Someone with the comments name of dmargulis made this observation:
“Some (most? all?) of the "pirate" sites are nothing of the sort. They are phishing sites, pretending to offer all manner of things for download, including every book in print, that they don't actually have and that they have never furnished to anyone. The goal is to get the site visitor to provide credit card information or other personal data. The problem for the author is that, in avoiding victimization by the phishing scam, you can't verify that any given site in fact provides a pirated copy of anything at all.”
“Some (most? all?) of the "pirate" sites are nothing of the sort. They are phishing sites, pretending to offer all manner of things for download, including every book in print, that they don't actually have and that they have never furnished to anyone. The goal is to get the site visitor to provide credit card information or other personal data. The problem for the author is that, in avoiding victimization by the phishing scam, you can't verify that any given site in fact provides a pirated copy of anything at all.”
I know from my own experience in trying to track down and stop unauthorized files of my “Your Writing Coach” book that not ALL pirate sites are phishing sites, but this does explain a lot. I did encounter sites that asked you to pay, via credit card, a small registration fee before you were eligible to download anything (naturally I didn’t). I can’t say I have too much sympathy for anybody who is suckered that way in hopes of being able to download pirated files. But it does blur the picture of just how much print piracy is going on.
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