase the guide, including the official Excel Basics In 30 Minutes website. The pirate links also expose readers to potential computer hazards, including malware and other scams.

How to file a DMCA takedown request with Google

How can authors or publishers ask Google to remove these results from Web search? Use the special Google form at http://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_dmca?&product=websearch. The form asks you to identify yourself, to describe the content in question, to include links to legitimate versions of the book or ebook, and then list the offending links. You have to swear to the following:

  1. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
  2. The information in this notification is accurate and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Note that your name and complaint may also be submitted to the Chilling Effects project, meaning that it will be publicly available. This could be a concern for authors who use pen names.

Because I usually have to file the same type of complaint against different parties, I use a a DMCA takedown request template and copy and paste the contents into the form, depending on the title being infringed and the content that has been used without permission:

I am the author and publisher of [TITLE OF BOOK]. This is an ebook and paperback (ISBN: [ISBN NUMBER GOES HERE]) that is about [NUMBER] pages long. My company [NAME OF PUBLISHER] holds all rights to this work, including text, logos, and cover images.

The book description and cover image have been appropriated without my permission on the website [WEBSITE DOMAIN] and subsequently appear in Google search results. The site further contains links to download unauthorized copies of the work.

I also have prepared links of legitimate versions of the content to paste into the form (e.g., official website, Amazon, Google Play, Google Books, etc.).

Filing a DMCA takedown request takes about 2 minutes using the template. Google usually responds quickly, although in some instances I have had to follow up with additional information (this is often the case for bloggers who are republishing scraped ebook content). For people with Google Webmaster Tool accounts, you can review the status of all DMCA takedown requests here.

Do you have problems with ebook pirates? How have you dealt with the pirates? Share your story in the comments below.

Jun 26
Love2

How to renew a Blogger custom domain through Google Apps

By Blog

Blogger, the blogging service offered by Google, used to have a really neat feature: The ability to reserve and pay for a custom domain through the Blogger interface to replace the default blogspot.com domain that Google provides. For reasons that are not clear, Google removed this feature in 2013. It’s still possible to get a custom domain, but users have to do it on their own through registrars such as GoDaddy or eNom and then point the domain to Google’s Blogger servers (if anyone is interested in setting up a simple business website using this method, consider Google Blogger For Small Businesses In 30 Minutes).

When Google turned off custom domains registration in Blogger, however, they didn’t think through an important process: How existing customers could renew their custom domains. Because customers never dealt directly with the registrars when they set up the domains, the renewal process is supposed to take place through Google Apps. This is a big problem, because many users never registered their Google Apps account or were never assigned an email address associated with their accounts. So, when the renewal email is sent to the backup email address, it’s not clear how to get into the Google Apps account to update billing information or perform other important functions. Fortunately, I found a partial solution for some users, which I will share below.

First, here’s what the renewal email looks like:

How to renew a Blogger custom domain through Google Apps

While my Dropbox guide is currently associated with a new URL, the old Blogger-based book website still gets a fair amount of traffic so I definitely wanted to renew the domain to prevent it from expiring. I clicked the button in the email, but was brought through a hellish runaround. I knew the default email address for the Blogger domains is bloggeradmin@domain.com, but no password combination worked to access it, and the only account recovery method the help screens said I could use involved changing the c name record at the registrar (eNom) so Google could verify that I owned the domain. But this was impossible, because I never dealt directly with eNom — all of the administration took place through the Blogger interface, and Google Wallet/Google Checkout.

Eventually, by following another set of help links, I was able to fill out a Google Apps help form that let me tell Google Apps what the problem was. Here’s what I wrote:

Subject: Unable to get into my Google Apps account which I registered as a Blogger custom domain

I received a warning via email (via my backup email address) that my domain will not be renewed. It is impossible using normal methods for me to get into the Google Apps domain management panel for the Dropbox In 30 Minutes domain. I used my backup email address, the bloggeradmin@ email address, and every password I could remember but nothing works. I am also unable to use the c name method because Google/Blogger custom domains do not allow me to log into the registrar’s management panel (enom).

Please help.

The help form said I would need to wait for up to 7 days, but I received a reply in about 1 hour. Here’s what it said:

Thank you for your message. I understand you have no access to your account Admin interface to renew your domain registration. I will be more than happy to help you with that.

Please note that at this time, all Google customers for any product are being moved to a new Billing system. In order to comply with its requirements, they need to manage their account through a Google Apps Admin console. You must have received an email message with this information. However, if you haven’t or didn’t go through the information to get access to it, you can use the following link to reset the password and gain access https://admin.google.com/xxxxxx/ForgotAdminAccountInfo (where xxxxxx is the name of the domain in question).

