Amazon's Book Piracy Problem
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We just need to tighten what would be reasonable standard for middlemen to assure copyright is not violated.
This "just" hasn't happened for several years, so what makes you think anyone will do anything about it?
Since Amazon would clearly act if their own products or brands were impacted it stands to reason that not only are they complicit in committing that crime and providing assistance but also that they abuse their position to selectively enforce rules.
Of course there's no incentive to do anything to change this particularly in lobby driven parts of the world where the benefit of the company is paramount. After all the company is the one filling the pockets of legislators and judges.
The issue with Amazon is not that their services can enable copyright violation (any copy machine can do that), but that even if they're notified of such violations, they don't act on them in a decisive way. I doubt anyone would really complain about book piracy if authors could say "hey this book is in print from so and so publisher, so don't allow third parties other than the publisher to sell it" and Amazon acted on it. Or if authors had a way to say "hey Amazon I'm the owner of this ISBN so other formats for this book need my approval to be listed."
Amazon also operate a Print On Demand service, which would make them the publisher as well, for PoD products:
https://www.amazon.com/Print-Demand-Book-Publishing-Self-Pub...
If someone knowingly sells fraudulent or counterfeit goods, no, they're not "just a middleman."
- Not anymore, we eat yesterday the last one..."
I suspect there's language in Amazon's sale / author contract that tries to limit this. Given the widespread nature of the abuse, puncturing such terms should be reasonably viable.
17 USC 106 lists among exclusive rights:
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106
And § 501 - Infringement of copyright:
(a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. For purposes of this chapter (other than section 506), any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A(a). As used in this subsection, the term “anyone” includes any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his or her official capacity. Any State, and any such instrumentality, officer, or employee, shall be subject to the provisions of this title in the same manner and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/501
There's a strong case for criminal liability under § 506 - Criminal offenses, see:
Almost nobody ever notices.
- Wordery (UK-based, but free worldwide shipping)
- Book Depository (Owned by Amazon but appears to operately seprately from Amazon. Free worldwide shipping)
- Bookshop.org (US, UK and Spain)
UK-only
- Books etc (free UK delivery)
- Hive (free UK delivery)
- Blackwells (free UK delivery)
- Foyles (free UK delivery over £25)
- Waterstones (free UK delivery over £25)
- WHSmith (free UK delivery over £30)
It's also possible to buy titles direct from some publishers.
- hpb.com (half price books)
At least in store, HPB sells at the half the cover price (modulo collectibility). This makes getting into 60s/70s scifi schlock especially cheap.
Every single successful author seems to have hit this on Amazon. It seems like this should be worth a stupid amount of money and well worth taking Amazon on.
However, they currently don't do that - Everything gets put anywhere there is space.
There are some areas where stuff is put all together, like for example, there may be a shelf space full of a particular brand of superglue. If more comes in, even from a different vendor, as long as it is given the same ASIN (I think that's how it works - the ASIN is Amazon's internal ID system, sort of) then you can put that superglue with the other superglue in the same shelf space. That means you don't know who's superglue came from what vendor!
So if you received fake superglue and it came out of that shelf with superglue from 10 different vendors, which one sold you the fake?
It's a brilliant system all round: storage is cheap so the vendor doesn't pay high costs, Amazon keeps their costs low as their storage space is fully utilized.
The downside is that counterfeit orgs know this and it's easy to game!
Amazon can legitimately say that they don't know which vendor is the guilty party and no one can prove that vendor X sent in dodgy goods. Not sure if that's a legal defense or not but they have lots of money and you don't!
In fact, I remember someone a few years back on HN mentioned they were kicked off Amazon due to selling counterfeit DVD's (maybe CD's!) even though they were co-mingled so there was no way to tell.
The work/costs could possibly be even be pushed towards the superglue providers.
That's the crux of the problem.
Items from different vendors should have different ASINs.
Wait, they don’t require this now?
I couldn't decide what to do with it. It stood untouched until the expiration date, when I tossed it.
I have no idea if it was good or bad, but I've gotten enough fakes from both that it wasn't worth the risk.
> drastically lower the user experience
> with my book).
But it would also be more accessible for people who are color blind, which would be cool.
Yes, it's possible to read on an emissive tablet, and there are some (limited) colour e-book readers. But most are at best greyscale, if not strictly black-and-white.
World of difference between just creating a book torrent and actually putting it up for sale and making a profit.