Blogs | The Society of Authors

I could spend my whole life sending pointless take-down notices, so I send none. Lots of those sites don't even have any books; they are just harvesting email addresses or depositing the digital equivalent of doggy dung, not in a plastic bag but on the gullible consumer's device. This style of piracy is part of the landscape. Like shops trying to stop shoplifting, it's a fight that will never be won, though we can possibly pick off a few of the more amateur attempts.

But this year has seen something rather different, involving large and generally respectable organisations from public libraries to the BBC.