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Originally Posted by ghostwheel
Is there any case where the books were recalled from the buyers? I have never heard of something like that. I think the usual procedure is that one calculates how many times the book was sold and the violator has to pay the copyright holder for the pleasure.
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I've never heard of a physical recall either -- IMO it would be impossible in most cases, especially back in the 80's when most of the copies would have been paid for in cash.
You're correct in that one way in calculating damages in a pbook case would be to figure out the legitimate publisher's lost profit on each copy sold. This amount could be a lot more than any actual profits the infringing publisher made.
This is largely a fiction -- if the book had only been available at whatever price the publisher charged, there would be fewer sales, inevitably, yet that's how its done. (Tangentially, this is also why the MPAA/RIAA come up with such ridiculous numbers every time they claim how much they lose to illegal downloading -- by assuming every illegal download would have been a sale at full price.)
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What happened here? Did amazon or the wrongful publisher pay the copyright holder anything? Was a criminal/civil case opened? Is it simply that amazon figured that stealing the books back from the owners for $0.99 per copy was cheaper than paying the copyright holder?
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As far as I know there was no action by the legitimate copyright holder -- that would be public knowledge. Amazon was trying to preempt any claim that it knowingly participated in the copyright violation by pulling the book from sale, refunding the purchase price and deleting the books.
Amazon and/or the uploader wouldn't necessarily have been liable for $.99 cents a copy -- they could be liable for the amount of
lost profit on each book, which could be a lot more, plus attorney fees, etc.