Silver Publishing

veinglory said:

Silver went a little further by imprinting the buyer's name and credit card number on the ebook, at least one major pirate did not notice until after she had 'shared' it. She was mondo annoyed. There was a significant ironyfail.

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I'm not following how this worked. Did Silver set up something that made the pirated copy show the buyer from the pirate's credit card number on the book? Is that it?

veinglory said:

Silver went a little further by imprinting the buyer's name and credit card number on the ebook, at least one major pirate did not notice until after she had 'shared' it. She was mondo annoyed. There was a significant ironyfail.

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Uh, is that wise? Doesn't that border on privacy issues?

veinglory said:

Silver went a little further by imprinting the buyer's name and credit card number on the ebook, at least one major pirate did not notice until after she had 'shared' it. She was mondo annoyed. There was a significant ironyfail.

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Printing the name of the buyer in the book is one thing, but adding their credit card number is a bit too much and could result in them getting in trouble for facilitating identity theft. Not a good idea IMO.

Maybe not a good idea, but amusing to watch on the astaforums. At least they are trying something new while other presses aren't even identifiying ARCs so they can cut off pirating reviewrs who are releasing books before their pub date (a real temptation to an author's fans).

Stlight said:

I'm not following how this worked. Did Silver set up something that made the pirated copy show the buyer from the pirate's credit card number on the book? Is that it?

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Actaully now I can't remember now if it was just the real name, or the name plus credit card--but it is easy enough to do this for every buyer by automatically populating a form in the footer with information provided at purchase. It means you are more likely to observe the spirit of the EULA and share only with people you trust, or who at least know your real name.

As the ebook is for a persons own use, putting their information on it should not in theory offend their privacy. They only expose themselves if they also expose the copyrighted material.

Perhaps you're right, but in the USA we have so much trouble with ID theft and credit card theft here - sometimes the hackers get all the cards used at a major store - that I'm not comfortable with it.

People have been known to steal your bills from your mailbox (mail usually arrives several hours before you get home from work to get it) and use your card numbers. Not every site/store requires the 'secret' number on the back. This has gotten so bad that some credit card companies are sending their bills with only the last digits of the card number on them. ID theft can take years to straighten out and huge amounts of money.

If the credit card number it to be put on the object I think there should be a statement warning that it will before a customer buys the ebook/ whatever.

What happens if you lose your reader with your card number on the books in it?

An ebook isn't really an objects, but yes I suppose it could get hacked. I don';t know of even a single case of this happening, but I suppose it could. I am not saying it is the perfect response but it is idiosyncratic, assertive and I got some amusement from it. So I feel it told me something about the press. Which was the point I was making.

veinglory said:

As the ebook is for a persons own use, putting their information on it should not in theory offend their privacy. They only expose themselves if they also expose the copyrighted material.

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I can imagine lots of non-piracy contexts in which adding credit card numbers to an e-book could have unfortunate results.

For instance, a parent and child sharing an e-reader--one might not want one's teenage child to have one's credit card number. Or lending an e-reader to a house guest or a work colleague; again, not everyone to whom one is comfortable lending a book is someone with whom one is comfortable having one's credit card number.

And to be fair, lowering that comfort level is the intention.

I can see how it might be amusing that one pirate got caught out but what Silver Publishing is doing with personal confidential information is illegal in a number of countries. They are also not informing purchasers what they are doing with their information. And really it doesn't solve anything at all. Folks who want to pirate will just go through third party sites or have software that can remove the offending details. Going after one site means nothing, when ten more will spring up in it's place. Not to mention bittorrent or newsgroups.

Legitimate purchasers are the ones who will suffer, again. Those who buy through their website will be stuck with files that have their private credit card information imprinted. Security experts always tell you not to keep your credit card, bank details etc on your hard drive because there are programs/trojans/viruses out there that search for these numbers. Buying these books puts the purchasers at a security risk, and Silver should inform purchasers what they are up to.

veinglory said:

And to be fair, lowering that comfort level is the intention.

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I myself think that's inappropriate. Someone lending a houseguest their e-reader isn't engaging in piracy any more than someone lending a houseguest a printed book. I would not buy from a publisher who followed that practice.

veinglory said:

Maybe not a good idea, but amusing to watch on the astaforums. At least they are trying something new while other presses aren't even identifiying ARCs so they can cut off pirating reviewrs who are releasing books before their pub date (a real temptation to an author's fans).

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Actually a press recently caught a reviewer doing just that. The reviewer has lost their job with that review site and her name has been passed around to other review sites so she can't do it elsewhere.

While some publishers can't be bothered to protect their authors from pirates--this also includes the big NYC publishers who seem to cancel series when the pirating cuts into the profits--some of us are doing everything we can to protect our authors from these underhanded people.

