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Originally Posted by rlauzon
And how, exactly, does Amazon validate them?
One of the big problems with the current state of copyright in the world is that there is no directory of who owns what content.
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They could insist on a signed contract, not a click-button agreement, that the person submitting the material has the rights to do so.
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It's fairly easy to determine who owns the rights to something like Harry Potter or Heinlein, but what about something a no-name author put out a few years back?
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They could also assign someone on their staff to at least google for each book submitted--it won't fix the no-name/midlist author problem, but it'd allow them to say, "Gee, I wonder if Aaron Smith,
P1R4T0RZ@freemail.com, really does have the rights to distribute the Harry Potter books?"
Right now, Amazon's legal stance is the same is thepiratebay's: "but they totally clicked on the button that said they had the right to upload this! And we'll remove it right away if we get DMCA complaints!"
Amazon's situation has the added twist that they're directly profiting from their lack of review of the content uploaded to their site.
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Or how about the Doc Savage and The Shadow stories where we have a company (Conde Nast) who says that they own the rights, but others (Blackmask) saying that they are in the public domain. (Story here.)
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Those are issues for the courts; Amazon's not likely liable if they believed the wrong side (whatever that turns out to be).
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Of course, it would be a really nice thing if Amazon would pay to do all the leg work to determine the ownership of all these "abandoned" works, but I doubt that they could afford it (and it probably wouldn't be worth it).
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Obscure or questionable works aren't the issue here--nobody's arguing that maybe the Harry Potter books really are in the public domain; Amazon's just refusing to preemptively look at what's uploaded to their servers.
I think they're on pretty thin ice where safe harbor is concerned, because they're taking a cut of every ebook sold; they have an obvious interest in *not* managing their content better. In case of lawsuit, they'd have to prove that wasn't part of the reason for not reviewing books & getting real contracts before they sell them.