Forum: Author Hangout

US copyright is the real author's date of death, plus 70 years.

...IF published under the author's legal name. If anonymously authored, authored under a pseudonym, or written as a hired work then the protection is 95 years from date of first publishing or 120 years from date of creation , whichever is lower. Definitely still covered for any authors here regardless unless that author publicly announced an early release of copyright protection. I have only ever seen or heard of that being done maybe 3 or 4 times in my entire lifetime.

Was your stolen book already on sale at Amazon under your name?

You would think Amazon would be able to run a plagiarism detection algorithm there are plenty to choose from...

The music and film industry mostly succeeded in forcing the GAFA to censure content preemptively.

Why isn't it done for books?

Be both, so that you may achieve balance.

worshipflames@gmail.com

That email belong to Vidson David Onyemachi a Nigerian religious nut
gsm: +234 907 735 0913.

Somehow, I doubt he would call himself: Cathy L.c Maxwell to sell erotic novels on Amazon.

But with Nigerian, you never know...

Well, I could be wrong of course, but if Amazon didn't enforce their exclusivity contracts and allowed authors to publish outside of the exclusivity contracts, they potentially lose money, so ... effort or not, I suspect they have fiscal motivation to deal with violators of this sort. And since there are probably not many options to otherwise convince them about copyright infringement unless you are either the infringed author or an official representative, reporting contract violations might be a viable approach. However, I understand your frustration.

but when copyright infringement is reported, they should look into it.

And how exactly are they supposed to do that?

Particularly with something published under a pseudonym and without working contact details?

Lets think about what that would look like?

Reader reports that story XYZ published on Amazon by ABC was posted on SOL years before it was put on Amazon under pseudonym CDE.

Amazon looks on SOL, finds the story and tries to contact CDE through SOL with no response.

Amazon to ABC: Hey, XYZ was published years ago on SOL by CDE.

ABC: Yeah, that was me.

We know that ABC is lying, but what do you really expect Amazon to do at that point?

I'm not saying Amazon doesn't have any issues, but I think your expectations of what Amazon can do in a case where a claim of copyright infringement is made by a third party are unreasonable.

Then I'm thinking about protecting my stuff

The way copyright law works, the best thing you can do may be to have them published somewhere under your real name.

I do understand why people don't want to do that with porn.

they should have people in place to investigate things like this.

Even if they did, a conclusive determination in this kind of case where the original author is not contactable is flat up impossible.

Of course, removing your stories from SoL may help. As would pushing them into Premiere only. However, there is no guarantee that a potential thief hasn't already taken a copy of them with nefarious intent.

However, there is a crucial difference with stories you own if you choose to pursue a copyright infringement claim. Zon, or any other publishing agent, has no way to verify copyright infringement with a third party complaint, as Dominion points out, unless they can contact the author or verified agent in question to ensure that they never agreed to the publication. The work might be licensed. The copyright might have been revoked. The copyright might be public domain by choice. To take action in the absence of verified infringement is opening them up to legal recourse, I would expect. However, in the case of your stories, they *could* contact the author (you) and presumably you would set them straight. We've seen that some active/contactable authors, even within this thread, have had success with that approach.

My original suggestion to approach it as a contract violation does not require the participation of the original author. It may not work, I don't know, but it has a better legal chance than a third party report of copyright violation that cannot be verified except via common sense. Unfortunately, common sense and corporate life mix like oil and water. Same with justice and common sense. We might expect the Zon to notice the mere foreign publication implies contract violation. In that regard, I agree with your frustration, but realistically speaking, in the corporate world, the "copyright violation" hand refuses to speak to "contract enforcement" hand.

Regardless, if you are unwilling to try another approach and seek to protect your work, removing your toys from the game might be the best, or at least most satisfying, action for you, but as you note, such an action is not really punishing the Zon or even teaching them a lesson. They will truly not care. At most, it may disappoint Lazeez and your loyal readers. But, you own the copyright to those works and if you choose to stomp away from the game, bat and ball in hand, methinks most would understand and you are well within your rights to do so, regardless of the reasoning.

