The other day I read an ebook that was being sold, and right after I found another ebook that had the same pictures as the first one, but with rewritten text. Could legal action be taken by the original ebook writer? Or is this very common? (Especially with all the water4gas rewrites)
You can not OWN an idea if that was the case google and yahoo would have shut down long ago . However you can own content . For example if I was to copywrite a ebook . No one could copy it word for word . However they can read the ebook come up with a new information than publish an ebook in the same category . That is ok . And is widely excetible . Hope that helps .
The short answer is yes, provided the author can prove he or she is the original creator and no rights were given. I've won 4 lawsuits involving trading or duplicating my own personal work and from what I can see it's become big business. Now that so much product is digital download, the creators are now getting the protection they deserve. If you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your work was copied, resold, pirated, etc, you can win some pretty hefty damages. In some cases it's almost beneficial to the product creator as long as they have a good case. It might come to the point where product creators just live off the settlement payments they win in court.
That would be a day . i think I would personally start creating mass amounts of ebooks just to live off of court settlements . But like I have said an IDEA can not be owned only material . I.E. exact replica of an ebook would be copyright infringement . As for water to gas I have seen a few diffrent versions . None the ones I have seen are worded the same or looks like they where pirated . I actually checked them out as soon as they where released . Sounded to good to be true and I was right . IMO. So as far as the water to gas it is a CONCEPT and can not be owned . But the words on the concept can . For example exact same ebook diffrent name that would be copywrite infringement or exact same name and 2 diffrent names . 2 water to gas ebooks diffrent names diffrent material inside the ebooks . Not copyright infringement . That is ok.
Rehashing other people's ideas and turning them into an ebook for quick profit is fairly common in this business. However, most people have enough common sense to change graphics, paragraph headings, etc. The original owner could litigate against those who poach his/her material but also have the burden of proof that intellectual property was in fact stolen. Those who rewrite ebooks generally change the contents sufficiently enough to pass the product off as their own making a lawsuit much more difficult.
Thanks for the response, but what about if the images were copied? I understand the concept of words being copied, but what about images?
What if the images are instructional? In other words made specifically by the author. Do you think it would be safe to copy them exactly? (Yes I realize that now I am blatantly revealing my intentions)
Yes, with the popularity of Private Label Rights Content, often, you might have 10 people selling the exact same ebook under different websites, brand names, book titles, etc. That's one of the problems with PLR. Usually, the terms of the PLR rights will specify that you cannot claim copyright to the ebook product, unless "significant" additions or changes have been made. Punters have disagreed on what "significant" means, but some suggest anything where 50% to 70% of the content was added in, rewritten, or modified. As a real life experience, even printed books by pretty famous authors are sometimes (maybe more frequently than we think) marketed like they were different products. One time I bought a Dee*pak Cho*pra book in the bookstore but later realized that I had the same book at home. Only difference was: The title was different.... ....... go figure eh? Fortunately, I managed to get my money back .. :ebay:
I think there must be slews of websites that used images that were copyrighted and integrated them with photoshop for something on their site. Question is, what is the likelihood that the owner will find the image(s). If a website is WH and gets 20K page views a month and uses a Getty Image in the logo, I wonder what the chances are of the owner being caught?
