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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

#141
post #120

Counterfeits in comingled inventory has become pretty common on Amazon these days. "Fulfillment by amazon" has led them to comingle inventories on common products, meaning every seller's product gets jumbled together. I've gotten counterfeit huggies diapers from amazon (invalid serial number for huggies 'points' and different build quality), Mach 3 razor blades, GE MWF Water filters, even a counterfeit baby bath. The…

Wouldn't this be the perfect time to do a chargeback?

Just make sure you don't have any Kindle books or AWS resources tied to the same Amazon account, in case Amazon cancels your account over the chargeback.

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

#142
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publish hard paper and sell to entreprise. That's where there is a money. A company will pay 49$ for a book they want. A dude won't.

> A company will pay 49$ for a book they want. A dude won't. Perhaps you meant to say that you won't.

I meant to say $99 ;)

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Basics is amazon's line of products, you can't sell them yourself because they'd always be counterfit (or used)

By the same process in which Amazon has sold counterfeit NoStarch books, Amazon could also sell counterfeit "Basics" products. At this point, we're pretty sure it has something to do with commingling...

Why would Amazon let anyone sell an Amazon Basics product? It's not a "Basics" category, it's the "Amazon Basics" brand. Nobody else could produce those.

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

#144
I've stopped using amazon for products that are easy to counterfeit. Beauty products are especially bad. It's really hard to know that a shampoo is real just by looking at it, and if you can sell a bottle of colored foam for $40, counterfeiters are immediately drawn to that.

I used to order an expensive conditioner (olaplex) through Amazon but got burned by this. The company that produces the shampoo started selling direct through their website (at amazon's price with free shipping) because they were losing out on sales through fake inventory that was being sold to amazon.

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

#146

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…

Willful infringement? I assume you have proof that Amazon knew something was counterfeit and still sold it?

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

#147

I have no idea how Amazon keeps getting away with selling counterfeit and plain unsafe (anything cheap chinese plugged into a socket) products. No judge would accept that somehow a 3rd party is to blame when 1) I'm paying Amazon, 2) Amazon delivers the item from an Amazon warehouse and 3) Amazon takes the return and reimburses me. At no point in this transaction is a 3rd party involved. Clearly they should be liable…

The 3rd party is whoever sells amazon the inventory, which may not even be the company that produced the product. There's a lot of opportunities for counterfeits to get introduced into the pool of real products, and there's a lot of incentive to do so, since profit margins are much higher.

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

#148
post #92
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $1000 ... course Wow. Surely the best advice such a course could possibly give would be 'convince people you can teach them to make money, and charge a lot for it'.

Yeah a few years ago it was SEO courses , now Amazon selling courses which are way overpriced, next ... ? Who gets rich in a goldfish, the miners or the person selling the tools?

> Who gets rich in a goldfish

I think it must be the diver because he found the treasure chest, assuming that it isn't counterfeit:

https://www.amazon.com/Bestgoo-Aquarium-Ornament-Live-Action...

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was especially hilarious during the hoverboard craze-- there were hundreds of versions of the exact same item, being sold for $200-$1500.

Were there any hover boards that weren't private labels?

And now: http://www.ul.com/newsroom/featured/uls-involvement-in-hover...

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

#150
post #29
post #15

Amazon does indeed print books through its Createspace print-on-demand division. It’s been used by hundreds of thousands of self-publishers but also indie presses seeking to sell additional copies without investing in a big offset print run. If the pirate attempted to use an existing ISBN (required to match up the listings) I am pretty sure Createspace would automatically flag it [ETA: Not so sure anymore. See http:/…

Depends on how amazon's lawyers looked at it. I suspect they assumed that section 230 of the CDA, and the DMCA would cover them. However because physical paper copies are being generated that voids both the protections provided by both laws. Amazon is most likely criminally and civilly liable here . I am not a lawyer and nothing here should be considered legal advice merely personal opinion

While I'm not a lawyer either, my understanding is that neither section 230 of the CDA nor the DMCA safe harbour provide protection for companies that actually sell copyright-infringing works, regardless of whether they're digital or physical.
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