Good morning everyone!
This morning we received an email from a RAK participant regarding concerns she had about some e-books that she received as RAK gifts. She is familiar with DRM (Digital Rights Management) Laws and how they apply to digital media, in this case, e-books. She was able to determine that the e-books she received were not legally passed along.
We have decided not to disclose the name of the participants for privacy reasons and because we don't want this to become a public scolding or lynching. However, we feel that it is very important that we address this issue now.
While we have no intention of prohibiting e-books from being gifted for RAK, we MUST prohibit the illegal sharing of e-books. As book bloggers, we all have far too much respect for this industry to do it the injustice of obtaining and/or sharing books via illegal means.
We ask that you refrain from downloading any illegal copies and that you most certainly NOT share them with others. If one of you receive a copy that you have ascertained is illegal, please DELETE it immediately.
In order to avoid this from happening in the future, we have added a new and important rule to the gifting of e-books:
E-book participation is limited to files being gifted directly to a person from the e-book store. Amazon's Kindle Store is set up to allow this, as well as the Kobo store and we believe Barnes & Noble as well.
We are not here to babysit you but to encourage you to share the love of books with your fellow bloggers. If any of you receive an illegal e-book, please feel free to address it directly with the person who gifted you. If you have trouble, or if it happens on more than one occasion, then please notify us. If you cannot play by the rules, you will be banned from RAK.
Thank you all for making this feature so AWESOME!
Eeesh.. sad that you've had to post this at all :(
ReplyDeleteVery sad! I'm not sure how it works, I'm sure you can gift a ebook from smashwords as well.
ReplyDeleteSad indeed... but I think it's great that you make the rules very clear so it won't happen again.
ReplyDeleteWell done :D
That really sucks. I'm so glad this has been brought to your attention. Authors work so hard, and they deserve to have the copyrights respected.
ReplyDeleteA responsible and quick reaction to a potential problem. You ladies do an awesome job! Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteI agree w/ all the comments. Sad that you had to even post this. Hopefully, it won't become habit. Keep up the awesome work :)
ReplyDeleteI'm sad that this even need to be pointed out in this community :(
ReplyDeleteThank you for handling it so well and hopefully it doesn't happen again!
Eep, indeed!
ReplyDeleteFor someone who knows what a DRM is but not how to detect/identify them (i.e., *me*), how could someone determine if their ebook is legally obtained or not?
Smiles!
Lori
Whoa. I will most assuredly be more careful about this. I've received some ebooks from people, but I never really thought about this. I need to figure out a way to check DRMs on mine.
ReplyDelete