Practically speaking, I suspect this would be a headache for SoL to administrate. There is not an exclusivity contract with WLP for authors -- except for some contest entries -- so in general, an author is free to publish her works wherever she chooses. Asking WLP to determine if copyright infringement has actually occurred or not seems difficult, at best. And as it stands, WLP is very careful (and likely with good reason) to ensure that the copyright for the story contents remains with the original authors, perhaps to avoid taking on this responsibility, and rightly so.

However, I suppose, as a thought experiment, if WLP did accept and document a position of agency for stories published here, they might be able to register infringement complaints on behalf of authors. Having said that, I do not see a way for that practically to occur and highly doubt that Lazeez would enjoy the additional headaches associated with it. It might even dissuade some authors from posting here since it would necessarily force all to accept WLP to represent them. It seems unlikely all would agree with that change.

Please note, also, my disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I do not even play one on television.

Having said that, I do not see a way for that practically to occur

I suspect that it would require a written and signed agreement to create the necessary principal/agent relationship in a way that would stand up if challenged.

Adding it to the sites terms of service likely won't cut it.

I have no doubt that the Zon is ... challenging and frustrating to work with. I have heard similar horror stories of apathy and churlishness, especially in the past. However, both Big Ed and Younger have reported the process improved in this thread, even quick infringement action, so perhaps there is hope, though tempered expectations might be wise regardless. I suspect "tempered expectations" is your intended message, rather than "give up, all hope is lost."

TO be honest, I don't think that Amazon cares.

My point is that even if they did care (and yeah, they probably don't), what is being asked for by The Outsider is impossible.

It is extremely easy to copy a paragraph from the sample that is provided on Amazon and do a google search. Most times it comes up with a link to the story on SOL.

Unless the real author posted the story under their real name, your suggested Google search proves nothing other than that the story was posted to SOL before it was posted to Amazon.

If it was posted under a pseudonym, it doesn't prove, it isn't even evidence, that the person who put it up on Amazon isn't the real author.

This is why Amazon only accepts copyright infringement reports from someone claiming to be the real author or an officially designated agent of the author.

Further to Dominion's point, the fact that a Google search pops up a story on SoL proves little except that two copies of the story exist. The fact that multiple copies of a story exist is not nearly enough to prove infringement. The SoL story might be ripped from the Zon. The Zon story might be licensed from the original SoL author. The story involved may have had the copyright expired (unlikely) or the story could be public domain. The original author might have sold the copyright. The original author might have posted in both places under different nyms.

As Dominion rightly points out: lacking a clear statement/complaint from the original author regarding infringement, any automated search of this nature would be absolutely and utterly useless from a copyright infringement standpoint. While there are certainly reasons to dislike and vilify the Zon, not implementing an automated test like the one suggested, I posit, is not one of them.

The problem with that is if you look at timelines.

In the ones I tried to get them to remove, my original posting dates on ASSTR was way back in 1997. Literally over two decades before the thief posted their works on Amazon.

Unless you were posting to ASSTR under your real name, the timeline by itself doesn't prove as much as you think it does.

If they were posted under a pseudonym what would it take to prove that you were the one who originally posted those stories more than two decades later?

Two decades later can you still prove you wrote the stories before they were posted on ASSTR?

I'm not saying it's impossible.

I'm also not saying Amazon has clean hands.

I am saying it's not as simple and straight forward as people are claiming.

Yeah, Amazon doesn't care. Until an author who has solid, well documented evidence that they wrote the story at issue hires a lawyer and sues them, that isn't likely to change.

And as the original author, you can easily verify the infringement if you've made the infringement claim. The point of the reply you quoted was in response to an idea that if a story in question appears for Zon in an automated Google-type search it must be a case of infringement, which is clearly untrue -- there are many situations where such a simplistic rule would fail badly, of which theft in the other direction is certainly possible, simply not in your particular case. As you note, there is more information required than the mere presence of an identical story online: like dates of publication combined with a statement from the original author or copyright holder that infringement has occurred.

The answer to your questions likely depends on copyright law in the country the author lives in.

As to US law,my understanding (I am not a lawyer) is that if the genuine copyright owner wants to recover monetary damages, they will have to sue or at least formally threaten to file a lawsuit. This is best done through a lawyer.

That's getting into choice of law and jurisdictional issues that are rather complex.

As long as Amazon has a presence in the real author's home country, it would be easier for them to sue there.