Yeah, but from a legal standpoint I could imagine it would get iffy. If they give a warning that this is being done, then I can't feel sorry for any idiot who tries to pirate an ebook. I still think it's something one has to be very careful about.

para said:

They are also not informing purchasers what they are doing with their information.

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How so? It isn't a hidden policy, it isn't giving the information to third parties. Printing your full given name inside a book is just spontaneous personalisation as far as I can see.

M.R.J. Le Blanc said:

Yeah, but from a legal standpoint I could imagine it would get iffy. If they give a warning that this is being done,

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And all they would need to do is look at any internal page of the book prior to illegally sharing it--then they would see their given name was printed in there.

Basically complaining about this would be like calling the cops to report the aoutrageous theft of your favorite illegally grown pot marijuana plant.

Silver is not printing on their site that they are going to print your credit card number on the ebook. That makes it a hidden policy. You don't know it's going to happen until after it is done. It is the sort of thing that the customer should know before it happens.

No one thought department stores could be hacked for the list of their customers' credit cards before it happened.

Part of protecting people from ID theft is to consider the possiblities. Hacking from an ebook where all you have to do is open it and copy the number - not hard. Again most RL places don't ask for anything beyond the number and the name.

The pirate got the ebook, an ID thief could get the books and there s/he's got the credit card numbers. The ring maybe set up to do this in a matter of days. Criminals are fast.

veinglory said:

How so? It isn't a hidden policy, it isn't giving the information to third parties. Printing your full given name inside a book is just spontaneous personalisation as far as I can see.

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Sure, putting your name in a book is one thing, but the credit card number? If customers find out that's happening Silver can say farewell to their sales.

Stlight said:

The pirate got the ebook, an ID thief could get the books and there s/he's got the credit card numbers. The ring maybe set up to do this in a matter of days. Criminals are fast.

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Yes they are. Now does anyone know how often small presses are hacked and their information stolen? Most smaller publishers are easy to crack via their carts or other features.

I could name several that I know have been hacked, but they learned and stopped the hackers before too much damage was done, though one had their entire site taken down by a hacker.

I've heard of this practice before for piracy prevention, but the publisher wasn't named. Does anyone know if there are other epubs doing it too, or whether it's just Silver?

I was downloaded some material I subscribed to via SAGE and notice the also print the subscribers name on the footer of each page. I dount such a major academic publisher would be doing this if it was not legal. As with ebooks, academic papers are provided for one person's use only.

The problem is printing the credit card number, not the name on the ebook. Names appear in phone books and alone aren't much use for ID theft. On the other hand I'm cure the names helped when theives were grabbing cell phone accounts out of the air on the street just from people using their phones. That theives could do that makes the printing of the credit card number on the ebook a matter of serious concern.

veinglory said:

As with ebooks, academic papers are provided for one person's use only.

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There's no problem if a professor says to her research assistant, "Take a look at the article I have up on my screen and see if I'm right in saying that Jones argues that the Babinski reflex isn't present in orangutans" and the research assistant sees the professor's name in the footer.

There would be a problem if the research assistant could see the professor's credit card number in the footer.

E-books are not to be reproduced or transferred, but that doesn't mean that only one person can ever see them. That's the problem with reproducing people's credit card numbers en clair on the files--it puts people's financial information in jeopardy when they are doing perfectly legal and permissible things with the e-books, not only when they are violating their terms of use agreement and/or copyright.

nkkingston said:

I've heard of this practice before for piracy prevention, but the publisher wasn't named. Does anyone know if there are other epubs doing it too, or whether it's just Silver?

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I hope not. I don't upload e-books -- unless they are Project Gutenberg files, Baen Free Library books, etc. where it's OK to share. After all, if somebody wants to read something from Silver Publishing, surely they can spend the $3.99 or whatever to buy their own freakin' copy. Sheesh. But I can see lots of cases where this would be baaad. For example, what if I bought the e-book as a gift for someone else? What about websites that buy e-books to give away as prizes in contests? What if someone stole my computer or my e-reader?

Also, if a company thinks it's OK to do this to my personal information, how do I know they are careful with that information at all? We all know that some e-book publishers aren't careful enough about sensitive information. Years ago, when e-books were still fairly new, I bought an e-book that was only available as a CD -- I think because it wasn't out yet. Weeks later, it arrived in my mail box, and the letter accompanying the disk contained my entire credit card number. Oh, yeah, way to treat your paying customer's sensitive information. I remember wondering: 1) what were they thinking?!; 2) in all that time, how many people at their office had access to my credit card information?; and 3) what if the package had been lost or stolen? Oh, and on top of that, their database was later hacked. What a shock.

That's just it. It's a question of what's going to be seen as the bigger crime. Pirating (which I'm not saying it's not bad, because it is) or putting a customer's sensitive details on a file without their consent or knowledge?