[MENTION=53143]GingerCoffee[/MENTION]: I'll give you an example of deviantArt, an art site where I display my photography for many years now. The site has grown enormously, and with it, art-theft. Unfortunately, as many people that they employ to deal with these issues, they get hundreds of complaints every single day, so members know to wait for up to 6 months until they get any resolution. It's just a limitation of the system. So I'd give them more time, just drop polite reminders at regular intervals.
If they take a week, that would be acceptable, a month, it would be disappointing. Six months is not acceptable. But I'd judge each company on their own merits. Large does not always mean highly profitable. Amazon does have the resources, I don't know enough about Deviant Art to make a judgement.
WGA is the writers' union in the US, but you have to be a full member for them to be able to do anything about a plagiarized work... www.wga.org www.wgae.org i sent an email to the perp several days ago, informing her that she's been 'outed' but have not received a reply...
[MENTION=53143]GingerCoffee[/MENTION] Good to see a little bit of research going on here rather than blanket assertions! You are right that no duty exists from the company to the shareholder: there is no fiduciary relationship there. In fact, using fiduciary duty in this sense is irrelevant (and incorrect terminology). Corporate fiduciary relationships relate to the director/company relationship, in that directors have duties with respect to the company as a legal entity (importantly, directors, in almost all cases, DO NOT hold duties to the shareholders). Director duties usually involve (this differs by jurisdiction): the duty to act in good faith, to be loyal to the company (i.e. act in its, not their own interests) and to exercise due care in the exercise of their role. The presumption is that directors act in this fashion, the plaintiff must prove otherwise (the "business judgment rule"). Corporate social responsibility, therefore, is an entirely separate issue to fiduciary duty at all. (Indeed, its an ethical, not a legal concept). Note: I'm not taking a moral position on any of this, I'm just (crudely) describing the law of fiduciary obligations between directors and companies as it exists. Oh man, ok, back to writing
If a week goes by, I'd send a follow up letter requesting the status and stating, in stronger terms, what I believe Amazon's duties are. There's no reason not to push them if they're not taking it down. But the larger view, which seems to imply an intentional bad act with respect to this work, doesn't make sense. And I don't think something like a fiduciary duty to the corporation by its executive enters into it. Having an axe to grind against large corporations in general doesn't really add much or help the situation. The best way to deal with this is to work within the company's procedures and allow a reasonable time to investigate and take the material down. If you get two or three weeks in and nothing has happened, it is worth thinking about getting an attorney to send a letter. I certainly don't see any reason to jump into litigation right away, particularly if you don't have the money to fund it. I don't see anyone taking this case on a contingency, so it makes sense to me to stick with Amazon's process for now. They may have a lot of resources, but they also get a lot of these sorts of requests and they don't have an unlimited number of people in their legal department doing reviews. At this point, if you went to an attorney they're probably going to do the same thing that is already being done, and if time goes by and the matter still isn't resolved then you'd consider next steps. For something like this, I wouldn't even hire an attorney yet, personally. But if you want to spend a few hundred dollars to get a letter from a law firm, it 'might' speed things up. I don't know.
[MENTION=53143]GingerCoffee[/MENTION]: You are right, Amazon is much bigger than devArt, although they too have over 6 million users. They are mainly kids and poor artists, but a lot of us pay for subscription. I think their team for this is 15 people. I can't imagine many companies investing much more in it (but maybe I'm wrong).
The Board of the Directors of a corporation act as fiduciaries of the shareholders, as I understand it. The Directors do have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders (in many jurisdictions, at any rate), however the common idea that this means they have to act always to increase shareholder wealth as much as possible is a myth. There is case law to that effect out of Delaware, for example, and in California the duty to the corporation and shareholders both is provided by Statute. I believe this is also the common law position in the U.S. New Zealand may be quite different - I'm not sure what duties do or do not exist there. I'm in California, as is Amazon, where the California statute applies.
Some of them do have quite a number of people on it. Those companies also get many more take down requests than others. I saw somewhere that Google was getting 250,000 requests in a week, at one point. If that's true, it is easy to see that even with a good-sized staff and the automated processes they use, it's not a small task. I don't think Amazon gets nearly as many requests as Google, but they still get a lot of them, and in my dealings with them, at least, they do the analysis and if they believe the material is infringing, they remove it. Sure, any time I send a request I'd be extremely happy to call my client an hour later and tell them the material is already down, but that's not realistic.