I don't know if publication on SOL (located in Canada) would be enough for Canadian jurisdiction to attach. You would have to consult a Canadian lawyer for that.

They could also sue in the US courts, where Amazon is headquartered.

Which choice is best for the real author is something they would have to consult with a real lawyer on.

Within the US the way our federal courts are organized there are multiple jurisdictions in which a lawsuit can be filed. Not all are proper.

As I understand it there are three choices for proper venue.

1. The federal court district where plaintiff is located.
2. The federal court district where the defendant is located.
3. The federal court district where the injury occurred.

For a foreign plaintiff suing a US defendant in US federal courts 1 is out, and in this specific context 3 is difficult to define so 2 may be the only choice.

In this particular instance, the defendant may be in Nigeria, good luck with that... He also, more than likely, has given fake identification information to Amazon or his publisher (was it KPD?).

In this particular instance, the defendant may be in Nigeria, good luck with that...

The author can sue Amazon itself.

Other suggestions for poisoning your stories:

Story dialog critical of Amazon might work also.

Gary

I don't see any similarity between the situations.
Amazon requires that the persons posting on it site certify that they own the all the rights to the material. Pirate Bay indexed torrents knowing that they were for copyrighted material and offered them to anyone who signed in.
What is the similarity?

(Could someone remind me of RWMoranUSMCRet's other pen names. A link to the blog where he listed them would be fine.)

I can't find that blog post but here are a "few":
Robert Moran • RWMoranUSMCRet • Brother John • Tony Sorrentino • Harry Lime • Donna the Dog Lover • Honeysuckle Lime • Downtomyknees • Serena Christian • Morganna Roberts • L. Sprague Campbell Jr. • Scarlett Griffin • Sueloves2bespanked • Diane Destry • Mickey Malone • Second edition harry lime • Grandpa's Bedtime Stories • Wally Weston • Ladyboy Larry/Lucy

To Keet et al, any chance of a page on ReaderInfo to cover acknowledged pen names? It'd give a central repository for stuff like Pixy's post.

I proposed such a list a long time ago but we decided not to for several reasons. The most important being that not all authors like to disclose connected pen names. That's also why there is no reference between Contributor Pages to connect pen names for the same author. I think there is only one reference on one of the pages and only because the author specifically and publicly stated the reference. If the list has to be limited to only publicly announced relations between pen names it will be a very incomplete list.
I do keep a personal list, that's why I could list the pen names for Harry Lime so quickly. It's only because the author himself published the list in a blog post that justified reposting it here. Harry Lime and Rachel Ross are the two authors with the longest lists of pen names.

Harry Lime has 20 pen names in the system.

Rats, I 'only' have 19 in my list, which one am I missing?

Rache had 20 pen names in the system, many of them were inspired by characters in sitcoms.

I have 41(!) pen names for Rache in my list, three of the pen names are also the MC in the story from that pen name and one is a reviewer alias.

unless the original author contacts them

Well, theoretically, the estate in the case of an author's untimely demise, would be considered his/her official representative, I would presume, and could register the complaint instead. I'm sure the Zon would ask for proof of that relationship, which might be challenging to provide, especially around here.

However, while there are practical challenges to publishing behind a pen name, they can be overcome. But no, a third party complaint probably cannot be accepted since the third party cannot know the author's intent or actions.

While I do not know the process or even if there is one, challenging the Zon contract violation by pointing out another copy published here doesn't require the input of the original author and might be another route for outraged third parties who cared enough to give it a whirl.

Run some code periodically checking new titles on Amazon (every night), check descriptions of new titles if they are sufficiently similar to what you care about. If you find a potential match, Mk1 Eyeballs.

The amazon website is still accessible with js disabled, that means scraping doesn't require a full browser and is relatively easy.
Do a search on "github amazon scraper" you will find a lot of python scripts. (I didn't test any) If you want something user friendly look for a jupyter notebook based solution. ipynb files are a convenient way to mix UI, data and code.

Alternatively, there is an API, but as far as I know, Amazon only left a limited API access.

So you would need to register as an affilitate or associate. That means you need a website promoting or selling amazon products...

The documentation is here:
https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation

I'm not 100% sure that api can be used to get all new books. There are a few node for new books but leaving the search empty to get All items in a node doesn't seems allowed.