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Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

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Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#71

Post by mindstab »

Big business vs the little guy is extremely unfair these days. If I had given away 6000 free mp3s or movies via a P2P system you can bet they'd try me in court for the full price of them all, but in this article already they are equivocating saying "oh but they were free, less people would have paid for it so he can't realistically ask for all the money for all the copies we gave away".

How come when a big company gets "ripped off" they can charge far more than the retail price for every copy but when the actual creator gets ripped off he gets nothing and people equivocate on even the numbers?

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#72

Post by kevinpet »

ck2 wrote: post #65
wccrawford wrote: post #2

Amazon should own up and pay. They have effectively stolen from this author. No, we can't guarantee that those people would have bought it for free, but if these were physical books, the law would require that they pay the author. The agreement wasn't that they get to change the price any time they like. The agreement was that they get to match competitors. They violated that.

Actually, if you go by RIAA settlements and court verdicts, non-physical items are actually worth exponentially more than physical.

A set with two data points cannot imply exponential growth. The phrase you are looking for is "orders of magnitude more".

Please, let's keep exponential around as a word with meaning. It conveys something useful.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#73

Post by SoftwareMaven »

jobu wrote: post #66
dminor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're offering 35% or 70%, not 35 or 70 cents.

35% is a terrible rate for an ebook. You can only get %70 if you charge more than $2.99 and opt-in to Kindle Lending. Does that mean that authors don't get anything for books read through Kindle Lending? That seems terrible if true. Kindle Lending is the reason I finally signed up for Amazon Prime, and I would expect authors to get a cut of that revenue.

Authors get nothing for books lent through the library and people have been OK with that for a long time. A book still has to be purchased.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#74

Post by alttag »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #51

I am surprised that Amazon didn't pay him a small token payment, perhaps a couple of thousand dollars. In the past Amazon has given me two grants for free AWS usage ($1000 and $300) so I personally consider them to be generous, for a corporation. I would bet that no one with real authority at Amazon reviewed this case because if they had, I think they would have made a small good-will payment.

If it does go to court, a goodwill payment might be interpreted as evidence of wrongdoing.

In your case, the marginal cost to Amazon of providing AWS was negligible, and Amazon has full rights to offer products they create as freebies, so such grants easily translate to goodwill. In this case, Amazon doesn't own all rights to the product, so it's a bit more murky. It would be as if Amazon was granting you freebies but were only resellers rather than providers of AWS, and didn't compensate the actual provider.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#75

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #63
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the same contract says that they are not liable for damages in the event of an error. The contract does not support a claim for money, that case is a moral one rather than a legal one.

So the question then is can you disclaim copyright infringement in this way, did Amazon do it right? They'll probably do the corporate thing and give $50k to a lawyer to check the contract rather than giving compensation for the costs they have forced on their client.

Of course not.

The author and Amazon agreed a contract which they both understood which stated rules (Amazon could vary the price) and consequences (essentially none for Amazon so long as what they did was an honest mistake which it seems this was).

The author had the right to not sign it or to ask for amendments (and not sign if they weren't granted) but whether or not it was a good deal for him or not he did agree to those terms and assigned certain rights to Amazon which they were asserting.

Copyright infringement doesn't involve any agreement between the two parties, it's a simple assertion by one party that they don't wish to be bound by the (legal) rights of the other.

They're not comparable situations and whatever superficial similarities exist it's nonsense to suggest they are.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#76

Post by ianferrel »

Tichy wrote: post #53

Can't they delete the free copies from the kindle devices? Not that I really like that, but that seems to be the use case for that feature.

The last time they did that, there was a huge upswelling of discontent, several lawsuits (which went nowhere, I believe), and they stated specifically that they would not do so again.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#77

Post by awj »

ck2 wrote: post #65
wccrawford wrote: post #2

Amazon should own up and pay. They have effectively stolen from this author. No, we can't guarantee that those people would have bought it for free, but if these were physical books, the law would require that they pay the author. The agreement wasn't that they get to change the price any time they like. The agreement was that they get to match competitors. They violated that.

Actually, if you go by RIAA settlements and court verdicts, non-physical items are actually worth exponentially more than physical.

Part of the reasoning there is in calculating the impact of redistribution. When someone tosses an mp3 up on a torrent the RIAA doesn't just lose the immediate (potential) sales for those who downloaded it, but also for anyone that that network shares the files with.

Mind you, I don't agree with the specific numbers they're citing, but the general logic works. It's kind of like the Drake equation, everyone can agree on the general format, but you can plug in specific values to make it mean whatever you want.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#78

Post by wisty »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #49
nknight wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were authorized to distribute the content according to the terms of the contract . It appears they distributed the content outside of those terms. I'm sure there's language to ensure they won't get hit with damages, but they should be.

And the same contract says that they are not liable for damages in the event of an error. The contract does not support a claim for money, that case is a moral one rather than a legal one.

He can still seek legal advice. Just because a contract says "we can't be held responsible for anything" doesn't mean it's always going to hold up in court. It just wouldn't be fair, and lawyers would lose too much business.

What matters is the disputed amount ($13,000), whether the author wants to play hardball, and whether Amazon would rather pay him to go away or squash him like a bug (to set an example). Because even if he wins (and I've no idea if he can), it wouldn't be fun if Amazon got nasty.

I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't seen the contract in question, so I have no real idea, but it's not as clear cut as "you agreed not to sue us". It could very well be a bluff by Amazon.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#79

Post by alttag »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #73
jobu wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

35% is a terrible rate for an ebook. You can only get %70 if you charge more than $2.99 and opt-in to Kindle Lending. Does that mean that authors don't get anything for books read through Kindle Lending? That seems terrible if true. Kindle Lending is the reason I finally signed up for Amazon Prime, and I would expect authors to get a cut of that revenue.

Authors get nothing for books lent through the library and people have been OK with that for a long time. A book still has to be purchased.

Libraries purchase physical copies of books (often at higher prices to get a sturdier binding). For popular books, libraries purchase multiple copies, some of which get lost or damaged, and must be replaced. In other words,authors still see some income from libraries.

With Kindle Lending, there is no substantive gain for authors.

Re: Amazon Won’t Pay Self-Published Author For Books It Mistakenly Gave Away

#80

Post by bad_user »

mindstab wrote: post #71

Big business vs the little guy is extremely unfair these days. If I had given away 6000 free mp3s or movies via a P2P system you can bet they'd try me in court for the full price of them all, but in this article already they are equivocating saying "oh but they were free, less people would have paid for it so he can't realistically ask for all the money for all the copies we gave away". How come when a big company ge…

I thought HN was good at math:

     lim(number_of_lawyers) = 0 USD payed
     1 -> infinite
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