Kerala   

Cyber piracy of books unearthed

By Our Special Correspondent

KOCHI, JUNE 3. A Russian Internet Service Provider, Yandex, has closed two websites that were engaged in selling pirated versions of the fluent English self-study books by a Kochi-based publisher.

The two copyright-infringing websites were http://englishwell.narod.ru and http://goodeng. narod.ru. They had been built exclusively for the purpose of selling on the black market the books in the `Fluentzy' series by Prof. Kev Nair. The two websites had been constructed by illegally copying texts from the website www.fluentzy.com of the Kochi-based Adult Faculties Council and from seven of the books written by Prof. Kev Nair. The infringers had carefully removed all references to Prof. Kev Nair, the Adult Faculties Council and to India, the country of origin of the copyrighted books, before using the copied stretches of text on the two websites. The illegal websites had been charging an exorbitant premium of more than 250 per cent over and above the published price for each of Prof. Nair's books.

The operators of the two websites were anonymous. The websites did not carry any contact information about them on their websites - except for an impersonal e-mail address each. The website operators had not given any name or phone number or fax number or any land address on the websites. The websites did not say whose websites they were, or who the webmasters were, or who owned them or who were responsible for operating them. Those who wanted to buy the books were asked to contact the operators of the websites at an e-mail address.

The Adult Faculties Council, the authorised publishers of these books, discovered what was going on as soon as the two websites started the copyright-infringing activity. After a brief fact-finding surveillance, they filed a notification of commercial piracy and copyright infringement with Yandex along with an elaborate report, as Yandex was found to be the Internet Service Provider for the two websites.

The ISP acted promptly, and closed both the sites summarily within 24 hours.

This incident is considered significant against the backdrop of a growing feeling among developing countries that items of intellectual property having unique value are being systematically smuggled out of those countries into developed countries for mindless commercial exploitation.

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