Can't tell much from that, yet. If the plaintiff can prove their case, they should win. But all you have here is a ruling on Amazon's motion to dismiss, where the judge has to interpret things in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. What you're saying when you file this kind of motion to dismiss is that even if everything the Plaintiff says is true, there is no legal claim. Looks like the judge dismissed one of the copyright claims, but not the other. There hasn't even been a trial yet, much less a finding of infringement.
How do you suggest that they do that? Automate a process that checks vast numbers of web pages to look for the same text? And then what? Suppose I posted my work online previously, and then I want to publish it. Only their automated process finds my prior posting and refuses to publish it, even though I'm the original author. OK, so they come back to me and if I affirm I am the original author, they go ahead and publish it anyway. And now you're back in the same position, except the infringing seller simply has to go through one more step of affirming they own the material (which they already have to do to publish it).
I think it's worth a check if they confirm for original work from the "author". Even if it brings you back to square 1, there's always reminding a possible plagiarist the guilt of using someone else's work.
though i've only done a slew of paralegal work and am not an actual attorney, as steerpike is, i know enough about the law in general and about copyright law in particular, to be in full support of all he has said... he knows what he's talking about and is right on all counts, imo... to argue with his knowledge-based opinions and conclusions serves no purpose that i can see... and he's giving us and the op the benefit of $250-$400+/hour legal advice for free! thanks, counselor! hugs, maia
Maybe. I don't know enough about the technical challenges involved to know what it would take to implement it. If it could be done reasonably, then it's not a bad idea. You do already have to affirm that you own the rights to what you're publishing, however.
Thanks, maia, that's very kind of you. I do enjoy a good discussion, and haven't yet met any lawyers who are never wrong (getting them to admit it is another thing ). I do enjoy working with artists and writers, though, and I'm always interested in learning new things. Recently, I helped a production company get signatory status with the Writer's Guild of America, and worked on a collaboration agreement for two screenwriters who were involved in the project. That was a learning experience in and of itself, and if I can pass along anything of value on the forums I'm happy to do it. I try to speak in general terms, though, and anyone contemplated legal action should find a good attorney and sit down and talk to them, and get the benefit of a full analysis of their situation
I didn't say it was a settled case. It may not be for many years. It was simply interesting because of the legal principle involved of a duty to remove copyrighted materials regardless of whatever fine print is in one's customer contracts.
Update: I have yet to hear word back from Amazon regarding them taking down the notice, but something interesting just happened. I was contacted by DIP Press. Like 2-3 weeks ago I had sent them this story (before all the plagiarism stuff). And they just emailed me back saying they wanted to publish my book... I'm assuming this is a mostly online thing by the looks of the author agreement. I, of course, immediately let them know about the plagiarism issue just for full disclosure purposes. I dont know if that changes anything. If it does... oh well. Does DIP Press pass the sniff test for you guys? I've posted similar threads in the past and they were far more shady than these people sound. But being the cynical person I am, I'm still hesitant to make any big decision like this. Also, I'm pretty sure they know about the free version of the story because that was the way that the person got a hold of me. I'm hesitant to just copy/paste the entire author agreement, for some reason that sounds like a bad idea, but if you have questions about it I can probably answer them. http://www.dip-press.com/
They look new, and aren't listed in Preditors and Editors. They may not have much of a customer base yet. Do they want any money up front from you and/or do they own the rights to your book when you sign on and for how long?
I would just try googling them, if there's anything about them out there, that would be the best way to find it. From what I saw, they don't seem too legit though...
It's a 2 year agreement and then the rights go fully back to me. And I get something like 40% in royalties of copies distributed through third party vendors after they take out refunds, credits and printing costs.
Yeah... seaching via google brings up a couple of results of angry clients. Doesn't sound promising. I'm glad I didn't just auto-sign the deal.
