Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
LMB went over the top when she used the 'P' word
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I most definitely agree with this. If I didn't already have all her works that I'm interested in her comment might make me also refuse to buy more-but I don't think it'd make me disparage her in return. At least not publicly. Ignore her, yes, but not disparage her.
If I owned one of the sites she called 'pirate' sites then I might think about suing her. She would have a definite right to ask me to stop distributing her books but has no right to do so in a disparaging way assuming there's a reason I might reasonably believe it's OK to do so. The terms you quote are such a reason-although legally they only give you the right to copy, not to distribute. (I'm not sure how a court decision would rule on it, they might hold that including the 'no charge' term implicitly gives the right to distribute as it makes little sense otherwise. But then courts do prefer explicit terms in contracts to implicit so I'm not really sure how that would go.)
Anyway, it's still her right to ask sites that she did not directly give distribution rights to to stop distributing her books. Even doing it rudely, as it appears she did, doesn't remove those rights. (Sometimes I wish rudeness were punishable but it isn't.) As you pointed out she'll probably never be totally successful in getting distribution of the 'free' versions to stop but that's how it seems to be on the Internet and it doesn't affect her rights. The only question I can see is how long she intends to keep trying.