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Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

arstechnica.com

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Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#11

Post by gist »

cobookman wrote: post #2

How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued? If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

Sued for what damages? They can simply remove the offending titles and carry on. What is the cause of action and harm? "You made the same mistake twice and we lost (how much???) dollars!" [1]

Maybe some kind of class action but that requires an attorney spending money to advertise and collect information from the class of people harmed. Then litigate, settle and what money do you get? [2]

[1] How much did this particular seller lose? No way it's enough to pay any legal fees. Even if it is even if Amazon has to pay the legal fees what do you get in the end? Time trouble etc.

[2] I just got a check for some Verizon class action in the amount of roughly $2.00 this was after so much time I had forgotten about it.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#12

Post by pfarnsworth »

Amazon gets away with this because it's practically impossible for small business owners or authors to police their site. It's similar to Google, where they let counterfeits thrive, but real content creators get fake DMCA notices and shut down.

I really hate to say this, but large companies like this need to be regulated via laws. There's simply no other choice. Having Amazon throw their hands up and say "There's nothing we can do, we have algorithms" or hiding behind the safe-harbor laws is not acceptable.

Having their ability to shut off peoples' incomes or being victimized by counterfeiters, with no human contact and no process, is unacceptable and needs to be changed. They aren't changing fast enough and they don't want to change because it's expensive, and the only solution is to force them via laws, which I'm loathe to support but it's the only way.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#13

Post by mojomark »

Totally, this. As a case in point, my "Digital Image Processing and Analysis: Human and Computer Vision Applications with CVIPtools, Second Edition" text book stated right on the cover that the book was "Not for sale in the US" (or something to that effect). Seemed odd, then I read the intro in which the author was excited that he finally convinced the publisher to print in color. My book was not in color (super great for an image processing text). Two weeks later, the binding started to come undone - not just a little - literally all of the pages fell out.

Awesome, thanks Bezos!

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#14

Post by sacheendra »

djaychela wrote: post #9

Surely this should be an easy fix for them to be able to detect counterfeit books being created? If they are anything like other on demand self publishing platforms, you upload a pdf or similar file to create the book, and surely it's not beyond the wit of those at amazon to create an ml based system that would be able to detect similar files to those of legitimate books that they already carry and flag them to the l…

It is not that easy. They need a reliable system to do that. For what can go wrong, see all the hate Youtube's ContentID gets. But, identifying whole books should be simple enough.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#15

Post by alanfranzoni »

MikeCapone wrote: post #10
cobookman wrote: post #2

How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued? If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

is eBay getting sued every time a counterfeit good is sold?

eBay has no warehouse. eBay has no printing service. But I'd say that eBay should offer a fake-reporting system (which AFAIK exists) and should report users engaging in such activities to police or other institutions.

The problem with Amazon is that they seem not to take appropriate action. How can you not be held liable for printing books in an unauthorized fashion AND selling it from your warehouse?

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#16

Post by benologist »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8
cobookman wrote: post #2

How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued? If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

More than likely, they can just claim "we're just a platform, someone else uploaded the file". This is the inherent problem with Section 230 immunity for platforms: We've given companies a blank check to be used as part of criminal enterprises, and given them no incentive to police illegal behavior on their networks. In this scenario, Amazon is able to literally produce, sell, and distribute counterfeit material, kee…

By not hiring sufficient oversight Amazon is excused for not having sufficient oversight.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#18

Post by dnautics »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #12

Amazon gets away with this because it's practically impossible for small business owners or authors to police their site. It's similar to Google, where they let counterfeits thrive, but real content creators get fake DMCA notices and shut down. I really hate to say this, but large companies like this need to be regulated via laws. There's simply no other choice. Having Amazon throw their hands up and say "There's not…

Why should large companies be regulated on this specific topic but not small companies? It's equally illegal activity.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#19

Post by lftl »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8
cobookman wrote: post #2

How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued? If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

More than likely, they can just claim "we're just a platform, someone else uploaded the file". This is the inherent problem with Section 230 immunity for platforms: We've given companies a blank check to be used as part of criminal enterprises, and given them no incentive to police illegal behavior on their networks. In this scenario, Amazon is able to literally produce, sell, and distribute counterfeit material, kee…

Does Section 230 apply at all when we're talking about a physically distributed product like this? I get that, even if it doesn't apply, Amazon's defense is probably that they're an intermediary and not the seller, but I thought the DMCA applied pretty strictly to digital copyright violations, and that any lawsuit in this instance would hinge on older laws for physical-good copyright violations.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#20

Post by leoc »

vorpalhex wrote: post #3
cobookman wrote: post #2

How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued? If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

They are probably liable, but it's also not intentional behavior which means less damages - so it's not worth being the first person to sue them. This is just Amazon being sloppy and not having any reasonable checks or controls on their print service.

The classic "control fraud" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_fraud strategy is to incentivise your subordinates to maximise revenues while "neglecting" to check that they aren't engaging in fraud to do it. Then you can protest your innocence when the fraud comes to light.
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