It was not too long ago that Wiley petitioned the courts for the identities of over 200 people in New York that were infringing on the copyright of their digital books. It looks like the company has zeroed in on four people in specific who are accused of piracy!
The publisher said the amount of revenue lost through illegal copying of its For Dummies guides was “enormous”, with over 74,000 copies of its Photoshop CS5 All-In-One For Dummies guide pirated. This is fairly interesting because the firm’s lawyer said that he believed this would be the first trial of its kind based on the use of Bittorrent.
Wiley is bringing these guys to court because they refused to settle outside of it. Wiley’s lawyer, William Dunnegan, told the BBC: “We are asking people who are identified by their ISPs as being copyright infringers to pay the minimum amount due under the Copyright Act as statutory damages. That sum is $750. For the most part people are owning up and complying with the law. However, the named defendants have not.”
It will be an interesting case on a major publication company going after digital book pirates in court. If the defendants lose the case instead of only having to pay $750, they may face the maximum of $150,000 per infringement.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
