Search and Rescue

When bestselling crime writer Mark Billingham signed up to Google Alerts, the web monitoring service, he expected the alerts to be about discussions of his books or of Tom Thorne, the lead character in his novels. But what he received made shocking reading. Listed were a torrent of filesharing sites offering ripped-off copies of his novels. "75 percent of the sites I was alerted to were piracy sites," he says. "... Dealing with the pirates is like fighting the Hydra. As soon as you shut down one link, another three spring up elsewhere."

For Billingham, like other authors, the monitoring service has turned into a monthly catalogue of copyright theft. Infringements are passed to his publisher, Little, Brown, and removal orders - known in the trade as "take down notices" sent to Google so that the link is removed. "But it is never for long", says the crime writer, his voice edged with frustration: "Within weeks fresh links appear."