I also did a google search on DIP Press, and there are enough warning signs for me to not consider them and strongly recommend others also to not consider any of their offers. I'm still interested in hearing how the topic of this thread is going and how it'll end. Right now it looks like we just wait, but I'm very bothered by the fact that Amazon has not seemingly done anything - freezing sales, suspending the account, taking down the books, or something similar. After all, there have been dozens of complaints for about eight weeks now.
We wheels need to squeak louder. Are there any writer's unions that anyone knows of? I just left a voicemail for the local writer's association to see if they were interested in adding their voice. Many of the other plagiarized authors are getting involved.
It will be interesting to see. I wonder how many of those complaints were submitting through their established process. As I said above, in my experience many of these companies won't do anything unless the complaint goes through that process. The official processes usually require that the complaint come from the copyright owner or someone authorized to act on their behalf. I usually have pretty good luck with Amazon, but the letters I send are coming on law firm letterhead, so that may help. If you can get the copyright owners of the other plagiarized materials to submit complaints, the process might move faster. But they should remove the material even if there is just one infringing story. The question is, what verification procedure are they using? And do they give the person who listed the book a chance to respond? It would be dead simple to fake original authorship and send in a take down request of someone else's work, so I presume they do a little more due diligence when it comes to copyright take down requests. Trademark requests are simpler, because the mark is either being used or not and you can prove ownership of a registered mark easily enough (registration might have been of similar benefit here, and if the work doesn't come down I'd submit again after the registration has been filed).
From my point of view, you are letting Amazon off the hook as if they bear minimal responsibility to police their own site. I understand your point of view, don't get me wrong, but I definitely don't share it. They are an extremely profitable business. There's no question they have the resources should they choose to apply them. They merely need to expand the department that deals with this problem. It's not dependent upon some legal technicality the original authors need to follow to protect their own work. Amazon has the option to set any policy up they want to. They are much less likely to be legally liable for halting a sale than they are likely to be legally liable for knowingly selling stolen property. A pawn shop cannot sell stolen property. It's not up to the owner of the stolen items to find them and let the shop know the goods are stolen, let alone jump through some contrived formal paper hoops to stop the sale. The victim of the thief needs to have reported the theft to the police, a third party, but that is not what motivates the pawn shop to stop the sale. The shop owner is motivated to verify the property legally belongs to the person who wishes to sell or pawn the item or the shop owner risks the possibility of financial loss. In the case of Amazon, there is no financial incentive for them to identify and remove stolen goods that are for sale that I can see. There needs to be. It's not a legal concern only remedied by the original authors following a legal procedure. Amazon simply chooses to provide limited resources to address the problem and you seem willing to excuse that minimal resource application by blaming the authors for some fabricated-by-Amazon technical barrier, and/or claiming that the volume of goods on the site somehow limits what Amazon can do. Nonsense, it's a matter of applied resources, not a matter of an impossible task. Here's where I believe we differ. You seem to be saying you believe Amazon has a reasonable procedure that you think may require the original author to file a formal complaint via one, and only one, procedure. And you think it is reasonable that Amazon limit action only to cases where all the 'i's are dotted and the 't's crossed. I believe we are seeing this slow to act response because Amazon chooses to invest as little as possible in protecting authors. Rather than supporting the authors whose work is the basis for the success of the company, they choose to not give a damn. What you see as reasonable, I see as a lack of corporate social responsibility. I don't accept that we the public, and in this case authors, need to let corporations off the hook by accepting the premise of absolute fiduciary duty to shareholders. This is probably getting a bit complicated and off topic for the thread so I'll just leave it with that stated philosophy I hold, that I think may differ from yours. And please forgive me if I'm making any false assumptions about your position. Just correct me and I'll go from there.
I think one has to consider the fact that Amazon (or any other company that sells books) cannot just assume the complaint is legitimate. Following procedures is one way to ensure that everyone is treated the same, that complaints are proven satisfactorily, that short-cuts haven't inadvertently harmed an innocent party. If I were wrongly accused, I'd certainly want to make sure the proper hoops were jumped through, and that this was done before any adverse actions were taken against me, not after.