You see an axe to grind, I see an urging against complacency. You see reasonable business practices, I see accepting that 'excuse' as a given without questioning it, is not the only option. What do you imagine taking place during those "two to three weeks"? And given the fact there are 11 different works and multiple authors, why not suspend the account during the investigation? I can see a policy allowing a challenged author to time reply. But it's just as reasonable to suspend an account during the investigation as leaving it up. All Amazon needs to do is give knowledgeable employees the authority to say, there's enough evidence to suspend the account. As for making an author of these self published works bear the legal burdens, even a few hundred dollars for a letter, again, I find that to be a poor business model. Here's a corporation making a substantial profit from these little guys. It would be in Amazon's interest to support them against the wholesale fraud that these book spammers are apparently now doing. It's been going on for a while now, at least more than a year. The problem looks to be large scale, it needs more than a faucet drip response. It's a common practice for these large dot-coms to avoid investing in policing their sites. That makes a lot more sense for Facebook and Youtube as their role is providing a platform for others to use. But it does not make sense IMO, to apply the same standard to Amazon that is actively selling the products. EBay is in between, the platform they provide is for independent sellers to sell on. They differ from Craig's list because they take a cut of the sale, but they differ from Amazon in that they are not the seller. Amazon is. It has a more definitive relationship to provide goods that are not stolen. I go back to my pawn shop example. The pawn shop has the financial incentive not to accept stolen goods for sale. The onus is at the point of acquiring the goods, before the goods are placed on the shelf. If Amazon does not adequately police itself, then indie authors might want to lobby for the regulations to force book sellers/publishers to do so. My concern is not with a single plagiarizer, it is with the wholesale scams that have apparently taken off. Hmmmm, maybe it's time to start my blog.
If you're the subject of a false take down request, then it doesn't seem so reasonable for them to suspend your sales while they investigate. You could do a lot of harm to someone with false requests if they did that. Like I said, above, they're in a no-win situation as far as many are concerned. If they suspended sales on a legitimate work, they'd get criticized, and in many cases from the same people.
I know they take down YouTube videos within a day of seeing them go up, so I looked into it. Plagiarism Today: Why Fair Use Suffers on YouTube This is the direction Indie authors could go with Amazon (pipe dream, I know) : But we need to first have the expectation it is our right not to have our work stolen, and sellers/publishers have a obligation to protect our rights if they are earning any profits from our work. This stuff is fascinating: Copyright Owners Hire “Hashers” to Find Their Videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, an Indie author doesn't have the resources of big time producers. This is why YouTube stuff comes down so fast: Digital Millennium Copyright Act This was interesting: Stay tuned for the next installment kids, (this post was getting too long and likely losing readers): The DCMA applies to the books you own that are on Kindle. And rather than Amazon suffering for copyright infringement Amazon can take them back if they are plagiarized and you don't get a refund!
Google takes stuff down from YouTube in a hurry because they use an automated system. It is particularly effective if you are one of the big rights owners, who sends a lot of take down requests. Google also gets a lot of criticism because they remove content that shouldn't have come down. Google has little choice, though, given the number of requests they get. Anything but an automated system isn't feasible. Amazon actually reviews each request, as far as I know, and having someone review a request and make a determination is a more responsible approach. I suspect Google would do something similar if there was any way at all to make it possible given how many requests they receive.
I should note that you can look to groups like the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), who are generally progressive and have a big problem with the takedown process as implemented by some of the big corporations (and the EFF is right to be concerned). The EFF argues against automatic blocking as a result of a complaint, and also favors human review over automated processes. Of course, the EFF's big opponents on this issue are the huge content-owning corporations, like Time Warner, who like to see the deck stacked in their favor.
Amazon's legal department contacted me. They make no effort to police stolen books on their site outside of an individual contacting them with evidence copyrighted work has been stolen. Good luck proving it by showing you posted your work on FictionPress if it isn't copyrighted, and if AgentKirb gets his stolen book removed, the other 10 books the thief has for sale will remain for sale. He asked if I had the authority to speak for AgentKirb and I didn't, so he said I could give his phone number to AgentKirb to call and ask about his specific book. I'll send it in a PM and if Daniel or one of the mods says it's OK to post I will. I do, however, plan to post it on Amazon's discussion board. Amazon does not act against repeat offenders unless they list stolen works again and again. Eleven stolen books did not impress the lawyer as a red flag and he would not define what would trigger an investigation if someone was actually proved to be selling more than one copyrighted book. He cited the not unexpected, 'we get too many complaints', but when I suggested Amazon chose the level of resources to apply to the problem, he said that wasn't his decision. He would not say what was the timeframe for getting a stolen book removed. He would not say if it could be one week, two, a month, a year or any other time frame. It confirms what I suspected, there is no financial cost to Amazon to ignore this problem. When I asked about the volume of stolen work being a growing issue and growing concerns we had about wholesale theft of large amounts of work, he said they were "working on it". When I mentioned the NPR article from a year and a half ago, he just repeated, they were working on it. Nothing is going to change unless Indie authors grow some political clout. Color me not surprised. On another note, I wonder if this is the same person or if the thief stole the name as well? http://www.indiewritersupport.com/profile/JessicaBeckwith Anyone registered on that site? I can't access the profile without registering.
