Oolite Bulletins

While the BB was down - somebody called Peter Michelsen thieved Drew's free eBooks (SQ, Mutablis, Schism, Ascension) and started selling them - obviously this put Drew in a particularly bad place given the derivative work CCL clause - Amazon were utterly crap - and initially only changed the author's name from Michelsen to Wagar, which helped not one jot. The books are now gone from .co.uk but still present on the .com site.

Now that the BB is back up, if anybody would like to drop Amazon a line about their crappy Copyright Theft policy I'm sure Drew would be much appreciative!

Drew's set up a forum - but you'll need to register: http://wagar.org.uk/website/?page_id=1337

(LEET - I think he contrived it this way!)

What a scumbag!

And how nice of Amazon to react so efficiently (not)


Scumbags, scumbags, scumbags.....

changed the name to "wager" i see :-/

bit of a sticky area here i think, i know Drew should be able to kick ar$e regarding the characters he invented, how that intertwines w/ the other stuff, i don't know. i didn't know the first thing about a Kindle till this thread, lol, i'm totally out the loop. if i were Drew i'd write demanding the stuff gets pulled, the person gets banned and i'd ask for personal details etc for his lawyer to recoup money made off sales, just to light a fire under amazon.
i've dealt w/ ebay, trying to get some rip-off maggot banned for printing up Purgatori posters and selling them as "rare" items - they do *fk all*. all this "safe trading community" BS is garbage, they don't give a fk is a buyer is duped as long as they get selling/buiying fees etc. be nice to think amazon would be different, guess we'll have to see how they act.

Drew has jumped up and down all over Amazon - got lots of help from CC people.

The toe-rag in question is still selling books on Amazon, even obviously stolen ones - ones which other authors have had less success getting them to pull - Amazon should have pulled the entire account until the authenticity of ownership of EVERY book he was selling was validated - but they haven't - they haven't even done what they said they'd do for Drew which is pull his books from ALL Amazon's - all they've done on the .com site, is make the pricing unavailable, so you can't actually buy them any more.

I'm sure Drew will be along eventually, to let us know how he's getting on, once he's noticed this thread!

In the meantime - feel free to nuke Amazon from orbit... (or at least send them a stern email!)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

The toe-rag in question is still selling books on Amazon,

Outrageous... and look at this title of his: How To Write, Create, Promote And Sell Ebooks On The Internet + Resell Rights

shtty situation. makes me wonder if any of my artwork's been ripped off - i've come across people taking a pic, badly pasting over some elements and reposting it as their own work before, no money involved, but it makes you wonder if any stuff like this is going on. ebay make you go through hoops to make a complaint and virtually will do nowt unless you use the VERO procedure, and even then apparently their contempt for the copyright holder is staggering.

I'm coming back to this topic, simply to say how I'm simply raging inwardly while being at work.

(We're talking about CC and copyright a lot here at work, a university library with both very old and new stuff.)

can someone put a link up for us to make it easier for people to complain

Unfortunately, as far as Amazon is concerned, you can only complain if you are the copyright holder. Once they're satisfied that you are, and that one of their resellers is ripping off your work, then they'll remove it from their system (or just remove the buy button on Amazon.com, apparently).

However, what they won't do is take any punitive action against the reseller. Despite accepting that this reseller was in breach of copyright, they are allowing him to continue selling other material – including other material in breach of copyright where either the actual copyright holder hasn't found out about it, or has been unable to convince Amazon that they hold the copyright.

One example is The Unearthing, available for free download here:
http://kspaceuniverse.blogspot.com/
and on sale, illegally, via Amazon. This is coming up with a "customers who bought this item also bought ..." tag, so Peter Mictchelsen – and Amazon – have both made money from this. Not a lot of money, probably: a few pence, in all likelihood. But the really worrying thing, from my point of view as a publisher, is Amazon's total lack of concern for the established and accepted fact that ONE OF THEIR RESELLERS IS PIRATING OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK.

Hi Folks,

Good to see the forum back up!

As for this little saga, you can see the trail of events here.

In essence, from a strictly personal perspective I'm awaiting Amazon removing the US (.com) entries at the moment. They told me it would take 3-5 days to disappear completely from their database, so if they're not gone tomorrow I'll be back on the email.

My first priority was to protect Oolite itself. I was majorly concerned that these books are now widely circulated enough that they might show up on the radar of those with an interest in the overall copyright of 'Elite' - and if they perceived someone was trying to make money out of it they might come down on the whole operation like a ton of proverbial.

Second I was clearly alarmed that it was possible for my books (and a bunch of others authors' works) to be 'published' in this fashion.

Third, someone was making money out of my work!

Fourth, they were blatantly (and amazon too) disregarding CC SA-BY-NC

The situation was a bit confused. Some of my books were published and listed as 'Author:Peter Michelsen', others were under my name and others were under 'Author:Drew Wager' (sic) !

I immediately asked Amazon to remove them via email, having failed to get in touch with them by phone. They responded with a request for documentation which I duly provided. Delay, delay...

In the interim, I immediately blogged, faced and tweeted about the problem, and many folks came to my rescue, blatting the books on amazon with negative views and virtual cries of 'Stop Thief'

Next I found that amazon had changed all instances of of 'Peter Michelsen' with respect to my books to 'Drew Wagar'. All fine and dandy, but bearing in mind my highest priority above, left me exclusively in the firing line. I wasn't entirely comfortable with this obviously!

Further emails threatening legal action were required before Amazon agreed to take them down entirely. .co.uk have already managed this, still waiting for .com

As disembodied rightly says, I can only do this on my own copyright. I can't help the other authors other than notifying them. Fortunately our 'thief' was rather inept, and had kept the thumbnail title pages intact on many of the books, enabling me to track the original owners. However, Amazon isn't treating these as a single event.

I can't force them to pursue the reseller and they won't release his contact information (probably fake anyway) to me, so I can pursue him elsewhere.

I've no idea how bad this problem is, so I set up a forum hoping to corral enough support to at least go to amazon et al with some positive suggestions rather than a flame war.

And that's pretty much where I've got to... Made for an interesting week!

Cheers,

Drew.

Oh well, this finally nails it.

I will never use either of those rip-off, thieving crap services (eBay or Amazon).

This would make a nice Slashdot story.

... If it wasn't for the whole 'we-want-to-keep-Oolite-off-the-legal-quagmire-radar' thingy

Nope. Books still present on amazon.com

Sent them a strongly worded letter. If they don't comply now I'll have to get a lawyer involved.

Cheers,

Drew.

Sorry to hear that, Drew... it shouldn't be happening.

What is most frustrating is that they don't seem bothered.

1. This guy is a thief
2. They are doing something illegal
3. All they have to do is pull the books

Well, duh! What's the right thing to do Amazon?

Cheers,

Drew.