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Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

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Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#51

Post by peterjlee »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #7

Its ridiculous the amount of energy and effort you have to waste in order to find a product that you don't suspect as being counterfeit on Amazon these days. The other day, I wanted a super bright flashlight that ran on AAA batteries and was of decent quality and price. I had to pour over the millions of listed flashlights, most looking physically identical, with the exception of the brand name printed on the flashli…

When I buy phone chargers from Amazon I intentionally avoid the manufacturer branded ones because I know it's going to be fake. I usually choose a well known 3rd party brand with good reviews.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#52

Post by dragonwriter »

danjoc wrote: post #5
achow wrote: post #2

It took me a while to understand that buyers are actually getting pirated books which has Amazon branding and are poorly produced (uneven binding, poor printing, missing content.. etc.)! I was incredulous, surely this is not part of Amazon's business strategy! Then saw that maybe one of the Twitterati has guessed it right: @marziah: Wait, how? Is someone copying the book and using Amazon as the printer? And they don'…

Google is doing the digital version: https://www.google.com/search?q=python+for+kids+pdf First result. Google docs. Free book. Edit: Not sure if modded down for pointing out Google is pirating the book in nearly the same way as Amazon (HN loves Google, it can do no wrong) or if it's because I linked to Google's pirate link (Oh no! You're bankrupting the author, dirty commenter!).

The "digital version", provided takedown provisions are observed, is protected by the DMCA safe harbor.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#53

Post by Pica_soO »

danjoc wrote: post #10
HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #7

Its ridiculous the amount of energy and effort you have to waste in order to find a product that you don't suspect as being counterfeit on Amazon these days. The other day, I wanted a super bright flashlight that ran on AAA batteries and was of decent quality and price. I had to pour over the millions of listed flashlights, most looking physically identical, with the exception of the brand name printed on the flashli…

All those rebrands are coming from alibaba. Just go to ali express and buy direct if you want one. The "entrepreneurs" using jungle scout are flooding amazon with rebranded alibaba stuff.

Yes, its those Americans ripping off books and printing them for near free, ruining English artists and writers. Remember the HMS Pinafore- what a royalty massacre, by those lawless Bösentals!

There is only one way, to bring those evil-doers back to the light of justice. Tax them for whatever they stole! Oh, sorry, wrong century, wrong villain!

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#54

Post by EliRivers »

strictnein wrote: post #9

This sucks, doubly so because it's No Starch Press. They've got some great stuff and their books have a better feel than a lot of other tech books. Something about the cover, binding, and the paper they use feels really nice.

And the smell. I can identify my No Starch books by scent.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#55

Post by nkrisc »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #7

Its ridiculous the amount of energy and effort you have to waste in order to find a product that you don't suspect as being counterfeit on Amazon these days. The other day, I wanted a super bright flashlight that ran on AAA batteries and was of decent quality and price. I had to pour over the millions of listed flashlights, most looking physically identical, with the exception of the brand name printed on the flashli…

Let me guess, those millions of listings of the same flashlight also ranged in price from $1.55 to $67.99, right?

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#56

Post by losteverything »

benmorris wrote: post #45

Amazon is turning into a mine field for legitimate sellers. I have a customer I work closely with to integrate their customer products into Amazon. They have a catalog of 3,000 stock parking signs listed on Amazon. We took considerable time to buy custom SKUs and get them listed. We discovered in the last month two separate Chinese sellers utilized the Amazon buy box feature and listed on our product page for less mo…

I'm curious. Did you ever send an order to China?

So if I make a thing that can't be digitally copied easily I'm safe???

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

wang_li wrote: post #41
UnfalseDesign wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Google isn't pirating the book. It is being hosted on Google Docs. This is no different than if someone put the PDF on Dropbox and made it public. It isn't Google's pirate link. It is a link to a pirated file that just happens to be hosted on Google Docs. The difference here is that Amazon is actually printing the pirated book. Google is just hosting a file that happens to be made publicly view…

> The difference is that Google isn't pirating the book. It is being hosted on Google Docs. This is no different than if someone put the PDF on Dropbox and made it public. It isn't Google's pirate link. Google has just exploited a loophole in the law that allows them to provide all the technical expertise and infrastructure to profit from piracy, while remaining legally non-liable.

It's not a "loophole", which implies an unitended gap in the law; the entire intent of the DMCA safe harbor, which was a centerpiece of a debate about the law itself, is to protect online content hosts from liability for copyright violations resulting from digital distribution of user-submitted content in cases like this, so long as they abide by a specified takedown process.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#58

Post by 6stringmerc »

lsaferite wrote: post #33
6stringmerc wrote: post #30

As a "Content Creator" and frequent advocate for U.S. Copyright Reform, this is one of the few instances where I think the full willful infringement penalty is absolutely justified. There's only a paper thin "Well they didn't inspect every book!" defense, which immediately falls apart when Amazon is making money by way of the transactions and doing market harm to the actual Copyright holder. It's not "incidental" inf…

Do you also advocate that eBay should verify every item it sells is not counterfeit?

If you consider my perspective is that eBay / Amazon / et al are acting with the least amount of policing effort they can legally or financially commit, then yes, I would like to advocate that a marketplace such as eBay should attempt to verify every item it sells is not counterfeit.

I'd like to avoid being unrealistic in that I don't think a marketplace can 100% verify every item and grow to scale, but I'm also extremely annoyed at the "all or nothing" kind of false dichotomy you've presented.

I'm not trying to be insulting or glib with the following, but if you'd like to peruse several different threads in this discussion it appears Amazon has more than enough reasonable data to address an issue, but has heretofore turned a blind-yet-financially-beneficial-in-principle-eye to the situation. If a bunch of humans sitting around and spit balling can hammer down a half-dozen examples and concerns out of altruism then I think any attempts of offloading that 'check and balance' into the Amazon system is quite significant.

If they get around to it, I'd classify their pragmatic motivation as akin to "I'm sorry your feelings were hurt" moreso than "What I did hurt you and was wrong."

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#59

Post by bitmapbrother »

Buying from Amazon is a lot like eBay these days. In addition to what Amazon sells you also have a bunch of stores, of questionable origin, that are selling counterfeit and intentionally misrepresented products. I'm not sure what it adds to their bottom line, but it's destroying their reputation.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#60

Post by lsaferite »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #36
lsaferite wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also advocate that eBay should verify every item it sells is not counterfeit?

I was under the impression that "under Amazon's brand" meant that the item is being "sold by Amazon" rather than a merchant using Amazon as a platform. I think eBay should verify items that are being sold by eBay, and Amazon should verify items that are being sold by Amazon, but eBay shouldn't be responsible for items being sold VIA eBay, nor should Amazon be responsible for items being sold VIA Amazon.

I'd be interested to have more detail than the tweet to understand the specifics.

If they are saying Amazon is producing and selling these themselves, then that's a big deal. If they got a shipment of them that are counterfeit and are selling those, then it's a slightly less big deal IMHO, but still a serious problem.

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