Flying Pincushin Games in Dire Need of Advice!

[Flying Pincushion Games]

There is no polite way to put this, but as one of the owners of Flying Pincushion Games, and the guy who actually puts our books together as our layout artist, I have come across a rather nasty problem.

To put it simply, Flying Pincushion Games books are being posted to the web for download without permission. Every volume we have thus far produced is now magically available for unsanctioned download.

My question to the rest of the 3pp publishing world is, what can I do about this? Can I report the poster for putting a water marked PDF up for download without publisher consent? Can I force people to take our work down. Is there civil legal recourse available to me?

I do not wish to sound petty, and I love sharing our work with our readers. But to be honest, we are a very small outfit, and our profit margins are paper thin, so every sale really does count. It really takes the wind out of your writer/publisher sails to see something you worked on for months now available for free, posted by someone who has no right to do so.

So, there it is, any advice from my peers out there in 3pp land would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff Harris
Flying Pincushion Games

[gamer-printer]

Well first of all, I would find another person to do the page layout, if you suspect the unauthorized public release of your product is coming from him or through him (or her).

My next question would be where is these unauthorized postings of your publication be posted? If it's a torrent site, well, those companies, in my opinion operate outside the law anyway, and achieving legal recourse is next to impossible. If your product is being distributed via some online selling platform such as DrivethruRPG, then yes, you definitely have some recourse to stop it from happening. It all depends on where the work is being distributed.

While it certainly won't help you, all my publications, even those that I publish via Rite Publishing, and not myself, I do all the page layout, and thus do not have your problem.

[AinvarG]

I don't believe he said the problem was the layout artist - I understood him to say _he_ is the layout artist.

Have you spoken to your (legitimate) distributors? They might have some advice.

[Flying Pincushion Games]

AinvarG has it right, I am the layout guy for TFPG, and good idea, suppose I could reach out to some of our friendly 3pp allies and also see what Drivethru and the other distributors have to say, we had only approached them very generally regarding the issue previously.

[Luthorne]

If the product is still watermarked, you can at least usually get the account that was used to purchase the product banned by the distributor...though given the ease with which new accounts can be gathered, this might have limited efficacy if they keep all the products they've purchased downloaded. Beyond that...it's very easy to get a disposable email address, and people purchasing things with the intent to sell them may be uninclined to give their real name - or even if they didn't, out of a desire for online privacy. So there's probably a limited amount you can do to pursue them in particular.

Beyond that, many download services will delete anything if they're told that it's illegal copywritten material, so some emails to the site offering it for download may prove productive, though there are many different download sites, so getting them all taken down can be rather difficult. Usually they depend on either not being known about by the publisher, or simply utilizing enough different download sites that a publisher won't want to bother sending out emails to every site. Such download sites rarely pay any attention to what is being uploaded, given the huge number of material that is uploaded, and depend on other people pointing it out.

In short, in the long term, you probably can't really do too much about it if someone is determined to engage in this kind of theft, but you can probably at least inconvenience them somewhat...

Of course, someone may have a better idea.

[Flying Pincushion Games]

Thanks for the suggestion Luthorne and everyone else, ears are still open for thoughts!

[gamer-printer]

Well if you are the page layout artist and one of the owners, who is getting access to the product outside of you to be able to release it without your knowledge. When I do freelance cartography work, I often ask for the adventure text so I know what to include in a given map, but I need special permission from the publisher in order to get that, I don't know if every cartographer asks for that. Otherwise check any other freelancer who has access to your product pre-release - and the culprit could be them.

[Rednal]

Who is getting access? That would be... anybody buying it. Removing watermarks from PDFs is somewhat difficult, but it is possible, so it's not unknown for people to purchase copies and get them "cleaned", then distribute them to others. Most likely, the culprit isn't someone who helped make the product.

Luthorne has the right idea here.

[Flying Pincushion Games]

I have the sinking feeling a PDF cracker and a DL site account is all that is really needed to repost our work. I also suspect the culprits are a tiny section of the PF fan base, why they would repost for free hard working folks books is beyond me, as I am sure the vast majority of PF fans would never do that. Heck, plenty of them are involved in 3pp's.

A truly frustrating and disheartening issue all round, as I am sure we are not the only publisher who has this happen often.

[Rednal]

If it helps, I think a lot of the people who try to grab illegal copies aren't likely to be buying very many legitimate products in the first place, so it may not be hurting your bottom line very much. Shutting stuff down when you can will help, of course, but the best way to help your business is probably continuing to make good products and advertising them when you can. A certain amount of illegal distribution is - unfortunately - inevitable with the way technology currently is, but as shown by the many other publishers still in business, it's quite possible to succeed in spite of that. ^^ You've made some nice-looking stuff, so I hope this doesn't get you down for long.

[Flying Pincushion Games]

Thx Red, and yeah, we did figure it is at least, somewhat, part of the way the world is, but the compliment and the advice is much appreciated!

I will likely end up chatting with some of our more established contacts, like the good folks at Raging Swan and Kobold Press, and see what, if anything, they do in situations like this.

This is why we publish, for the awesome PF folk like all of you who took a moment out to give some helpful advice!

Now where did Liz go, I need to learn to use that detect full wallets wand she had :)

[Wraithguard]

I wish I had some advice for you, but I think Rednal has the right idea.