Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But this, if you recall, Dennis, was precisely the reason that Amazon pulled George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four". It had been uploaded via the Mobipocket "eBookBase" system by a publisher for whom it was in the public domain, and found its way to Amazon, which it shouldn't have done. The book is still in copyright in the US, and has a US rights-holder, who (not unreasonably) objected to this violation of their rights (they were selling the "legit" US edition in the Kindle store), leading to Amazon pulling the edition that wasn't legal to sell in the US.
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Yes, but how does that disagree with anything I've said?
There was a US rights holder where it isn't PD selling an electronic edition, who understandably squawked about the illegal-over-here PD version. For them, it was money.
But note that
Amazon did not vet the PD version when it was uploaded and say "Oops, can't offer that!" They simply removed it when they got a complaint.
That's what everyone will do. Witness MR's boilerplate about reporting rights violations all over the eBook Uploads area. It probably isn't
possible to check the worldwide rights status of every offering if you are Amazon, Fictionwise, or the like. All you can do is make clear you do not intentionally offer stuff in rights violation, provide a simple means for reporting them, and take the offenders down when reported.
Respecting publishing
territories is a different matter. a publisher can tell Amazon "We have the rights to offer the book in the following countries..." and Amazon can use geo-location based on the IP address of the user to determine whether they can buy that edition. (Yes, there are ways around this with proxies, but the majority of users won't know how to do that.)
The laws governing intellectual property rights tend to be set up to require you as the rights holder to defend them. It's largely on you to look for and take action about rights violations, with the corollary that if you
don't defend your rights, you may lose them.
For example, some years back some fans wrote to SF/fantasy writer Katherine Kurtz. They wanted her permission publish a magazine of fan fiction set in her Deryni universe, which they would then
sell. Kurtz sad "no".
They did it anyway. Katherine
had to sue, or risk losing rights to her own creations. She sued, won, and the fans were out large amounts of money for legal fees, court costs, and ads in the relevant trade papers admitting that Katherine had the rights and they had violated them.
Because the rights holder must police them, money is a factor. It may be a simple matter of a take down request, assuming you can easily prove you
are the rights holder. It may require hiring a lawyer and filing suit. It takes time, and probably costs money, so it's more likely to be done if the rights holder sees money involved.
So Fictionwise isn't going to try to check the rights status of every book they offer. How could they? They'll offer the book, and apologize and take it down if someone documents that it
is a rights violation, and the usual reason someone will do that is over money.
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Dennis