Lisa Loucks-Christenson Investigates
The Circus, the Pirate Site, and the Record That Would Not Disappear
By Lisa Loucks-Christenson
Thursday, August 27, 2026 | 1:49 a.m. CDT
Rochester Sun Times News
There is a point when copyright infringement stops sounding like a legal term and begins to feel like a circus.
Not the kind with childhood wonder. The other kind: a spectacle built around denial, distraction, performance, and the expectation that the person whose work was taken will eventually become too exhausted to keep standing.
I have had a front-row seat.
I watched the clowns. I watched the ring. I watched the trick-pony show turn into a dog-and-pony performance. I watched people swing from trapezes without a net below them—and I kept wondering who would pay when they fell.
Their authors might pay. Mine might pay. Families might pay. Creators already carrying grief, sickness, financial pressure, deadlines, and dreams might pay.
And mine already had.
The decision to let authors go
My name was under malicious attack over one author, though the story was framed to make it sound like there were more. I kept the emails. I retained the online record. I preserved the messages, contracts, publication history, original manuscripts, illustrations, photographs, captions, source files, and correspondence.
As a publisher and investigative journalist, I know documentation matters.
The conflict became a threat not only to me, but to the authors connected to my publishing work. They had advances. They had manuscripts. They had plans. Some begged to stay.
I chose to let them go.
Not because I stopped believing in them. Not because I wanted the money back. I did not demand repayment of their advances. They kept what they had earned because I believed in them and would not make them pay for a battle they did not create.
I thought of King Solomon.
Sometimes wisdom means refusing to let people you care about be pulled apart because another person has decided to build a spectacle. Sometimes protecting people means absorbing a loss yourself rather than requiring them to stand beside you in the ring.
One author chose a different path.
One.
The records I preserved raised serious concerns about derivative work, look-alike cover presentation and trade dress, copied or substantially similar content, and damaging statements directed at me within material tied to the dispute. My original publication history, contracts, files, dates, and creative materials tell a record that differs sharply from the claims made against me.
Contracts do not bleed.
People do.
Records do not forget.
Filing the reports anyway
I filed reports.
I filed through IC3. I submitted FBI tips. I contacted the Rochester Police Department. I reached out to other state, federal, international, and relevant agencies and reporting channels.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Not because I expected a rapid rescue. Not because I believed an overwhelmed department would suddenly have the time, staff, jurisdiction, resources, or authority to solve every intellectual-property crime, online threat, or cross-border allegation placed before it.
I filed because I was protecting the record.
I was protecting my name.
I was protecting my authors.
I was protecting my family.
I was protecting my publishing house.
For a victim, repeated reporting can become its own injury. You explain the facts, organize the materials, provide the links, submit the screenshots, answer questions, and wait. Sometimes you receive no meaningful response. Sometimes you are left feeling as if reporting the harm has made you the problem—another file, another call, another burden for already overworked departments.
But I filed anyway.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Because silence can be twisted. Because unreported misconduct can later be portrayed as though it never happened. Because a report date, an intake number, an email, a submitted tip, a screenshot, and a contemporaneous record may matter long after the immediate response has failed to arrive.
I was not doing it for a reward.
I gained nothing from the time, the documentation, or the emotional cost. Yet I refused to allow brazen efforts to conquer my life one title at a time, one photograph at a time, one illustration at a time, one accusation at a time.
I refused to let anyone strip away my life’s work without preserving the truth.
What the pirate site revealed
I did what I was told to do years ago by one officer: I stood the rest of time.
I did not live in the past. I kept creating.
I returned to the field. I shot photographs in storms. I ruined equipment. I endured the mosquitoes people claimed did not exist. I went back for more images. I wrote, illustrated, documented, researched, published, and continued the work I believe I was put here to do.
Then I found a pirate site.
Twenty-nine of my books were there, distributed in formats I never created, approved, or intended. The books existed outside their proper publication channels, stripped from the control every author and publisher works to preserve.
And there, among my books, was material connected to the author at the center of the earlier conflict.
The comparison was not subtle.
My copyright dates appeared.
The other claimed publication dates appeared.
My trade dress appeared.
The look-alike presentation appeared.
The original publication history was available to examine. My books, language, work, and timeline existed alongside claims that one of my books had supposedly never been published.
That is the problem with a record.
You can deny it. You can attack the person who made it. You can insist something never happened.
But you cannot make original publication dates disappear. You cannot erase contracts by wishing them away. You cannot remove the history held in drafts, illustration files, source photographs, captions, emails, registrations, archived pages, and original materials.
Truth has a way of surfacing.
This time, it surfaced through a pirate site.
The price of “just sue”
The public often hears a simple response: “Just hire a lawyer.”
That response ignores the practical reality of intellectual-property litigation.
A creator cannot walk into a law office as though shopping in a grocery store, select justice from an aisle, pay at the register, and leave with a resolution. A serious copyright matter can require substantial evidence review, jurisdictional analysis, attorney research, discovery, filings, expert review, testimony, and years of litigation.
A large retainer may be required just for counsel to assess whether a case has merit, a viable venue, recoverable damages, or a practical path forward. I have heard estimates around $85,000 merely to open a major intellectual-property matter with top litigation counsel.
I once contacted a leading litigator in California. He wrote back and asked why I was reaching out from Minnesota.
My answer was simple: I had exhausted Minnesota.
That did not mean I was too old to fight. It did not mean I was too broke to bring a case. It meant I understood the difference between a fight worth preparing for and a circus intended to drain the money, health, time, family, and creativity of the person being targeted.
The record matters
To every author, photographer, illustrator, filmmaker, journalist, musician, publisher, and creator: preserve your work.
Keep your manuscripts, drafts, contracts, correspondence, source files, metadata, captions, original images, publication records, invoices, screenshots, registrations, and version history. Store them securely in more than one place.
Do not assume that a denial makes the truth disappear.
It does not.
I have been creating for six decades. I began at eight years old and was nationally published a few years later. I have spent my life writing books, photographing wildlife, illustrating stories, reporting investigations, documenting environmental and community issues, and telling stories intended to help others see what they might otherwise miss.
I believe God sees what people try to bury.
I believe evidence matters.
I believe you can survive theft, attacks, betrayal, and attempts to erase your work.
You do not have to live inside someone else’s circus.
Watch it if you must. Keep the ticket if you need it as evidence. But do not live on peanuts while someone else performs with your work.
Look up.
Everything you need is up there.
About the columnist: Lisa Loucks-Christenson is the founder and publisher of Rochester Sun Times News and the creator of Lisa Loucks-Christenson Investigates. She is an award-winning author, illustrator, photographer, investigative photojournalist, documentary filmmaker, and publisher whose work covers wildlife, environmental issues, community matters, publishing, and investigations. Her career spans more than five decades of storytelling and creative work.