Attn: Authors, Publishers, Artists & Everyone

Playster seems like a new company– newly launched this year. They want to do for all entertainment what Netflix has done for movies. That’s awesome for the millions of folks glued to their smart phones and other devices, who livestream and do what you do with those doohickeys 24/7.

That’s bad news for the creators of the content that those folks watch, download, livestream, and oggle.   Netflix offered movies and video. Those entertainments are meant to be watched– rented or bought.  Netflix purchased rights to sell and rent those videos.  When a torrent site offers that media for download without having purchased the

rights to do so, that site is slapped with injunctions and shut down.  Netflix would never be able to do what it did without being aboveboard.  I’m sure there are quibbles about that, but by an large no one wants to tangle with the Movie Industry because they have lawyers and They Are Legion.

Playster is doing the same thing for audio, video, and books. I don’t know if gaming or other art is also included. From their fluff PR descriptions, if those media aren’t offered now, then they will be soon.  DonnaPlay,  a different horse of the same color, has everything you might want to view on a smart device for rent at a low low cost of $2.95 to start. So things will get worse as more of these sites pop up.

The issue?

Playster makes its money on memberships. They sell monthly subscriptions to allow their members to download anything listed with Playster.  Playster has made deals with the likes of Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Harlequin (not only can you find those articles, but scroll to the bottom of their press & media page and you can read their pick of those pieces– many of which don’t have comments posted; elsewhere on the web you can read articles with the same info but with comments noting that Playster has listed other authors’ works without permission). While doing some more searching for this post, I found a neat little PR blurb from PR Newswire about Playster’s deal with Harper with more email contacts.

But no one from Playster contacted us about listing our titles and no one from DonnaPlay has contacted us regarding our titles either.

DonnaPlay  has more information on their central site accessible to non-members. They have more information about those wacky advertisements that I saw– sending people to their site and sending people to Playster– and more legal mumbo jumbo to shake a stick at.  https://www.donnaplay.com/terms

No one from either company has as of yet responded to my emails.

And I haven’t even told you about the Indian company selling our ebooks.  www.flipkart.com  They’re like an Indian version of Amazon with an email for infringement issues. I emailed them and they responded within a few hours to say that my case is being forwarded to their legal team. 

The point in all this?  Google your work.  Look to see where it’s listed– and who is selling it or renting it.  With new kids in town like Playster and DonnaPlay– and unscrupulous, naive and ignorant people more willing to pay one company between $3-16 a month to download to their hearts content INSTEAD of pay the creators of that work for the right to do the same thing– then more of us have to stick together.  This is a violation of our rights, our authors’ rights, and copyright law. 

But more than likely you guys have never heard of these people before.

 It’s not like the issue with Movietube– a livestreaming torrent site that had a class action suit slapped on by the movie industry it forcing the site (though anonymous) to be shut down.  The site is gone. 

If Playster and DonnaPlay and the other streaming sites seeking to infringe on our copyrights and offer our work to their subscribers without compensation– we have to do the same thing to them– do what was done to Movietube. Shut it down or make them take down our work.

So, if you’ve created something– brilliant or bogus it’s yours and you have rights to it– do a search. Scroll through the listings carefully.  Click on every link you can– especially ones you’re not familiar with– and see if your work is listed on one of these sites.  Unless you’re a member of the site and do a search that way… but that sort of mucks things up because by paying them you’re perpetuating them.

Then contact them.  Follow the links above and email and call them. Demand that they enter into agreement with you– either for compensation for having listed your work without your consent or for compensation and a future agreement moving forward.

And, by all means, make sure your copyrights are in order. Just don’t slap a little C in a circle and have done. Go through the process and get your copyrights. It’s easy, quick, though it can be expensive. For internet forms, the wait time is about 8 months. For mail-in forms, much much longer. http://www.copyright.gov/  and the process electronically  http://copyright.gov/eco/

A FB friend of ours, Dave Gerrold, posted a great note about internet outrage– about how the mob mentality of the internet gets things done. He said “Internet outrage forces attention onto things that should not be swept under the carpet — internet outrage is a way that ordinary people can raise their voices in a demand for change.”

So how about we drum up some internet outrage of our own here and get these sites to stop stealing from us?