Some people didn’t even understand! If you reused an E-book that is CC-licensed; at this case, CC BY-SA ; you must apply a same license to your E-book. Whenever you are using Draft2Digital, SmashWords, BookBaby, or any of these self-publishing platforms to publish your E-books, one wrong move may lead to a TOS violation; having your book canceled, and land you in court.
If you are an author who licensed your book under a CC license; and you allowed others to reuse your work, you still retain your copyright,–until it expires. Well, CC licenses are built to last long. And you can’t revoke it. Well, I always license my work under a CC licenses. My goal is to reach 100 E-books that are CC-licensed.
You’re not suppose to apply technological measures to any of the remixed CC-licensed content. But most proprietary creators didn’t even understand. However, they applied it anyway! Although, you can take action against them. These copyright trolls are the known thugs who are responsible for causing our copyright system to break.
Example Scenario
Say if you are writing an E-book about mice, and you published via any self-publishing platform. Your CC license is CC BY-SA. And your work is reused by your reader, Ric. He starts to reuse his work as he surrounds it with his original content. He publishes it to any self-publishing platform. Somehow, he applied DRM to your work, and he licensed his work as “All Rights Reserved” for his book. The another reader starts to read his book, he/she is upset because, the book is DRM-infected. He/She contacts you about an issue of your E-book that is reused, and it’s been placed under technological measures. You took action against Ric who violated your license. However, he’s a member of a company who didn’t even care about CC-licensed content.
Most likely, Ric is a copyright troll who is responsible for his acts with his company. That also lead to a court-order that demands this company to be shutdown. But one problem is corrupted court systems can cause problems to our law systems around the world.
Why This Is A Problem?
DRM is barberric, and if it’s found on CC-licensed content, and you’re responsible for applying technological measures to this E-book, you are facing legal action against you.
If you discovered a CC license “CC BY-SA: E-book, Always Keep At This Same license
Avoid using BY-ND, BY-NCSA, BY-NC, and BY-NCND after reusing this content with this license what I’ve just mentioned above in quotation marks.
Many creators who licensed their content like this are so upset because, copyright trolls are just bypassing the copyright statement with a CC license inside. These trolls are trying to spoof other creators who are trying to find the CC-licensed content. Legitimate creators might be aware of these causes what copyright trolls has started, recording industries didn’t even care about these open licenses either.
What To Do?
Launch a forum for some readers who are trying to report a problem that occured with your E-books.
Respond to your viewers who are having trouble reusing your work.
If you have multiple of books that you’ve published, write a book blog, and tell them your work is CC-licensed,–just like I do!