If instead of "pirates"...

[Dulin's Books]

the customers who purchased the book from Amazon are not pirates. they believed they were buying legitimate offerings. Amazon is not a pirate because they were selling what was thought to be legitimate offerings. The publisher of the 1984 version in question is not a pirate because they believed they were legitimately allowed to sell the work in question to those customers. when the mistake was found both amazon AND the publisher stopped offering the work to those customers in that location. the publisher, however innocently the mistake was made, probably would have been fined by which ever agency is responsible for that sort of thing had it been the agency that found the error.

Amazon should never have the right to go back in to the individual devices and claw back the books. You sell me the book and find out later you shouldnt have, you can ASK for it back. but Im under no obligation to do so. If you come to my house and TAKE the book well thats just stealing.

[apbschmitz]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

Amazon should never have the right to go back in to the individual devices and claw back the books. You sell me the book and find out later you shouldnt have, you can ASK for it back. but Im under no obligation to do so. If you come to my house and TAKE the book well thats just stealing.

Might want to check your local laws on that one. Here's Wikipedia's version of the law on receipt of stolen property:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Possession of stolen goods is a crime in which an individual has bought, been given, or acquired stolen goods some other way.

"In many countries, if an individual has accepted possession of goods or property and knew they were stolen, then the individual is typically charged with a misdemeanor or felony, depending on the value of the stolen goods. If the individual did not know the goods were stolen, then the goods are returned to the owner and the individual is not prosecuted. However, there are often exceptions, due to the difficulty of proving or disproving an individual's knowledge that the goods were stolen."

[Dulin's Books]

the goods weren't stolen. the book is in the public domain in some places and not others. the publisher packaged the work as an ebook for sale and accidentally sold it in places where the book was not yet in the public domain- where it did not have the right to. the customer is not in possession of stolen goods- more like mistakenly shipped goods.

if the books were physical copies its like a chain book store accidentally shipping a box of books to one of their stores in the US instead of the store in Canada. The books get shelved and a few get purchased prior to the mistake being realized. no one goes to the receipts for that day, looks at the addresses on the CC cards, goes to peoples' homes , enters and retrieves those copies. mistakes happen.

now if there is maliciousness or purpose behind the shipment and not just a mistake and the police are called and they have built a case and there are indictments and there are warrants- well yes then the customer has to give them up. and they can attempt to get theri money back from the company. but thats many steps removed from the store coming in and getting it back

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

the customers who purchased the book from Amazon are not pirates. they believed they were buying legitimate offerings. Amazon is not a pirate because they were selling what was thought to be legitimate offerings. The publisher of the 1984 version in question is not a pirate because they believed they were legitimately allowed to sell the work in question to those customers. when the mistake was found both amazon AND the publisher stopped offering the work to those customers in that location. the publisher, however innocently the mistake was made, probably would have been fined by which ever agency is responsible for that sort of thing had it been the agency that found the error.

So you are basing piracy/not-piracy on what the infringing person believes? It's not like it was the first time that they had illegal copies. I can't find the thread where I first heard about this, but they were saying that Amazon was selling at one point the Harry Potter ebooks, and despite this and the 1984 thing, and the fact that considering the size of Amazon there is no cheap and easy was to check all of the submissions making it possible for infringing works to get uploaded, they don't consider it their obligation to check the validity of what they purchase.

What do you call a website that has been known for repeatedly hosting copyright infringing works? What do you call the people that download from that website?

[Dulin's Books]

no . a person can still be in violation of a law they dont know about. in my post above I am taking about that one particular case. if anyone finds that a particular company/site is violating / infringing copy repeatedly then that company is either incompetent or willfully ignorant. either way they have to clean up their act or get hit with criminal charges.

[morriss003]

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

Speaking as a guy who had a novel published back in the 80s, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I would be grateful if anyone who decided to liberate my novels would first make the effort of contacting me. I could then be asked if I intended to reclaim the rights from the original publisher and republish myself. Most living authors probably aren't that hard to find. This seems like a basic courtesy before grabbing somebody else's stuff.

I basically agree with you, but I have to admit that I like to see pressure put on the publisher/author to reclaim the rights to some of the books that I would like to see reissued. I have read three of the Guinevere Jones series that was written by Jane Ann Krentz long ago, but I cannot bring myself to pay $45 dollars for the last one on Ebay.