Kindle Deleted Ayn Rand Content

[tompe]

Originally Posted by carld

And how exactly are they going to check every book uploaded? They can't just check the title and author.

And this is enough. You cannot sell a book with the wrong content.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

If Amazon can't verify that they are authorized to distribute the content, then you think it's OK for them to do so? The only penalty should be that when they are informed that it was unauthorized that they just need to take it down. No harm, no foul.

Think about what you're saying. Do you really feel that distributing content should be perfectly OK as long as you're unaware whether the content came from an authorized source or an unauthorized one?

In what way is it any different to a "physical" bookstore? Do you really think that Barnes and Noble, to use a random example, "verify" the legality of every book that is supplied to them by a publisher? I very strongly suspect that they (reasonably) assume that the publisher is not a crook.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

I have not seen anything indication that MobiPocket books uploaded to MobiPocket ends up at Amazon.

They do. I speak from personal experience.

Take a look at:

https://www.mobipocket.com/ebookbase...e/pub_info.asp

You can sign up as a publisher and see for yourself if you choose not to accept my word.

They way it actually works is that you upload your books using the "eBookBase" system at Mobipocket. For each book, you can choose which retailers the book will get distributed to. "Amazon.com" is one of those retailers.

The first time you do this, Amazon then send you some forms to fill in and fax back to them, which are all about US tax payments, etc. Once you fill those in and fax them back to Amazon, your books then appear in the Kindle eBook store.

I've attached a screen shot showing you what the retailer selection page looks like. Amazon's entry is lower down the list.

[carld]

Originally Posted by tompe

And this is enough. You cannot sell a book with the wrong content.

Of course you can. You can upload a Harry Potter book with your name and a different title on it. It's still just as much a copyright violation. If I collect short stories from the net and sell them as a collection under my name and title it's still a copyright violation, and there's no way to check that before the fact without checking every single thing that gets uploaded form everyone.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In what way is it any different to a "physical" bookstore? Do you really think that Barnes and Noble, to use a random example, "verify" the legality of every book that is supplied to them by a publisher? I very strongly suspect that they (reasonably) assume that the publisher is not a crook.

We're not talking about Publishers making mistakes. This thread is about a random user on the internet who uploaded unauthorized content to Amazon, which Amazon then re-distributed without verification of the content.

If you think what Amazon did is perfectly OK, then you're also saying that all P2P sharing should be OK as long as people just take a file down when the copyright owner asks them to. No harm, no foul.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by carld

and there's no way to check that before the fact without checking every single thing that gets uploaded form everyone.

If you're going to sell/distribute content from unknown sources, you should be checking.

Otherwise you're gambling that ALL copyright violations will be handled with a DMCA takedown instead of a lawsuit.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

We're not talking about Publishers making mistakes. This thread is about a random user on the internet who uploaded unauthorized content to Amazon, which Amazon then re-distributed without verification of the content.

If you think what Amazon did is perfectly OK, then you're also saying that all P2P sharing should be OK as long as people just take a file down when the copyright owner asks them to. No harm, no foul.

What I'm asking you is how Amazon can tell the difference between a "legit" publisher and a rogue individual. The internet makes it pretty easy for anyone to look like a legitimate company. If I sign up with Amazon and say that I am the "New York Publishing Corporation" (or whatever), how can Amazon verify that I am not who I claim to be?

[carld]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

We're not talking about Publishers making mistakes. This thread is about a random user on the internet who uploaded unauthorized content to Amazon, which Amazon then re-distributed without verification of the content.

If you think what Amazon did is perfectly OK, then you're also saying that all P2P sharing should be OK as long as people just take a file down when the copyright owner asks them to. No harm, no foul.

Nope, that's an entirely different thing.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

They do. I speak from personal experience.

What you claimed and I quoted was that they uploaded for another region like Australia and that upload automatically was sent to Amazon. I really do not believe it work that way.

In a later posting you said you that they made a mistake and selected all regions which is another claim then the one I quoted.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by carld

Amazon did not, the uploader did.

Amazon directly charges and profits from people downloading the content. Amazon sells the content. Amazon is not "blind" to the content, it's not as if it's encrypted content they have no way to look into. So Amazon is quite responsible for distributing copyrighted material without permission.

Sure, the uploader is responsible too, but (in my view) less so, especially if he/she uploads content that is PD where he/she lives and just overlooks that he/she is implicitly giving permission to Amazon for selling it in the US (something which, anyway, he/she has no right to do, so Amazon should not just trust it). And it can be argued that the copyright infringement on Amazon's part was unintentional and good-willing, but it's still there.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by carld

Of course you can. You can upload a Harry Potter book with your name and a different title on it. It's still just as much a copyright violation. If I collect short stories from the net and sell them as a collection under my name and title it's still a copyright violation, and there's no way to check that before the fact without checking every single thing that gets uploaded form everyone.

Yes, you can sell some copies but what I meant is that you will not sell many copies before somebody notice that the content is wrong and report the book so that it is removed. So there is no economical reason for doing that. And it is probably fraud or something else which will be prosecuted as a crime.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

What you claimed and I quoted was that they uploaded for another region like Australia and that upload automatically was sent to Amazon. I really do not believe it work that way.

In a later posting you said you that they made a mistake and selected all regions which is another claim then the one I quoted.

You select the retailers to whom your books should be sent. That defaults to "All Retailers". I have attached a screen shot to my previous post #304 above to illustrate this.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You select the retailers to whom your books should be sent. That defaults to "All Retailers". I have attached a screen shot to my previous post #304 above to illustrate this.

Yes, that is a reasonable way for it to work. I realize now that the text I commented on can be read in two ways. I probably read it in a different way then you intended it to be read.

[carld]

Originally Posted by tompe

Yes, you can sell some copies but what I meant is that you will not sell many copies before somebody notice that the content is wrong and report the book so that it is removed. So there is no economical reason for doing that. And it is probably fraud or something else which will be prosecuted as a crime.

Well of course, that's what I've been saying. Remove the copyright violations as they are discovered. That's the way everyone who does this sort of thing operates. That's not good enough for some people though, they single out Amazon as having to pre-screen everything.

Carl

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

What I'm asking you is how Amazon can tell the difference between a "legit" publisher and a rogue individual. The internet makes it pretty easy for anyone to look like a legitimate company. If I sign up with Amazon and say that I am the "New York Publishing Corporation" (or whatever), how can Amazon verify that I am not who I claim to be?

So a user downloading content from P2P isn't expected to to be able to tell the difference between a legitimate distributor and a rogue individual. So if that user turns around and shares the same file back out, everything is OK?