Selling Other's Comments?

A site visitor asks:

What if someone takes your written words from various blogs, puts them in a book and adds defaming comments of their own and then SELLS the book? I, along with a number of friends and acquaintances, have had this done to us by one person. Do we have any recourse?

As I state on in my article about Online Copyright Issues, anything you write you own the copyright to and that person, if they had any e-ethics should have contacted you for your permission to include your writings in their book.

They can make any comments they like defaming or otherwise--that isn't really the issue--everyone can have an opinion. The issue is using your content that you wrote in a book that they are commercially gaining from without your permission.

At this point your only recourse would be to bring legal action against the party in question and that can get very expensive fast. Another option, would be to check where their Web site is hosted and then review their hosting company's DMCA (also noted in the above article) clause and make them aware that the book they are selling is infringing on your copyright by including your posts without your permission.