I didn't think you'd have much luck. Most of the time, such sites won't deal with people other than the copyright owner. AgentKirb should be able to get the books removed, however. Maybe without registering it, though that would certainly help.
We'll see. I got the impression they weren't interested in any informal evidence anymore than they cared someone with multiple complaints of stolen books needed to be looked into. I posted the phone number on the Amazon discussion, BTW. The actions of the other authors are spelled out in the discussion. Sounds like Amazon has had plenty of notice. Now I'm not only curious about how long until the seller is stopped, I'm curious if she's going to end up with only some of the sales stopped.
I've used informal evidence. That said, my complaints are coming from a law firm on law firm letterhead, and even though it is unfair that seems to get their attention more quickly. Filing an application to register the work and then submitting a copy of that with the complaint could help. I wouldn't wait for the registration to be granted before moving ahead with the process. On a positive note, I doubt the author has made any sales since all of the plagiarism comments went up in the reviews.
Looking around more for Jessica Beckwith, it looks like she had the books up on Smashwords but they are taken down now. On Google Search: But on Smashwords it is no longer there.
Smashwords doesn't have as many of these to deal with as Amazon. I expect that you'd get it removed from some place like the Kobo store very quickly as well. Too bad the person who uploaded these didn't do use their Smashwords account for all of the marketplaces.
Hi agentkirb, Sorry to hear that you're having to go through this, unfortunately with the internet being so accessible to everyone, I feel this sort of thing is going to get worse, especially if those that are able to pull the plug are reluctant to do so. A few years ago, I had a unique childhood memoir (1,500 words, no payment) published in a local magazine - 2 months later in a national mag., there was my story with name changes and a couple of minor changes to the details. (It felt as if someone had nicked my childhood) I wrote to the editor enclosing a copy of the mag. that my story was in, only to receive a very condescending letter back from the editor (don't you think, maybe, common, I remember my mum saying 'the letter was littered with a load of pacifying patronising stuff') which only made my blood boil all the more. However, knowing that to pursue this any further would be time consuming and most probably futile, I let it rest and hoped the editor would at least 'pull, the offending author, over the coals' for it. I know how I felt over a 1,500 word article, I can only imagine how much worse it would be to have a whole novel plagiarized - my heart goes out to you. Hope you get a satisfying result at the end of this. 'hugs' Trilby
[MENTION=18585]Trilby[/MENTION]: That's such a sad story! Luckily, they have definitely vastly improved copyright and intellectual property issues since then, and these days, that editor would have absolutely no choice but to pull it straight away and profusely apologise. Things did change for the better. In fact, if you still have that issue, and original publication with an earlier date, you can complain to the paper now and get justice.
it IS copyrighted from the moment the book is completed and exists in tangible/reproducible form... if you're referring to having the already existing copyright registered, that's another thing altogether and consists of submitting the ms to the LoC and paying the registration fee... i assume it's the same person, since it shows her location as 'KS' and the perp is in kansas...
It doesn't matter a piece is copyrighted with the initial posting. Being right in this case does not equate to automatic justice. Being right doesn't mean the lawyers at Amazon are going to give a rat's ass. The excuses I got when I mentioned 11 books, easily checked, different Fictionpress authors, the legal rep at Amazon essentially said, "so what?" The Kindle author could have permission to publish other people's stuff. When I said there's a discussion with a number of authors saying the stolen works were theirs with links to the original Fictionpress postings, the rep said, his department never reads the reviews or discussions and never investigates anything posted, it could be 100 stolen books, they wouldn't care. That's why I say if Agentkirb gets his book removed, the thief will still have 10 other stolen works for sale. Amazon is apparently investing exactly zero resources policing their site for stolen books. The agent made a reference to "they are supposed to check that when the book is initially listed for sale". But when I suggested they weren't very effective if they missed this easy evidence, he brushed it off, not his department, not his problem. BTW, he accused me of being a reporter. I thought that was telling that maybe they are reluctant to honestly answer any questions because they aren't convinced their answers look all that good when disclosed in the public sphere. Yes, you are correct. There are some useful links earlier in the thread on this. It would be great to track this person down, but there's no way to know if the fake author also stole a real person's identity as an author name. One of the news articles I cited noted these people are using fake addresses in the US while they actually live in other countries. There is a J Beckwith in Kansas but no Jessica Beckwith in that state according to the Whitepages. I found another removed link, however: It would appear this thief set up a sales promotion network.
I don't think policing their book for stolen work makes much sense. I could publish an anthology of works by other people, some of which are reprints, and those stories will be found online. Amazon has no way of knowing what agreements I have or don't have with their authors. I believe the publisher has to affirm that they have the rights to publish the work, or that it is in the public domain (and I'm not sure they let the latter publish as easy as they used to). I also wouldn't act on the reviews if I was in Amazon's legal department. I'd act on a complaint from the copyright owner or someone representing the copyright owner.