Yep. People who are rightly angered when their material is plagiarized and shows up on the site would likewise be angered (and also rightly so) if their legitimate work was removed due to a false take down request. It's easy for us to sit behind the computer and comment on the process, but we have no idea how many of these Amazon gets or how many people they have available to review them. If someone can demonstrate that Amazon just blows these off and doesn't care about them, that's one thing, but I've seen no proof of that, and in my own experience with Amazon, getting items removed isn't that hard. We'll see whether they end up doing the right thing or not, but expecting instant action is completely unrealistic.
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I pick this one statement, because I think it is emblematic of the underlying problem. What actual evidence do you have that this is the case? None whatsoever. You just assume it since they aren't moving as fast as you like. If you have some inside information as to the volume of requests they receive, the size of the staff they employ to review the requests, and so on, please share it. Otherwise, you're just making assumptions that are convenient in that they support your preconceived notion of Amazon.com, but not exactly illuminating because they don't appear to have any basis in objective evidence. All of the miscellany about fiduciary duty seems to be evidence of bias on your part, but I'm not sure what it has to do with this discussion or where anyone brought it up as a defense for Amazon.
No one is saying they should. No one is denying this either. In the case we are talking about the thief has 11 different novels, all copied almost word for word from 7-8 different authors on fictionpress. In every case a link has now been posted on Amazon citing each and every original piece. I had a conversation pointing this out to an employee on Amazon's 'chat'. Agentkirb has sent an email to Amazon. Several of the other original authors report also contacting Amazon. There is no shortage of evidence in Amazon's hands supporting the claim the seller has stolen the work. Steerpike's comments and now yours as well excuse Amazon assuming they have a reasonable procedure they are following. I agree they almost certainly have a policy in place. But my position is, I don't find the policy to be reasonable and/or the staff adequate to address the problem when the reasonably well documented theft of eleven books remains up for sale on Amazon's site long after Amazon had a clear opportunity to act.
What timeframe do you think is reasonable? Tell us ahead of time and let's see. This is day 4, or 2 business days if you don't want to count the week end. I think one 24 hour business day was reasonable to at least suspend the account, with whatever additional time was needed to verify the fraud. I do have a bias, as do you. Mine comes from the knowledge that the majority of corporations have the business model that they have no duty to stakeholders (the community, customers, other affected parties), only a duty to shareholders and profit. I spent a fair amount of time looking into this the first time someone used the argument (couple years ago in a different forum) that corporations had a legal obligation to the fiduciary duty to the shareholder. It turned out there was no such law (in the US at least) but rather it was a commonly held myth that stemmed from a comment in the ruling on Dodge v Ford Motor Company, not the ruling itself, and the comment has been repeatedly cited as if it amounted to case law. Lessons from Dodge v. Ford Motor Company; M. Todd Henderson; University of Chicago - Law School; December 2007; U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 373 Only a small percentage of large corporations, (Ben and Jerry's for example), have adopted a corporate social responsibility business model. If there were any financial reasons for Amazon to suspend that seller more quickly, including reasons of bad PR if such plagiarizers were more widely complained about, I have no doubt Amazon would have acted within 24 hours to suspend that seller's account. But I see no financial risk to Amazon for investing an inadequate amount of resources to act quickly in such cases. So yes, I am making a much more cynical assumption than you are. But it is not a baseless assumption as you believe. I am a Ben and Jerry's kind of capitalist, not a knee jerk anti-corporatist.
And this is why A) The judicial system is so confusing for a lay person to navigate, and 2) People who work with that judicial system make "so much" money. It's a confusing maze of grey areas and IP is no exception. And if you don't continually refresh your 'legal GPS' - changes in law - it's easy to get lost!
Actually, there are some lay-people, or pro-se litigants who know an astounding amount about navigating particular court systems -- more than many lawyers. And it's also, unfortunately, untrue that those who work with the legal system make "so much" money.
