Some people didn’t even understand! If you published your book, and licensed it under Creative Commons license; it’s irrevocable when published in paperback. But some publishers are trying to claim their book is CC-licensed, but what they are doing is spoofing viewers, and readers,–causing licenses to be invalid.
License Spoofing Can happen Anytime
Say if You purchased a book from an online book store. You are interested of my books, and you wanted to reuse it,–after you checked if the CC license is valid. You’ve contacted me to varify if the license is valid. I’ve responded; telling you the license is valid. But at the other hand; you are about to purchase a book that is related to my content. Although; the CC license may look like is valid, but what you are trying to see, it’s an actual All Rights Reserved statement. That means the license is invalid. Some authors change licenses overtime,–including companies. You can use the reporting tool to report abuse at the online store,–telling them about a license-spoofing incident. It may take some time for the administrators to respond to your report, if your report is detailed enough; the faster the response. But in some cases, some online vendors can be corrupted overtime.
Terminology
The author of the book uses some hidden text, or ways to make the license look like is valid. An image, or misleading text is the known way to spoof readers about the CC license. What I’ve mentioned above; the spoof can lead to serious problems, such as Search Engine Spoofing. Some authors are trying to rip off readers by causing copyright claims to be mysterious, causing our copyright system to be unreliable.
Spoofing can be in any forms: such as tampering with the legitimate license itself by causing the actual url to link to the another url of the webpage with an invalid license. Or using an image that may looks like a valid license, but it’s not clickable to the copy of the license.
How it works:
The author writes the copyright statement without any knowledge about applying an open-content license. He/she publishes his/her book.
The reader has interest of reading this book, but he/she goes for a reusable version. She made a purchase to a book all right; but she discovered a license,–stating it’s safe to reuse. But she didn’t even risk to reuse it. She really found the actual license that didn’t even state it’s safe to reuse this book.
Why you shouldn’t do it?
License-spoofing is common on most publishing platforms that we use everyday. License-spoofing is the another form of scams that are so easy to find, if you believed you are spoofed, you can report problematic content by using their reporting feature to let the platform administrators know about your issue.
You shuldn’t spoof licenses on your E-book because of the following:
- That can hurt some open-source communities who rely on open-source content.
- Spam search engine results.
- License scams can flood the search engine ran by scammers who rely on licensing their work via Creative Commons.
License-spoofing is unpredictable! It doesn’t just happen on self-publishing platforms. It can happen anywhere.
Some authors might lose their self-publishing account for license-spoofing,–if the report is valid.
What to do?
Contact the vendors of the E-book stores to notify them about a spoofing incident, and provide all of the information, and the text of the license found on it’s copyright page, and include an excerpt. They will review the book, and find the license in question that’s been spoofed. If the license has been spoofed, and the license is invalid. The book will be recalled,–notifying the author about his/her book has been pulled. In some cases; license-spoofing can violate TOS,–resulting his/her account being suspended, or terminated.
If you’re a concerned author, and you want to make sure your CC license is legitimate?
Try to check your license statement to vairify if it’s valid before publishing your work. You should always respond to your viewers, don’t change the license,–unless you had a specified reason.
Focus on publishing your books that are interesting and unique.
If you are the administrator of your company who mass publish books; talk to your authors about license-spoofing. You can also add some of the paregraphs to the TOS page.
Implement programs that will prevent users from license-spoofing,–if you are the vendor of the E-book stores online.
You can still contact your self-publishing platform to let them know about the license-spoofing incident. They will setup programs that will prevent license spoofing.