I assumed money would exchange hands, but if it did or not doesn’t matter. No one, until I saw it, seemed to have any problem with the post, it even had a few likes. But I had a problem and I made it known. Theft is theft and this was theft. The person who posted that advert is a criminal. There’s no ambiguity here: those writers earn royalties on each and every one of their books sold, both print books and ebooks. But this person was taking copyrighted material and selling it as if he’d been licenced to do so. That’s illegal. It’s irrelevant if the person was selling the pirated ebooks or not, they were copying copyrighted material and that is illegal.
We really need to change our mentality in this country around copyright or the arts will never thrive. We need stricter laws and enforcement. In the USA for example, the law provides for penalties from $2 to $150,000, including all legal fees, the infringer also has to pay the actual dollar amount earned on the infringement, and the infringer can serve jail time.
