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.
Yes, Amazon is producing and selling these. That is what makes this so outrageous.
That was the case with Linux Command Line. It appears to be the case here as well
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 extr…
Totally sympathetic to the author here, and believe that the counterfeit should be taken down IMMEDIATELY (checking amazon it looks like this is the case) If the book was digital then I would say preemptive verification should be done. However, for a physical paper book how could you verify legitimacy at scale? It's a hard problem. I can't think of a way that doesn't involve destroying a physical copy to OCR, and tha…
In both cases a five year old child could tell the difference in an instant.
Amazon is directly selling these not acting as a third party. They are the counterfeiters in this case totally different than buying something from someone on ebay and ebay facilitating the deal.
I'll be extremely surprised if that is the case. I'm going to wait for the official response before passing judgement. Amazon can easily afford a $150,000 fine for copyright infringement, but the damage to their reputation would be colossal.
That was absolutely the case with Linux Command Line and it appears to be the case here as well. I say appears because I have yet to receive the product but the manufacturing looks exactly the same as the last counterfeit. The same traits.
In the case of the counterfeit copies of Linux Command Line sold through Amazon, those were printed by CreateSpace in violation of copyright. That is certain. From what we can tell that is also the case here.
This is terrible. The infuriating thing is if Amazon actually does anything, the scammers still get off with no penalty other than having their seller and Createspace accounts suspended. If you don't mind me asking, is there a POD block printed on the bottom of the last blank page? Typically it's a barcode and something like "Printed in USA, Lexington KY" and the date. Also on the Twitter thread someone mentioned tha…
I haven't seen these counterfeits. I've only seen the photos. The first counterfeit looked like it was printed from our PDF but it's hard to tell. There's a bar code on the back but not the POD code you're referring to. But we know the first one was printed and sold by them. About 1200 copies.
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'…
These have no branding other than our front cover.
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…
I'm not sure I personally see much difference. In both cases, the hosting corporation is reproducing a pirated file. One does so physically and one does so on an electronic screen, but both processes are automated piracy.
We're having a problem with GitHub forks hosting a bunch of pirated copies of our books. GitHub wants us to point to them all -- but they're forks!
There's no way to report a counterfeit on Amazon unless you're claiming a violation of your own IP rights. I've complained about fake solid state relays. There are lots of fake "Fotek" solid state relays. UL has noticed.[1] The fakes are usually marked with much higher amp ratings than they can handle safely. Look at this "100 amp" fake "Fotek" relay on Amazon.[2] Fotek doesn't even make a 100 amp relay in that packa…
Seems like a smart lawyer could make a good chunk of change from Amazon if they can reliably acquire counterfeit goods and sue on behalf of the brand. http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellectu...
This actually seems to be an edge case that falls through the rules as written. You can't know that you're peddling counterfeit goods without violating the law, but you can negligently "whoops-didn't-mean-to" sell counterfeit goods. And as soon as you officially know, you put a hard halt to things there. So the manufacturer has to play whack-a-mole with the counterfeit suppliers to various points in the supply chain.
I've been running into his problem personally. About 25% of our business now is done via Amazon. We sell to Amazon retail directly and also use Amazon FBA internationally. The problem is that "other sellers" keep beating us to the buy box for certain SKUs. Amazon keeps asking us to sell to them for a lower price. The funny thing is, Amazon already gets the lowest price, by far, compared to all other distributors. I k…
>And ideally, actually, I'd like Amazon to offer a feature that essentially "bans" third parties from listing a SKU at the manufacturers request. I'd gladly pay to few thousand a year to ensure that the only one that can sell our products is Amazon themselves. Isn't this what owning a trademark is for? Can people advertise that they have M&M's for sale without the permission of Mars Candy Inc?
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.
I can't but only because I can't really smell much any more. Other than bourbon.