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Originally Posted by pshrynk
But my point here is that the ayn Rand books are owned by the heirs of her estate. If the books are sold, they should be the ones getting the money for it. JK Rowling got the money for the early sales of HP.
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Agreed, but that is between the seller and the owner. In the case of the Amazon books, the customer did nothing wrong.
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My further point is that the booksellers did not have means to pull the books back, but Amazon did. I think that they may have had to do this, or they would have been liable to the estate for some fairly significant damages.
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Having the means to pull the books back does not mean they have the legal right to pull them back. In the case of the Harry Potter books, I seriously doubt it would have been legal for them to force customers to return those books, even if they had the means. The same is true here. The customer made a legal purchase. The only ones who violated copyright are Amazon and the original uploader. To put it another way, buying the books was legal, selling them was not.
Whether or not the unauthorized distributors pull the books back has nothing to do with their liability. There is nothing in copyright law that says you are off the hook if you "undo" the infringement. The copyright violation occurred, regardless of whether or not Amazon deletes the books off of their customer's devices.