The reset link should be coming to this Gmail. Once you login, it will take you through setting up Billing to enable the auto renew option for your domain registration.

Sure enough, I was able to send a new password to my backup gmail account (thank goodness I had set that up) and get into the domain control panel to update the billing information. Mission accomplished!

Now, I know there are lots of other people with similar problems, but I don’t want to guarantee this method. For instance, if you never set up a backup email recovery account or waited too long to take care of the problem, you may be out of luck. But if any other readers try this method and it works, please share your story (and tips) below!

Apr 05
Love2

Why I moved my book websites from Blogger to WordPress (with examples)

By Blog, Industry

Since incorporating my ebook venture at the beginning of this year, I have spent a lot of time (maybe too much time) updating the online presences for various In 30 Minutes™ guides and videos. This has involved several steps, including 1) Migrating certain pieces of content from the old Blogger websites to the new WordPress sites and 2) creating new content for the new websites (for example, the new “What Is Google Drive?” webpage that I created for the product website for “Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes” earlier today).

In this post, I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of the steps involved in migrating content or setting up a WordPress site. Rather, the focus is on why I moved the book websites from Blogger to WordPress, particularly considering the Blogger-based sites were only six months old.

I have several reasons why I started with Blogger:

  1. The original Blogger sites were set up as experiments. In the summer of 2012, I launched the ebook venture, having no idea if it would be a success. I needed a flexible, low-risk website solution — and Blogger fit the bill. If it didn’t work out, I’d only be out a small amount of money ($10 per site) and a few hours of time per site.
  2. Blogger-based sites are much easier to set up than WordPress. A basic site can be whipped up in an hour or two, and I developed a few “hacks” (described in Google Blogger For Small Businesses In 30 Minutes) to make static product sites using Blogger.
  3. Sites with hosted domains on Blogger are cheaper than WordPress. A dot.com website costs just $10 for the domain and hosting is free and robust (I’ve had pages that have been slashdotted and they never go down!). WordPress domains can be had for the same price, but hosting is $30-$40 per year … or more, if you need additional bandwidth.
  4. I didn’t know if the In 30 Minutes “brand” would be dropped in favor of something else. I actually tried another brand for one title (“The Rogue Manual”) and considered others, including “In 20 Minutes” and “In 33 Minutes” (don’t ask!). Creating WordPress sites for each brand type would be expensive and time-consuming.

These are the reasons I started with Blogger. However, I should note that when I created the product sites on Blogger, I knew that I might migrate them to WordPress if the idea took off. Why? In a nutshell, Blogger is an imperfect solution. It may be cheap and easy to set up, but the templates don’t look great. Further, while the functionality is sufficient for creating online content, adding product links and buttons, and performing other basic tasks, WordPress takes things to a much higher level. I knew from working on WordPress blogs in the past that there are some gorgeous WP themes available, as well as plug-ins and other tools that can really supercharge websites.

What eventually happened? I launched my product sites on Blogger starting in the summer of 2012. Here’s what the old product site for “Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes” looked like:

Google Drive old site

As you can see, it covered the basics — a cover image, pricing, buttons to buy the ebook/paperback, etc. Even though I started to get some sales through the website, the appearance bothered me. It was nowhere near the quality and professionalism of the actual book cover for “Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes”, which was handled by a professional graphic designer in Rhode Island. I worried that the poor Blogger templates might be turning some potential customers away.

In early 2013, it was clear that the In 30 Minutes concept was working. I was selling hundreds of ebooks and paperbacks, and had been profitable since the second month of operations. I incorporated and decided to move the official product sites to In30Minutes.com, using subdomains for each one of the titles. I found a good theme for the master site (In30Minutes.com), and then strong product themes with a solid call-to-action for individual titles on the subdomains. Here’s what googledrive.in30minutes.com looks like now:

Google Drive user guide

All of the other titles are using the same theme (Responsive, which I have modified using child themes). For most of the WordPress product sites, I have added “buy” and “author” pages. Most of the product sites have individual blogs devoted to the topics covered in the guides, which mostly contain text posts and videos that can help readers. I also added several WordPress plugins, one of which has no equivalent in Blogger.

However, I haven’t deleted the old Blogger sites yet. The main reason is they still get traffic. For people hitting the old sites, when it comes time for them to make a purchase I link off to the “Buy” pages on the new sites. In the future, I may add 301 redirects, but want to make sure I have everything ready on the new sites before I throw the switch.

For other authors reading this post, have you considered WordPress for your book or author sites? Why or why not?