Piracy Site Oceanofpdf.com Shuts Down

Myself, along with a slew of authors reported Oceanofpdf.com to the authorities for its illegal copyright and piracy activities.

Oceanofpdf.com was a website that was unlawfully giving away thousands of copyright-protected e-books, in an attempt, my opinion, to make its money from advertising.

The website, in operation for months, had a US domain name and offered users free PDF thousands of books, upsetting, and frustrating authors such as Jim Camp, Philip Pullman, Grant Cardone, Robin Stevens, Bert Martinez, and many more.

We’ll try to keep it active as long as we can.

Sometime in July, a person, who claimed his name was Mr. Nicholas Liam, told a reporter for Bookseller.com, Charlotte Eyre, that he ran the site to help readers from all over the world access books. “We’re just a small team of four guys and do all the stuff ourselves,” he told The  Bookseller at the time. “We only process users’ requests. Once we get an email from a user requesting a book that he/she cannot afford/find in the library or if he has lost it, we try to find it on their behalf and upload on our site so that someone in the future might also get it.”

Liam went on to claim that “a few” authors had actually sent their books to him to upload to gain user reviews and increase their readership. He was aware that some people wanted him to shut the site down but said: “We’ll try to keep it active as long as we can.”

Today the website has been taken offline.

Martin Reed of the Society of Authors said: “We’re pleased to see that the Oceanofpdf website isn’t currently online, but we’ll keep the champagne on ice for now. The site was enabled by many organizations in the supply chain – website hosts, DNS management services, website registrars – and in spite of many complaints from authors and trade those suppliers were universally reluctant to accept any responsibility. It’s difficult to tell which bit of the chain has been switched off, and if it’s as a result of one of those companies stepping up then this is an excellent outcome – but depending on where it has been deactivated, there’s still a chance it could be switched back on. The domain name, registered through GoDaddy, hasn’t been disabled.

There are several issues at play here. One, a global citizen that felt that stealing or getting pirated materials for free was acceptable behavior. Tw0, as Mr. Reed, suggested there was a supply chain of indifference that turned a blind and failed to act. Unfortunately, this website is just a droplet in a giant sea of digital piracy.

According to Statista.com, a new piracy market has emerged in recent years thanks to the rise of e-readers. Estimates suggest that there are 16.5 million illegal book downloaders in the United States who, by downloading their literature illegally, contribute to a loss of sales of 315 million U.S. dollars. And that is just the US on a global scale it’s in the billions.

Let me know what you think about this topic of piracy?