Comic Book Resources

A Travesty of Copyright Theft

• by Brian Cronin
• in General

On his website, Luc Latulippe revealed some terrible news about a friend of his, Darren Di Lieto, who essentially had his entire website downloaded (his drawings as well as a number of interviews he has done), printed out as a 350-page book and then published by a Hong Kong-based company, who is selling the book for $100 (here is a scan by Di Lieto of the cover).

The worst thing about this situation is that, legally, there is not much Di Lieto can really do (without spending an unreasonably large amount of money). His options here consist mostly of searching for the re-sellers of the book, and sending them cease and desist letters. Perhaps also notify websites that are selling the book that the book that they are selling is infringed copyrights, so that it would be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Otherwise, while corporations inside Hong Kong technically are governed by the same basic system of laws as the United Kingdom, so at least in theory you would be able to pursue an infringement action, you’d first have to even find the corporation, which is nearly impossible (there is no record of the publisher, “Great Creativity organization,” existing, that I have seen - and Di Lieto notes that the contact info in the book is fake, as well). In addition, the ISBN they’re using is fake. We know the identity of the distributor of the book, though. The distributor is the Azur Corporation, although apparently attempts to contact them have failed, as well.

Here is a scan by Di Lieto of the interior…

This is a pretty awful thing to happen to a creator, and I only hope that by continuing to spread the news of this scam, it will help cripple the attempts to sell the book (and hopefully scare them off from doing this to a different person in the future).

If you want to voice your support and/or your anger (and any other suggestions for actions Di Lieto try), go to Latulippe’s website here.